Analytics
The Five Marketing Numbers Your Board Actually Wants
Impressions and followers do not survive a board meeting. These five numbers do.
Samuel McGarrigle · 29 June 2026 · 5 min read
Marketing loses credibility in SMEs for one predictable reason: it reports activity to an audience that thinks in commercial outcomes. Here are the five figures that change the conversation.
1. Qualified enquiries by source
Not sessions. Not form fills. Enquiries that sales agreed were worth pursuing, split by where they came from.
2. Cost per qualified enquiry
Total marketing spend divided by those enquiries, per channel. This is the number that ends most arguments about budget.
3. Enquiry to opportunity conversion
If a channel produces plenty of enquiries that never become opportunities, it is producing noise. This metric protects you from optimising the wrong thing.
4. Pipeline and revenue influenced
With a long sales cycle you need to show contribution before you can show closed revenue. Proper CRM attribution makes this defensible rather than anecdotal.
5. Return on marketing investment
Revenue generated against total marketing cost, over a period that respects your sales cycle length. Quarterly for short cycles, rolling twelve months for industrial ones.
Getting there
Almost every SME I work with can produce these numbers once the CRM, the website tracking and the channel data are joined up properly. That integration work is unglamorous and it is usually the highest-value project in the first ninety days.
When marketing reports in these terms, budget conversations stop being defensive and start being about where to invest next.
Where this leads next
- ServiceAI performance analyticsForecast pipeline impact and identify the change that moves revenue.
- ServiceHubSpot CRMCRM and pipeline reporting that marketing and sales both trust.
- InsightAI in SME Marketing: Where It Genuinely Helps and Where It Wastes MoneyA practical view of where AI earns its place in a small marketing function.
- ResourceUK SME marketing benchmarksBudget ratios, cost per enquiry and conversion ranges for £1m–£25m businesses.
Want this applied to your business? Compare our marketing services or book a discovery call and we’ll talk through the fastest route to qualified pipeline.
