Most contractors judge their marketing by feel: "the phone seems busy" or "that ad guy says we're doing great." Feel is not a strategy. The businesses that grow predictably track a handful of clear numbers that connect marketing spend to booked, profitable jobs, and they use those numbers to double down on what works and cut what doesn't.
You don't need all twenty from day one. Start with the handful marked essential, then add the rest as you mature. Here they are, grouped by what they tell you.
Lead metrics: is the top of the funnel working?
1. Total lead volume. The number of new leads (calls plus form fills) in a period. The most basic pulse of your marketing. Track it monthly and watch the trend, not just the number.
2. Leads by source. Which channels your leads come from, map pack, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, referrals, organic. Essential. Without this, you can't tell which spending works. If you track nothing else about sources, track this.
3. Cost per lead (CPL). What you paid for each lead from a paid channel (spend ÷ leads). Essential. This is how you compare channels on a level field. But beware: the cheapest lead source isn't always the best, see close rate and job value below.
4. Cost per qualified lead. CPL counting only real potential customers, filtering out wrong numbers, job seekers, and out-of-area calls. A channel with cheap leads but lots of junk may be worse than it looks.
Conversion metrics: are leads becoming jobs?
5. Lead-to-booked rate. The percentage of leads that become scheduled appointments. Essential. This measures how well your phone process converts interest into appointments, and a small improvement here lifts the value of every lead you generate.
6. Booking-to-close rate. The percentage of booked appointments that become won jobs. This isolates your sales and estimating process from your lead process.
7. Overall lead-to-job rate. The percentage of all leads that become paying jobs, end to end. The single clearest measure of how well your whole funnel converts.
8. Speed to lead (response time). How fast you respond to new leads. Essential. This isn't a vanity metric, response time is one of the strongest predictors of whether a lead converts. If your average is measured in hours, this is likely your biggest hidden leak, and the lead generation guide covers how to fix it.
9. Missed-call rate. The share of inbound calls that go unanswered. Every missed call is a lead handed to a competitor. Most contractors are shocked when they first measure this.
Financial metrics: is marketing actually profitable?
10. Customer acquisition cost (CAC). Total marketing and sales spend ÷ new customers won. Essential. The real cost to win a customer. If CAC is climbing while job value is flat, something's wrong.
11. Average job value / average ticket. The average revenue per job. Rising average ticket often does more for profit than more leads, and it changes which channels are worth their CPL.
12. Customer lifetime value (LTV). The total revenue a customer generates over their relationship with you, including repeat jobs and referrals. Critical because it reframes CAC: a customer worth $400 once and a customer worth $4,000 over years justify very different acquisition costs.
13. LTV-to-CAC ratio. Lifetime value divided by acquisition cost. This tells you whether your growth is sustainable. A healthy ratio means each customer is worth comfortably more than it costs to win them.
14. Return on ad spend (ROAS). Revenue generated ÷ ad spend, per channel. The bottom-line test of paid marketing. Tie this to booked jobs, not just leads, or it lies to you.
15. Marketing as a percentage of revenue. Total marketing spend ÷ revenue. Keeps your investment in proportion as you grow, and flags when you're under- or over-spending relative to healthy benchmarks.
Channel and visibility metrics: is your reach growing?
16. Map pack ranking. Your position for your core service-plus-city searches. Essential for local SEO. Your visibility in the map pack directly drives your cheapest, highest-intent leads.
17. Organic website traffic. Visitors arriving from unpaid search. A leading indicator of your SEO and content working, and of demand you're capturing for free.
18. Website conversion rate. The percentage of site visitors who contact you. This tells you whether your site is a conversion engine or a leaky bucket. Doubling this doubles leads with zero extra traffic.
Reputation and retention metrics: is the flywheel spinning?
19. Review volume and average rating. New reviews per month and your overall star rating. Essential. Reviews compound: they lift map-pack ranking, raise ad and site conversion, and close jobs on their own. Track the rate of new reviews, not just the total.
20. Repeat and referral rate. The share of revenue from past customers and their referrals. Your cheapest revenue. A rising number here means your retention and reputation systems are working and your growth is compounding rather than purely bought.
How to actually use these
Twenty metrics can paralyze rather than clarify, so a few principles:
Start with the essentials. If you track only a handful, make them: leads by source, cost per lead, lead-to-booked rate, speed to lead, CAC, map pack ranking, and review volume. These alone will transform how you make decisions.
Connect everything to booked jobs, not clicks. Impressions and even leads can flatter a channel that never produces revenue. Always trace the number back to jobs won.
Review on a rhythm. Look at these monthly at minimum. The point isn't the snapshot, it's the trend and the decisions it drives: pour budget into what's working, fix or cut what isn't.
Watch for the cheap-lead trap. A channel with a low cost per lead but a low close rate or low job value can be worse than a "pricier" channel that brings better customers. This is why you track cost per lead and close rate and job value together, never in isolation.
Build a simple dashboard. You don't need expensive software to start. A single monthly scorecard with these numbers, updated consistently, puts you ahead of most contractors, who track nothing.
The payoff
When you track the right numbers, marketing stops being a mysterious expense and becomes a controllable growth lever. You'll know exactly which channels earn their keep, where your funnel leaks, and what to change to grow. That clarity is the difference between hoping the phone rings and building a business that grows on purpose.
The other guides in this series, home services marketing, local SEO, Google Ads, and lead generation, show you how to move these numbers. This guide shows you which ones to watch.