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The marketing scorecard with only six numbers on it
Every marketing scorecard I found had a problem
Search this phrase and you get two kinds of template. The first has thirty-one KPIs across four "balanced scorecard perspectives", built for a company with a marketing department, which a firm with twelve leads a month cannot fill in, let alone act on. The second is a sensible small-business sheet with one flaw: it's monthly. At twelve leads a month, one quiet week is a third of your pipeline, and you find out about it four weeks late.
Neither tells you what a lead is worth, which is the only maths that turns marketing numbers into pounds. And neither has a rule for what stays OFF the card, which is how followers and impressions end up in the same box as sales.
Six numbers, because that's all that predicts sales
Twelve years being judged on a sales number taught me that most of what gets reported is what went up, not what matters. In a 2026 survey of over 500 UK businesses, 30% named website traffic as their most valuable marketing metric and only 6% named return on investment. Traffic is the number that makes you feel busy. Leads, proposals and sales are the conversation that pays you.
- Visits to the pages that matter, not the whole site.
- Where they came from: the top three sources, by name.
- Action rate on those pages: enquiries divided by visits.
- Leads, with the source of each ("how did you hear about us?").
- Proposals or quotes sent: proof leads became conversations.
- Sales won, count and pounds.
Weekly AND monthly: the card is weekly, and the monthly view assembles itself from the weeks you save, so you can tell a bad week from a quiet season.
The honesty check, given away here
Two questions, run against every number you're tempted to track. Does it only ever go up? Then it can't tell you anything, because it can't fall. And if it moved this week, would you change what you do? If the honest answer is "no, I'd just feel differently", it's decoration. Followers fail both. Impressions fail both. Email open rates fail the second and are faked by Apple's privacy settings anyway. Leads, proposals and sales pass, which is why they're on the card and the rest aren't.
And one warning about the benchmark you'll be tempted to compare yourself to: the "5:1 marketing ROI is good, 10:1 is exceptional" rule that every article quotes traces back to a single blog post asserting it with no data underneath. You are not behind. You're being compared to nothing. Work out what a lead is worth to you instead; the scorecard has the calculator.
Yours for an email
Get the Weekly Marketing Scorecard
Drop your email and it unlocks instantly (and lands in your inbox too, so you can find it again). No card, no trial, no dashboard subscription waiting behind it: there's nothing for sale on this whole site.
- The six-number weekly card, saves as you type
- The monthly roll-up that builds itself
- The what's-a-lead-worth calculator
- The vanity trap list and the two honesty checks
Where should the scorecard go?
You'll also get G's Marketing Letters: one short, useful letter every weekday, nothing for sale. Unsubscribe any time. Privacy.
Fair questions
Is the marketing scorecard really free?
Yes. The whole thing for an email address: the six-number weekly card, the monthly roll-up, the what’s-a-lead-worth calculator and the honesty checks. You also get G’s Marketing Letters (one short marketing letter every weekday, nothing for sale) and you can unsubscribe any time without losing the scorecard.
What should be on a marketing scorecard?
For a small B2B firm, six numbers: visits to the pages that matter (not total traffic), where they came from, the action rate on those pages, leads by source, proposals or quotes sent, and sales won. Everything else (followers, impressions, opens, rankings for their own sake) either only goes up or wouldn’t change what you do, so it stays off the card.
Should I review marketing numbers weekly or monthly?
Both. Weekly catches a bad week before it becomes a bad month, which matters when you only get a dozen leads a month and one quiet week is a third of your pipeline. Monthly shows you the season: a quiet August in a finance-heavy client base is a calendar, not a crisis. The scorecard does the weekly card and builds the monthly view from it.
What is a good marketing ROI for a small business?
Distrust the famous answer. The "5:1 is good, 10:1 is exceptional" rule that every article repeats traces back to a blog post that asserts it with no data, and a 5:1 revenue-to-spend ratio can be poor at a 20% margin or brilliant at 75%. The useful number is what a lead is worth to you (win rate times first-year value), and whether each source pays back within a period you can live with. The scorecard works that out for you.
Do I need Google Analytics to use it?
It helps for the first three numbers, and it’s free, so set it up with Search Console. But the numbers that pay you (leads, proposals, sales) come from your inbox and your bank, and the best attribution tool at this scale is asking every enquiry "how did you hear about us?". Note the answer in the leads row.
Want the reasoning first? Read how to measure marketing ROI as a small business (and which numbers are lying to you). Pair the scorecard with the Pipeline Review Template: same Friday, same fifteen minutes.