How Do I Know If My Marketing Is Working?
Every month a report arrives full of reach and clicks, and you still can't say whether any of it filled a room or booked a job.
Written by Paul Bosiger, Mission Beach Published 7 min read
To know if your marketing is working, read it against a baseline recorded before the work began, on the same measures, every month. The measures are the few that decide whether customers find you and choose you. Count them before you change anything, keep them on one page and log the work beside the numbers that moved. Anything else is a feeling.
- 01Is My Marketing Working?
- 02How Should A Small Business Measure Marketing Results?
- 03What Should A Marketing Dashboard Show?
- 04How Do I Track Direct Bookings?
- 05How Do I Track If ChatGPT Mentions My Business?
- 06How Often Should I Review My Marketing?
Is My Marketing Working?
You can only tell by reading it against a baseline recorded before the work began, on the same measures, every month.
A figure on its own has no direction. A month of visits, calls or bookings means something only beside the same figure from before the work, counted the same way. When a business can't say whether its marketing is working, the usual reason is that nobody wrote that figure down.
In April 2026 the Google Analytics on Mission Beach Hideaway's website had never fired, so it had no count of its own visits to compare anything to. What could be measured was written down that month, before the work began, and it became the park's baseline.
The work since is read against it. By 5 October Google had dropped the 2-star label. Mobile PageSpeed read 83 and 86 on two runs on 9 October. Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel have counted visits since 11 October.
Count it before you change it. A new site, a campaign or a month of posts can only be judged against a figure taken before it started.
Counted in April, before the work: 37. Counted again on 9 October: 83 and 86 on two runs. The grey is where it started.
How Should A Small Business Measure Marketing Results?
Start with the few things that decide whether a customer finds you and chooses you, and those differ by business, which is why an audit finds them and a template does not.
The usual answer is a list: reach, engagement, click rate, cost per lead, return on spend. Each is a real measure, and most of them won't decide whether your business has a good month.
The few that do sit between a stranger and a sale. Being found on Google and in the answers an AI assistant gives. A website that holds people on a phone. A post, a listing or a search that leads to a booking or an enquiry you can count.
The sample in FIG. 2, a monthly report built for a holiday park, carries four outcomes.
- 01Found on AI. How many of 20 everyday questions name the park.
- 02Fast website. The PageSpeed score on a phone, where the holiday gets planned.
- 03Social to bookings. Bookings that started on a post, counted through a tracked link.
- 04Demand and turnover. The Google rating, the website's revenue and the share of bookings that come direct.
A builder's would be different, and so would a developer's. That is why an audit finds them: it reads where the business shows up, where it doesn't and what the gap is worth. Each measure is written down as it stands on the first day, with the date, and nothing joins the list because it is easy to count.
What Should A Marketing Dashboard Show?
Every measure that decides the business, on one page and one date range, with the work logged beside the numbers, because otherwise cause and effect live in different logins.
The figures a small business runs on are scattered. Visits sit in Google Analytics, searches in Search Console, reviews on the Google Business Profile, reach in Meta and bookings in the booking system. What the AI assistants say about you sits in none of them.
Each login reports on its own dates, so a change in one is rarely seen beside its cause in another. Put the measures on one page over one date range with the work written beside them, and the two can be read together.
The Hideaway shows why the dates matter. On 7 October its 20 everyday where-to-stay questions were put to Google's AI Mode, and AI Mode cited the park's own website in 8 of them. The park's FAQ, 29 answers with 45 more across 12 pages, went live after that count.
So that count is the FAQ's starting point, not its result. Whatever the FAQ did can only show in counts taken after it, on the same 20 questions.
Our monthly work is reported on one page built for this, the Growth Board: each measure beside where it started, with a log of what was done that month. FIG. 2 is a sample we made up, for a park that doesn't exist.
The Sample Growth Board
A month for an invented holiday park, on one page. Each outcome reads against where it started and the target it is working towards, and the month's work is logged at the foot of the page. Every name and figure on it is invented.
How Do I Track Direct Bookings?
Tracked links, a pixel on the website and a booking system that records each booking's source, because until all three are in, nobody can say where bookings come from, your agency included.
A booking rarely starts where it ends. Someone sees a post, searches the name, reads the reviews and books on the website days later. Each of those places sees only its own step.
Three things join the steps up. A tracked link carries a short tag, built the way Google sets out for campaign links, that tells analytics which post or profile sent the visit. A pixel and analytics on the website count what the visitor does there. The booking system, connected to both, reports each booking with its value and where the guest came from.
At the Hideaway, Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel have counted visits since 11 October. Since 13 October the booking pages have counted each booking and its value. The tracked links for the park's Google profile, Facebook and Instagram are built and go on next.
For a builder or a developer the booking is an enquiry, and the same three apply. Judge a channel only once all three are counting, because a month read with one of them missing can hand the credit to the wrong door.
How Do I Track If ChatGPT Mentions My Business?
Ask the questions your customers ask, the same set every month, on each assistant, and count how often you are named.
Write down the questions a customer asks before they find you, the way they would type them. Ask each assistant the whole set the same way every month, logged out wherever it allows, and record whether you are named, where in the answer and whether your own website is cited.
The Hideaway's set is 20 everyday where-to-stay questions, asked of four assistants. On 7 October ChatGPT named the park in 14 of the 20 and Google's AI Mode in 13, and AI Mode cited the park's own website in 8. On 12 October Gemini named it in 11 of the 13 asked so far. Copilot, asked on 12 and 14 October, named it in 12 of the 20.
Answers change from one run to the next, so one run is a sample. The same questions asked every month, on the same assistants, turn the samples into a record.
What makes an assistant more likely to name a business is a subject of its own, covered in how to get your business mentioned by ChatGPT. Doing it for you is AI SEO.
7 Oct
7 Oct
12 Oct
12 and 14 Oct
The same 20 everyday where-to-stay questions on each assistant, counted once. This is the starting line. The next monthly count is read against it.
How Often Should I Review My Marketing?
Monthly, against the baseline, with the work logged beside the numbers that moved: measure, record, improve, grow.
Each month runs the same four steps. Measure the same few things the same way. Record them beside the work that was done. Improve what missed and grow what worked.
Kept long enough, the record is the proof. Wildside Adventures, a tour operator at Mission Beach, went from a two-year ceiling of 350 Google clicks a month to 1,020, read in Search Console against the months before its site was rebuilt.
Where to start is the first page: where things stand today, written down and dated. You can only know your marketing is working if you wrote down where it started.
The Visibility Audit writes that page. It finds the measures that decide your business and takes the first reading of each.
01How do I know if a campaign is successful?
Decide what it is for before it runs, and count where that stands. When it ends, count the same thing the same way. A campaign with no starting figure can only be judged on how it felt.
02How do you measure marketing effectiveness?
Against your own baseline. Pick the few measures that decide whether customers find you and choose you, and record where each stands before the work. Then read them every month on the same terms, with the work logged beside them.
03What is a marketing baseline?
A dated record of where each measure stood before the work began. For a holiday park that might be its PageSpeed score, how often AI assistants name it and how many bookings come direct. Every month after is read against it.
04What should a marketing report look like?
One page and one date range. The few measures that decide the business, each beside where it started and the target it is working towards, and a note of the work done that month.
05What does a marketing audit include?
It should measure where you stand before anything changes: who you compete with, what people search for, how fast your website loads on a phone and whether search engines and AI assistants name you. That reading is the baseline everything after it is judged against.
What This Is Built On
- The serviceTourism and resort marketing, booked not just seen→
- The proofMission Beach Hideaway, counted from April→
- The groundMarketing in Far North Queensland→
- The next stepThe Visibility Audit, $500, one week→
Written by Paul BosigerYKC AgencyMission Beach№ 0005
