You are closing your books. Your accountant is asking for receipts, you are checking depreciation, you are preparing the tax return. And marketing? It often falls off the table: you note that money was spent, you sigh, and you set off for another identical financial year.
Yet the timing suits it well. Your figures have just come out, the invoices are sorted, and you rarely have such a clear view of what came in and what went out. All you are missing is a quiet moment and a method.
Here is a simple method, made for the owner of a small business in French-speaking Switzerland: four blocks, and three written decisions at the end.
Why this review beats a new campaign
Add up what you put into marketing over the financial year: advertising, tools, service providers, content, printing. You get a real sum, whatever its size. Nobody would keep an employee without ever reviewing their work. Your marketing budget deserves the same treatment.
The closing review answers three simple questions:
- Which channels actually produced customers, beyond traffic and likes?
- Which services carried the margin, and which ones consumed time while returning too little?
- What should you cut, reinforce and automate for the coming financial year?
You need neither a complicated dashboard nor a heavy audit: one document and three decisions are enough.
Block 1: gather the figures
Open a plain spreadsheet, one row per month of the financial year, and fill in five columns. Do not chase perfection: an approximate figure written down beats an exact figure never recorded.
- Actual marketing spend: advertising budget, tool subscriptions, provider fees, content production, printing. Take it from your accounts, not from memory.
- Number of inbound enquiries: forms, phone calls, WhatsApp messages, direct emails. Your inbox remains a reliable source.
- Number of customers signed from those enquiries.
- Revenue generated by those new customers during the financial year.
- Declared origin: Google search, referral, social media, passing by the shop window, trade fair, former customer.
That last column is the most valuable, and often the emptiest. If you do not have it, write that down straight away: the first decision for the coming financial year will be to add the question "how did you find us?" to your contact form and to your first phone call.
Block 2: analyse your acquisition channels
You now have what you need to calculate a very telling measure for a small business: the cost of acquiring a customer, channel by channel.
The calculation, in three lines
For each channel, divide the spend over the financial year by the number of customers signed through it. You get a cost per customer, which you then compare with what a customer brings you over the whole relationship. The figure only makes sense with that comparison: a high cost can still be excellent if the customer orders often or for large amounts, and a low cost can disappoint on small one-off orders.
Picture an installation tradesman in Geneva, at the time of his closing:
- Search advertising: the cost per customer looks high at first glance, but the average order value comfortably covers it. The channel is profitable.
- Organic search: writing and optimisation cost little compared with the customers gained, and the pages stay online once the work is done.
- Social media: few direct customers, so a high cost per customer. Yet several customers who came through other channels say they checked the Instagram account before signing.
That last point is essential: a channel can be modest at acquisition and very useful for reassurance. Before cutting a channel on cost per customer alone, look at its role in the buying decision and ask yourself one question: what would happen if it disappeared?
Three reading traps
- The delay. A customer signed today may come from an article published much earlier. On a long sales cycle (consulting, real estate, business-to-business services), read your figures with some distance. For organic search, keep this benchmark in mind. No timeline or ranking can be guaranteed: early signals often appear within a few weeks, and solid results are generally built over several months, usually 3 to 6 months.
- The last source. "They typed the company name into Google" does not mean Google brought them. Something gave them that name first.
- Volumes that are too small. When a channel has brought only a handful of customers, you may be reading chance rather than a trend. Note the figure, but wait before deciding.
Block 3: profitability by service
The second analysis is often more revealing than the first. List your main services and, for each one, record three figures:
- Revenue for the financial year.
- Hours actually spent: yours and your team's, including administration.
- Direct costs: subcontracting, materials, licences.
Divide the margin by the hours and you get your real hourly revenue per service. The result often holds surprises.
Picture a service business in French-speaking Switzerland comparing its three services:
- Service A: decent revenue, few hours and few costs. The hourly revenue is good.
- Service B: the company's largest revenue, but many hours and heavy subcontracting. The hourly revenue is the lowest of the three.
- Service C: small revenue and the best hourly revenue, with very few customers over the financial year.
Service B fills the diary and earns the least per hour worked. Service C earns the most, but nobody knows it exists: it is highlighted nowhere on the website and in none of your publications.
There you have a major marketing decision for the coming financial year: promote what earns ahead of what keeps you busy. In practice, that means a dedicated page for service C, a few articles answering the questions its buyers ask, and a targeted campaign instead of generic communication. For the page itself, see our website creation service: we offer a one-page website from CHF 400 (hosting and domain: annual fees stated in the quote), an Express site at CHF 590 (4 pages, 5 working days) and a Pro site at CHF 2'490 (up to 10 pages, 3 weeks). Redesigns are quoted individually, and the details are on our pricing page.
Block 4: three decisions for the coming financial year
A closing review that ends without a written decision is a wasted review. Limit yourself to three: beyond that, you risk applying none of them.
Decision 1: what you cut
One channel, one tool or one service. Just one. Spot the subscription nobody opens any more, the social channel that takes your time every week with neither enquiries nor any reassurance role, or the low-margin service you keep accepting out of habit. Cutting frees budget and time, the two resources that are always short.
Decision 2: what you reinforce
Take your best channel and raise it gradually, in stages, watching the cost per customer at each step. Your organisation also has to absorb the extra volume: enquiries left unanswered are expensive. If the channel you pick is paid search, our Google and Meta advertising costs CHF 690, then from CHF 490 per month; a written quote within 24 hours gives you a firm price before work begins, with the advertising budget on top, paid directly to the platforms.
Decision 3: what you automate
Identify the repetitive marketing task that takes the most of your time: chasing unanswered quotes, publishing manually, writing the same answers to the same questions, copying contacts into a file. A well-chosen automation gives you time back for your core business. If you want to hand this work over, see our artificial intelligence automation service.
The mistakes that ruin a closing review
- Trying to measure everything. Five columns are enough. An imperfect table reread every quarter serves you better than a perfect dashboard that is never filled in.
- Judging on vanity metrics. Follower counts, impressions and views do not pay salaries. Look at enquiries, signed customers and margin.
- Deciding alone. The person who answers the phone often knows better than you where customers come from. Ask for their view.
- Postponing to next quarter. Block the date now in your diary, with the same rigour as a tax deadline.
Your plan, in summary
- Gather: five columns, one row per month, the raw figures of the financial year.
- Analyse the channels: cost per customer and the real role of each channel.
- Analyse the services: hourly revenue per service.
- Decide: cut, reinforce, automate, with three written decisions and a date for each.
Run the exercise again at the next closing, with the same spreadsheet. Comparing two financial years gives you a far firmer reading than impressions and views: you will steer your marketing with your own figures, just as you already steer your cash flow.
If you lack the data to fill in those columns, simply start with what you have. Write to us: we reply in less than 24 hours, and a 15-minute video call helps identify the measurements to put in place before the next closing.