There’s only one marketing metric you really need to care about: “cost per income.” Everything else you measure really rolls up to this one number, which tells you how much you have to spend in order to reach a particular profit. This all might seem a tad obvious, but few are managing to this approach.

Instead, IT solution providers often look only at the cost of marketing, eschewing the overall result in favor of near-term expense management. Even holding on to your cash comes at a cost … which is equivalent to future returns. Think in terms of what it costs you to make money, and your marketing efforts will become more targeted, more powerful and more substantial.

Piecemeal marketing doesn’t work — and that’s what you get when you look strictly at cost. Change your perspective: measure by cost of income, and you’ll be committed to generating ROI.