"Did this ad work?"

Here’s why that question keeps you stuck.

When you spend $2,000 on Google Ads and get 15 calls, you feel like you can track it. When you spend $1,500 on a direct mail campaign and the phone rings a bit more that week... you have no idea what caused what.

So what happens? You keep dumping money into Google because it "feels" trackable. You avoid radio, TV, direct mail, and podcast sponsorships because you cannot see the click-to-call path. And you stay boxed into two channels that every other tree service in your market is also bidding on.

There is a better question to ask. One that lets you scale into those "hard to track" channels with confidence:

"When does my next dollar of marketing stop making me money?"

That is what Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) answers. And if you want to profitably grow beyond what Google and Facebook can give you, you need to understand it.

Let me keep this simple.

That is it. You add up every dollar you brought in. You add up every dollar you spent on marketing. You divide. The result tells you how efficiently your entire marketing machine is running.

Here is an example. Last month your company did $180,000 in revenue. You spent $9,000 total on marketing (Google, direct mail, truck wraps, everything). Your MER is 20. That means for every $1 you spent, you made $20.

Now here is where it gets useful.

This strips out repeat customers and referrals. It tells you how efficiently your marketing is bringing in NEW business specifically. If that same $180,000 month included $60,000 from first-time customers, your aMER is 6.67.

Why does this matter?

Because when you know your aMER, you can test ANY channel and measure the impact. You do not need to track individual clicks. You do not need fancy attribution software. You just need to know your baseline aMER and watch what happens when you change the inputs.

Let’s say you are currently running Google Ads and spending $5,000 a month. Your aMER is 8. You are getting $40,000 in new customer revenue.

Now you want to test direct mail. You add $2,000 in direct mail spend. Your total marketing spend is now $7,000.

Next month, your new customer revenue goes to $52,000. Your aMER is now 7.43.

What just happened?

That extra $2,000 brought in $12,000 in new business. The marginal return on that $2,000 was 6x. Still profitable. Still worth doing.

You did not need to ask "which call came from the postcard?" You measured the whole system.

Most owners look at blended numbers and think they are fine. But blended numbers hide the truth.

If your first $5,000 in spend returns 10x and your next $2,000 returns 3x, your blended number still looks good. But that last $2,000 might be barely breaking even once you factor in your actual costs.

The real question is always about the NEXT dollar. Not the average.

When you are testing radio, TV, programmatic, or podcast ads, you are asking: "What did my aMER do when I added this channel?" If it stayed stable or improved, keep going. If it dropped below your profit threshold, pull back.

If you do not track new vs. repeat, your accounting or CRM should be able to tell you. If not, that is your first fix.

Know your breakeven aMER. If your gross margin is 50%, you need an aMER of at least 2.0 to break even. At 60% margin, breakeven is around 1.67. At 70%, it is about 1.43. These numbers tell you when to stop spending.

Seasonal adjustment matters. Your MER in March will look different than your MER in July. Compare month-over-month with the same month last year when possible.

Referrals are not "free." They came from jobs you did well. Jobs that took marketing dollars to win originally. MER captures this because it measures the whole system.

The question to ask your bookkeeper this week: "Can you pull a report showing revenue from first-time customers vs. repeat customers for the last 6 months?" If they cannot, you are flying blind.

Tree service owners: "I only do Google and Facebook because I can track them."

Really? Can you?

You can see clicks. You can see calls. But do you know which of those calls turned into booked jobs? Do you know the revenue from each job that came from each click? Do you know your true cost per acquired customer including the tire-kickers and no-shows?

Most owners cannot answer those questions either. They just FEEL like digital is trackable because there are dashboards with numbers.

Meanwhile, they ignore channels where their competition is not bidding against them. They ignore the fact that a well-written postcard hitting a homeowner's mailbox has zero competition for attention at that moment. They ignore that local radio still reaches property managers during their morning commute.

MER lets you stop pretending you have perfect attribution. It lets you measure what actually matters: total output vs. total input.

So here is my question for you:

If you could test a new channel for $1,500 and know within 45 days whether it was profitable... would you?

Because now you can.

Knowing your MER is step one. Knowing what to DO with it is step two.

If you are spending money on marketing and you do not know your current MER or aMER, you are guessing. And guessing at this revenue level costs real money.

We do a marketing diagnostic where we go over your numbers and show you exactly where your next dollar should (and should not) go. Takes about an hour. No sales pressure.

If that sounds useful, reply to this email with "AUDIT" and we will get you scheduled.

Until next week, keep your cuts clean and your numbers cleaner.

-Jacob