A marketing spend log: what each spend cost and brought in

To see what each promotion costs and which ones customers mention, give every spend its own row in a single log, taken from your bills, card statement and cash rather than memory. Ask customers at the counter how they heard of you, and count the enquiries nobody can place on a separate "not traced" line. At month end, check the log's total against the books, then decide for each spend: keep, change or stop.

Why marketing spend is hard to see in a small shop

A small shop or service business might spend a few thousand rupees a month on promotion: boosted social posts on the business card, leaflets in the newspaper, a stall at a school or society function, a banner, a local cable-TV scroll, a WhatsApp message to past customers. Each is paid a different way, nobody adds them up, and next month's spend is decided by habit.

"Customers don't remember where they heard about us; it's mostly word of mouth anyway." Some won't remember, and the log says so on its "not traced" line. But the spends themselves are on bills and the card statement. Writing each one down beside the enquiries customers do place shows which spends nobody mentions.

Asking "how did you hear about us?", keeping one sheet of where enquiries came from, printing a code on each batch of leaflets, marking an enquiry "not traced" when nobody knows, working out cost per enquiry and per order, and reviewing it monthly are all common practice. This page adds three things: one row per spend taken from the books, with offline and online spends in the same log; a month-end check of the log against the books; and a rule that "not traced" enquiries are never shared out among the spends.

The spend log

One row per spend, with these columns:

• month, what it was, and where it ran or was placed
• paid how: card, UPI, cash or bill
• bill or statement reference
• amount (₹)
• enquiries traced, orders traced, and value of traced orders (₹)
• keep, change or stop next month
• note

Finding every spend: bills, card statement, cash

Collect the spends from the books, not from memory: printer's and banner bills, ad charges on the business card statement, and anything paid by UPI or cash for promotion. Each gets a row the week it is paid. Online ad charges can appear first on the card statement, which is covered in checking a business credit card statement line by line.

Discounts given at the counter are not promotion spend for this log.

Asking customers, and the "not traced" line

Staff ask each new enquiry "how did you hear about us?" and tick a short counter sheet: one line for each of the month's spends, plus "friend / old customer" and "don't remember". A code printed on leaflets or a separate WhatsApp number for one spend is an optional extra.

Enquiries nobody can place go on the "not traced" line. They are counted, and never shared out among the spends.

Cost per enquiry and per order

For each paid spend, divide what it cost by the enquiries traced to it, and by the orders traced to it. No "good" figure is given here; the only useful comparison is with your own earlier months. The value of traced orders is what customers told you, not proof that a spend caused a sale.

The month-end check against the books

At month end, compare the log's total with what the books show for promotion. Any difference is a spend the log missed: find it and add it as a row. For the bills themselves, ask your accountant how marketing bills, including online ads paid by card, should be recorded. The log's total is then the promotion figure in a monthly budget against actual figures.

Keep, change or stop

Once a month, decide for each spend whether to keep it, change it or stop it, and write one reason beside each. Once a year, a line-by-line review of all costs asks whether to keep spending on promotion at all.

Worked example: a Jalandhar sports-goods shop's October

Illustrative example: a fictional sports-goods shop in Jalandhar, Punjab, with the owner and 4 staff, selling cricket, badminton and football gear to walk-in customers, academies and schools. Figures are invented; verify independently.

What was spent, from the bills, card statement and cash:

What customers said, from the counter sheet:

Plus 31 enquiries not traced to any spend ("friend / old customer" or "don't remember" on the counter sheet): 64 + 31 = 95 enquiries in all. Orders from these 31 are not counted against any spend.

Month-end check. The log first totalled ₹23,800; the books showed ₹25,000 for promotion. The ₹1,200 difference was a cable-TV scroll paid in cash from the counter, added as a row (it was not on the counter sheet, and no customer mentioned it either).

Cost per enquiry and per order, for the four paid spends that customers mentioned:

The WhatsApp message had no cash spent and the cable-TV scroll had no enquiries, so neither gets a cost figure. October is the shop's first month of the log, so these figures are the baseline November's are compared with.

Decisions written:

• Stall: keep, but one school's team-kit order (₹38,000 of the ₹41,500) may not repeat, so judge it again after the next stall.
• Leaflets: change the area; 3,000 leaflets brought 7 enquiries the customers could place.
• Boosted posts and academy banner: keep for November, then compare with October's figures.
• Cable-TV scroll: stop (if it is tried again, add it to the counter sheet first).
• WhatsApp message: keep, once a month. Before the next one: if you collect customers' phone numbers for messages, check what consent you need.

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Templates

Spend log

The spends:

What customers said, and the decision:

Counter sheet: "How did you hear about us?"

Looking at your promotion spend each month?

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