What each marketing source costs per lead

How a firm records marketing spend per source each month and reads leads, proposals and accepted fees against it on the CRM Dashboard.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Most accounting firms can say what they spent on marketing last year. Far fewer can say what that spending produced. The Facebook campaign felt busy, the directory listing felt quiet, the sponsorship of the local business breakfast felt worthwhile. Feelings are a poor basis for next year's budget, especially in a firm whose partners would never accept "it felt profitable" from a client.

Measuring marketing does not need an elaborate system. It needs two things recorded consistently: what was spent on each source, and what each source produced. This article explains how to do that in Achekam and how to read the result without fooling yourself.

Entering spend per source per month

A firm can enter what it spent on each lead source or campaign per month. The entry lives on the CRM Dashboard, under CRM & SALES. The Campaigns menu entry opens the mailing list rather than campaign spend, so look for spend on the dashboard.

Decide first what counts as a source, and keep the list short and stable. Typical sources for a firm:

• paid social media, with leads arriving through a Zapier lead hook that carries Facebook or Instagram Lead Ads submissions into the pipeline;
• the firm's website, through web forms that each have their own public address;
• directory listings and sponsorships;
• client referrals.

Then enter spend for every source with a cost, every month, including the months it seems small. A month left out is not a month that cost nothing; it is a gap that makes the source look cheaper than it is.

Agree, too, what counts as spend. The advertising platform's charge is obvious. Less obvious are the designer who made the adverts, the agency's management fee, the printing for the breakfast event and the directory's annual listing fee. Decide once which of these belong to each source, write the rule down, and apply it every month, so that sources are compared on the same basis.

Leads, proposals and accepted fees against spend

With spend recorded, the CRM Dashboard sets three outcomes against it for each source: leads, proposals and accepted fees. Together they tell a fuller story than cost per lead alone.

A worked example in words shows why all three matter. Suppose the paid social campaign produces many leads at a low cost per lead, while the business breakfast produces only a handful. On cost per lead alone, social media wins easily. But if most of the social leads never reach a proposal, while the breakfast contacts go on to accept audit engagements, the picture reverses. The question a partner should ask is not "where are leads cheapest?" but "where do accepted fees cost least to win?"

Read the dashboard in that order: accepted fees first, then proposals, then leads. A source that produces leads but no proposals is telling you something about lead quality, or about how quickly the firm follows up, not just about the source.

Blank where no spend was entered

Where no spend has been entered for a source, the dashboard leaves cost per lead blank rather than showing a figure. That is the honest result: without a cost, there is nothing to divide.

A blank is useful information in its own right. If a source shows leads but a blank cost, either it genuinely costs nothing, as client referrals often do in direct terms, or someone has not recorded its spend. Check which before drawing conclusions. A free-looking source that is actually costing the firm money every month will distort every comparison on the page.

Withdrawing mistaken entries

Entries made by mistake are withdrawn, not deleted. If someone records a month's spend against the wrong source, or types the amount wrongly, the entry is withdrawn and a correct one entered. The original stays on record as withdrawn.

That matters for the same reason it matters in the firm's own books: when a partner asks why last quarter's cost per lead changed, the answer should be visible, not reconstructed from memory. Agree who in the firm may enter and withdraw spend, so that the figures have an owner.

Nigerian and Kenyan firms should note one display limit elsewhere in the CRM: amounts on the CRM board are shown in rand even for Nigerian or Kenyan firms. Check the currency label when reading any CRM figure, and keep the firm's own currency in mind when comparing sources.

Deciding where to spend next

Cost per lead is a management figure, and it should be used the way management accounts are used: as a prompt for questions and decisions. AccountingTools' definition of management accounting describes it as the internal reporting that tracks revenues, expenses, variances and other measures to help managers act, which is exactly the job here.

A quarterly marketing review might work through these questions:

The last row is a reminder that the dashboard measures sources, not the firm's own behaviour. A source can look poor simply because its leads waited days for a reply. Follow-up speed is covered in the articles on Facebook lead ads through Zapier and web forms and the mailing list, and it should be checked before any source is cut.

Enter last month's spend for every source today, including the small ones, and put a monthly reminder in the diary of the person responsible. In three months the dashboard will have enough to start a sensible conversation about next year's budget.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.