Someone has quoted you. What would it have to do to be worth it?
Nine questions, about three minutes. “Will this marketing work?” is a forecast and nobody has one. What the same money has to move before it has paid for itself is exact arithmetic — and you will see one quote three different ways, because a business only has three places to find the customers it would need.
Free, and no card. Four questions are optional; two of them cost you a figure and the tool says which, rather than filling the gap in.
Informational only — not audit, attest, legal, tax, or investment advice. The required lift is arithmetic on the figures you enter; nothing here predicts what any spend will achieve.
“Will this marketing work?” is a forecast, and nobody has one
Someone has quoted you. A new website, a logo, a rebrand, an agency on a monthly retainer. The question in your head is whether it will work, and that question has no answer — not from an agency, not from a calculator, and not from anyone who has not met your customers. So it gets asked, nobody can answer it, and the decision comes down to whether the person selling it was convincing.
There is a question next to it that does have an exact answer: what would it have to do before it has paid for itself? That needs four figures you already have — the amount, how long you would hold it to, what a typical sale invoices for, and how much of every $100 is left after you have delivered the work — and it resolves to a single number of extra customers a year.
Then that one number gets shown three ways, because there are only three places those customers can come from. More people finding you. More of the people who already find you saying yes. The customers you already won, buying again. A quote that looks reasonable as “a few more enquiries a month” can look absurd as “every enquiry converting, and still not enough” — and it is the same money either way. Nothing here tells you which one to buy. It tells you what each would have to do, which is the part nobody works out before signing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the required lift?
How much the spend has to move your business before it has paid for itself, in your own units. A $15,000 website, held to one year, with a $1,200 typical sale and $55 kept out of every $100, has to bring in about 23 more customers in that year. That is exact arithmetic on your figures, not an estimate of what a website does.
Why does it show the same money three different ways?
Because a business only has three places to find extra customers: more people finding you, more of the people who already find you saying yes, or the customers you already won buying more often. Every spend being pitched to you is one of those three. Take the same 23 customers, at 60 enquiries a month of which 9 buy: that is 152 more enquiries a year, or 3.2 points of conversion on top of the 15 you convert today, or 0.21 more purchases from each customer you already win. You know which of those three is implausible for your business, where a calculator never could.
Is a rebrand marketing?
It is a conversion spend. A logo, a name, a website or a new way of describing yourself works on the people who already found you and changes how many of them say yes. It is almost always sold as though it brings people to the door, which is the reach route, and it is the hardest of the three to read afterwards because the change is slow and everything else moves at the same time.
Why does it ask whether I'm turning work away?
Because if you are, the answer is not on this page. Demand bought on top of a business that is already full is demand you cannot deliver, and it can cost you the customers you already have. The tool still shows you the arithmetic — capacity changes which answer is on top, never the figures — but it says plainly that the constraint is capacity or price rather than marketing.
What if I skip the margin question?
You're offered a low and a high guess right there instead of a typical margin borrowed from somewhere else. Working it out on revenue instead of on what you keep would understate what the spend has to do by a factor of two or three for most businesses — always in the direction that makes signing the quote look easier — so a range shows you the swing rather than pretending to one exact figure. Give neither, and the tool still tells you the three routes and the order to examine them in, because neither needs a margin at all.
Do I need an account?
No account is needed to run it or to see the required lift, the three routes and every note about them. Signing in with your email unlocks the order to look in and keeps the result, so a later run can show you what moved.