We started performance marketing — which metrics should I track, and which ones are misleading?

The reason agencies and consultants love ROAS is because it's tied strictly to top-line revenue. High revenue looks great on paper, but if your margin is thirty percent and returns run high, even a 6 ROAS can quietly run you out of business. Revenue that never hits your bank account is worthless.

We made the exact same mistake spending 80,000 TL a month. The dashboard showed a 5 ROAS, but once shipping damages and a 15% return rate were factored in, net profit was zero. After switching to tracking per-order contribution margin, dashboard ROAS dropped to 3.5, but our actual cash in the bank went positive for the first time.

edit: fixed a few typos.

Default last-click and 7-day view attribution models happily take credit for people who already know your brand. Tell your consultant to pause all branded search and retargeting campaigns; let's see what's left of that 6 ROAS on purely cold audiences.

Go into your dashboard settings today, disable view-through conversions, and switch your attribution window to 1-day click. That inflated 6 ROAS will come crashing back to reality real quick, and you'll see what's actually going on.

For reliable tracking, put these three metrics on your desk: 1) Gross profit left over for every lira spent. 2) Blended customer acquisition cost, which is total marketing spend divided by the number of new customers. 3) Actual bank settlement after shipping and returns are accounted for.

Is your consultant only serving ads to people who have already visited your site? Or how much of that 35.000 TL budget is actually being spent on completely cold audiences who have never heard of your brand?

id say look at your accounting software not the dashboard data. ad spend divided by net cash hitting your bank is the only real indicator dont get caught up in the rest of the metrics

This confusion is completely normal at the start, don't let it get you down at all. Deduct your shipping and production costs to figure out your net profit per unit, then tell your consultant to optimize purely for profit instead of revenue.

Let me share what happened to me; it might be useful. When you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.

I'm curious too.

Here's how it went for us. Ranking is the result, search intent is the input. Look at intent first.

Good luck with that.

I agree.

i agree.. and a competitors ranking might come from years of accumulatoin not just their content.

if I were you, Id go this route.

My question might sound amateurish, sorry about that. Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix.

Just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right. If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.

Correct. Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later as both sides remember it differently.

If I were you, Id go this route.

Don't miss this: When you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

I felt relieved reading this answer, so it's not just me. Merge instead of deleting; deleted content doesn't come back.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot, I'll try it today.