The owner of an online coffee shop in Almaty has already replaced the cappuccino ad with one about beans for home, and the following month Instagram ads cost him 100,000 ₸. By the UTM tags, the ads are credited with 20 first orders worth 300,000 ₸, and he is pleased: the money came back three times over. But from a 15,000 ₸ order, after beans, roasting, packaging and delivery, the shop keeps 6,000 ₸. Twenty orders make 120,000 ₸, 20,000 ₸ once the ads are paid for, and that is before rent and taxes. The shop and the numbers are illustrative.
What remains from revenue
Revenue
300,000 ₸
Variable costs: 180,000 ₸
Contribution
300,000 - 180,000 = 120,000 ₸
Advertising: 100,000 ₸
After advertising
120,000 - 100,000 = 20,000 ₸
20,000 ₸ before rent and taxes.
At Goodlabs Academia we treat marketing as an investment. Money goes into it so that more comes back, and the result is checked the way you would check any other investment. So for every campaign, from an influencer post to a 10,000 ₸ test, we ask four questions.
Four questions for any marketing money
| Question | At the shop |
|---|---|
| How much went in | 100,000 ₸ on ads for the month |
| What came back | 20 paid first orders worth 300,000 ₸, ROAS 3 |
| What was left | 20 × 6,000 = 120,000 ₸ of contribution, 20,000 ₸ after the ads |
| When it pays back | On the first order already: a customer cost 5,000 ₸ in ads and left 6,000 ₸ |
How much went in. All the money spent on the campaign: the ads, the influencer's fee, the designer, the contractor's fee, yours included. All of it together has to pay for itself.
What came back. Payments. Leads, followers and reach don't count here, because a lead isn't money yet: in the metrics glossary, leads at 896 ₸ each turn into 9,860 ₸ per student. And not everything credited to the ads was brought in by them: some of the twenty would have bought anyway, on a friend's recommendation. How much the ads added on top of what would have happened without them can only be shown by a comparison with what happened without the ads: another district, other weeks, a group that saw no ads.
What was left. Contribution is revenue minus variable costs: 6,000 ₸ per order, 120,000 ₸ from twenty. After the ads, 20,000 ₸ of it is left. ROAS 3 sounds good, but it is compared against the breakeven point, and for the shop that is 15,000 / 6,000 = 2.5. Below that ROAS, the ads don't even pay back the first order. For a business that keeps less than a third of its revenue, the same ROAS 3 would mean a loss.
When it pays back. For the shop, the ads paid back on the first order: 100,000 / 20 = 5,000 ₸ per customer against 6,000 ₸ of contribution. Repeat orders would add 6,000 ₸ each, and last year 840 of 2,400 customers ordered a second time. But for these twenty, repeat orders are still a forecast, not payback. The report shows it on a separate line with the date it will be checked in the CRM: customers who ordered more than once have a median of 28 days between orders, so it will be clear in a month or two.
What this means for your learning
We teach you to take a campaign review through to payments and the money the business kept: that is what the client pays for.
A small test is an investment too, one that buys knowledge. In week 2 of the Start track you will spend 10,000 ₸ on Meta ads, 2,000 ₸ a day for five days, sending people to your test site. That money won't come back as orders, but you will learn what a click and a lead cost in your niche. There will be no payments in this test, so the review table ends with leads and CPL. It becomes your first case study, and in case studies for clients the "what came back" line is payments. In week 4 you will use the calculator to work out how many months it takes a customer to pay back the cost of acquiring them, and explain that to the owner of a business in your niche.
Not every investment has to pay back from the first order: brand awareness advertising, for example, works for future purchases. Even then, the metric and the date it will be checked are named in advance.
Exercise: four lines for one campaign
A month later the courier service raised its rate by 1,500 ₸ per order. The ads again cost 100,000 ₸ and again brought 20 first orders worth 300,000 ₸. Answer the four questions from the table.
The same 100,000 ₸ went in, the same 300,000 ₸ came back, and ROAS is still 3. But each order now leaves 6,000 − 1,500 = 4,500 ₸, twenty orders leave 90,000 ₸, and after the ads that is minus 10,000 ₸. The breakeven point has risen to 15,000 / 4,500 ≈ 3.3, and ROAS 3 falls short of it. The first order no longer pays back the ads: a customer costs 5,000 ₸ and leaves 4,500 ₸. The campaign moves into profit only if at least three of the twenty order again: two repeat orders give 9,000 ₸ of contribution, which isn't enough, and three give 13,500 ₸. That condition goes into the report with a date for the check, and the owner gets the options that are his to decide: raise the price, charge customers for delivery, or look for another courier service.
Now the same four lines for your own week 2 test or a client's campaign:
If there are no payments yet, or the owner doesn't know how much is left from an order, write exactly that in the line. An "unknown" note beats a made-up number, because it shows what to ask the owner at your next meeting.