The 3 Questions Every Founder Should Ask About Their Marketing Campaigns

Campaigns are running, money is being spent, reports are being shared and everyone sounds busy. But ask a few direct questions about what that activity is actually producing, and things can get uncomfortable very quickly.

A surprising number of companies can’t clearly explain whether their acquisition is profitable, where their advertising spend is actually going or what their marketing team is actively learning.

That matters because unchecked marketing waste compounds quickly. If you’re a founder, you don’t need to micromanage your marketing team, but you should be asking these three questions regularly.

1. What Is Our CPA — Relative to Margin?

Knowing your cost per acquisition is useful, but the number means very little without the economics of the customer sitting behind it. Instead of simply asking, “What’s our CPA?”, the better question is: “What’s our CPA relative to gross margin?”

A £150 CPA can be fantastic or disastrous depending on what a new customer is actually worth to the business. If your gross profit per customer is:

• £1,500 → excellent

• £300 → potentially workable

• £120 → congratulations, you’ve built a very sophisticated money incinerator

Too many marketing discussions treat CPA as an isolated performance metric. That makes it possible to improve a campaign on paper while simultaneously making the underlying economics worse. In the worst cases, businesses end up proudly scaling campaigns that simply lose money more efficiently.

A healthy acquisition strategy needs to consider CPA alongside:

• Gross margin

• Payback period

• Customer retention

• LTV quality

• Sales team close rate

• Refund rates

There isn’t a universally “good CPA”. It’s only good if the economics of your particular business support it.

Founders should therefore understand what their target CPA is, why that number has been chosen and what margin it protects. It’s also worth asking what happens to the model if advertising costs increase by 20%, because acquisition costs rarely remain static forever.

2. What Percentage of Ad Spend Is Going Directly to a Landing Page?

This question can expose a surprising amount of wasted advertising spend. If you’re paying to generate a highly targeted click, the destination should usually be designed specifically to turn that attention into the action you want.

Instead, paid traffic is regularly sent to:

• Homepages

• Navigation-heavy websites

• Generic service pages

• Social profiles

• Pages designed primarily for brand awareness

• Pages with several competing CTAs and no obvious next step

The campaign then relies on visitors figuring out what to do for themselves.

As a rule, I want to see more than 90% of paid campaign spend going to dedicated landing pages, unless there’s a clear reason for doing something different. Those pages should match the message that generated the click and provide a controlled environment for conversion.

Every paid click should ideally arrive somewhere with:

• Strong message match

• A clear conversion goal

• Minimal unnecessary distraction

• Relevant proof

• Copy relevant to the campaign

• One obvious next action

If you’re paying for attention, don’t hand visitors a maze.

Ask your team what percentage of spend currently lands on dedicated landing pages, which campaigns are sending traffic elsewhere and why. Most importantly, ask whether there’s evidence that those alternative destinations actually perform better.

3. What Are We Testing Right Now?

This question tells you whether your marketing team is working with hypotheses or relying on assumptions. If nothing is being tested, decisions are probably being driven primarily by opinions.

Strong marketing teams should be continually looking for opportunities to improve performance. Depending on the campaign, that could involve testing:

• Headlines and messaging

• Offers

• Advertising hooks

• CTA copy

• Landing page structure

• Proof placement

• Pricing presentation

• Creative angles

• Audience segmentation

But knowing what’s being tested is only half the question. The founder should immediately follow it with: “What happens if this wins, and what happens if it loses?”

Testing needs to result in decisions. Otherwise, it risks becoming another marketing activity that generates interesting charts but doesn’t actually change anything.

For example:

• If the new landing page wins → replace the control

• If the offer generates more qualified leads → scale spend

• If an ad angle reduces lead quality → kill it

• If the new CTA improves conversion → roll it out more widely

A proper test starts with a hypothesis, measures an outcome and results in an action. Claude Hopkins was arguing for measurable advertising over 100 years ago, yet plenty of companies still make important marketing decisions based largely on preference and opinion.

Testing isn’t activity for activity’s sake. It’s a way to reduce uncertainty and make better decisions.

Final Thought

Founders don’t need to micromanage marketing, approve every ad or sit in every optimisation meeting. They do, however, need enough visibility to understand whether customer acquisition is profitable, whether paid traffic is being used effectively and whether the team is learning anything that will improve future performance.

The three questions are simple:

• What’s our CPA relative to margin?

• How much of our ad spend reaches a dedicated landing page?

• What are we testing right now?

Then there’s one final question that connects all three:

What are we learning from it?

A busy marketing team isn’t necessarily an effective marketing team. What matters is whether the activity is producing profitable customers, better decisions and measurable improvements over time.