The Australian measurement gap is wider than you'd think
The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts a hard number on this. In 2024-25, just 10% of Australian businesses actively collected or analysed data to make informed decisions, down from 24% in 2021-22, and only 6% used predictive analysis to plan business activities. Over the same period, 51% used social media for their online presence.
Read those two figures together and the picture is stark: about half of Australian businesses are publishing, while one in ten is measuring. That is the gap this article is about. The ABS notes the decline may partly reflect changes in how the question was asked, so treat the trend with some care; the absolute level is the point regardless.
CPA Australia's 2025-26 survey adds context, and it isn't flattering. Only 30% of Australian small businesses said their technology investment improved profitability, among the lowest results in the Asia-Pacific, and 44% earned more than 10% of revenue online against a regional average of 63%. Australian SMEs aren't behind because they're unusual; they're behind on the infrastructure that makes marketing measurable.
A word on the budget benchmark you keep seeing
Before setting targets, it's worth knowing where the most-quoted number comes from. The widely repeated figure that businesses spend 7.7% of revenue on marketing is from Gartner's CMO Spend Survey, which polled around 400 marketing leaders across North America, the UK and Europe, the vast majority at companies above US$1 billion in revenue. There were no Australian respondents, and no small businesses to speak of. It describes what very large Northern Hemisphere companies did; it is not a benchmark for an Australian SME, and using it as a target is how businesses end up justifying spend against a number that was never about them.
Why vanity metrics feel like progress
Likes, impressions and un-contextualised website traffic all feel like momentum. They're easy to report, they trend upward if you're doing anything at all, and they make a monthly update look productive. The problem is that none of them answer the question that matters: did this move someone closer to buying, how many, and at what cost against the value they brought in?
A campaign can generate excellent engagement and zero commercial impact. A business watching only engagement has no way to tell the difference until the revenue numbers eventually reveal it, usually months later.
What real marketing measurement looks like
It starts before a campaign runs, not after: agree what result counts as success, pick the two or three numbers that reflect it, and track them consistently enough to see a trend rather than a snapshot. That might be cost per qualified lead, conversion rate from enquiry to customer, or revenue attributable to a specific campaign; whatever ties most directly to the outcome the business cares about, rather than whatever is easiest to pull from a dashboard. This is
in its simplest usable form: connecting a result back to the activity that caused it, even loosely, rather than not connecting it at all.
None of this requires enterprise analytics. It requires agreeing on the handful of numbers that matter before the work starts, and looking at them honestly afterwards, even when the answer isn't the one you hoped for. Measurement is also what makes strategy more than an opinion, since it's the only way to know which parts of the plan to repeat.
The uncomfortable part
Real measurement sometimes tells you something you didn't want to hear: that a channel everyone likes isn't earning its budget, or that a campaign the team is proud of didn't move the number that matters. That discomfort is exactly why so many businesses default to softer metrics. It feels better to report a rising follower count than to report that last quarter's biggest campaign produced barely any qualified leads.
The discomfort is also where the value sits. A business willing to look honestly at what's working redirects budget toward what produces results, quarter after quarter, while competitors who avoid the harder questions keep funding the same underperforming activity out of habit. Over a year or two that difference compounds into a real advantage, not because the measuring business spends more, but because it spends more precisely.
You don't need a perfect system before starting. Asking every new customer how they found you, tracking which campaigns produced actual enquiries rather than clicks, and reviewing the numbers monthly rather than only when something feels wrong will move a business a long way from guessing toward knowing. If several of these habits are missing, that's often a sign the business has outgrown its current approach.
Our Strategy and Execution Excellence work is built around closing that gap: connecting activity to the numbers that actually matter to your business.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a good marketing ROI?
Be sceptical of anyone who answers this with a ratio. The commonly quoted "5:1 is good, 10:1 is exceptional" benchmark traces back to vendor explainer pages rather than to any study, with no sample, methodology or dataset behind it. A more honest answer is that "good" depends on your margin and your customer lifetime value: a 3:1 return can be excellent on high-margin recurring revenue and loss-making on thin-margin one-off sales. Measure payback period and cost per acquired customer against lifetime value instead of chasing a universal number.
How do I know which marketing channel is actually working?
Start with the least technical method available: ask every new customer how they found you and write the answers down. It's imperfect, since people misremember and journeys involve several touches, but it beats the alternative most small businesses have, which is no data. Layer in campaign-specific tracking such as unique landing pages, distinct phone numbers or discount codes for anything you spend meaningfully on. Then look for the channel that appears repeatedly in conversations with your best customers, not merely the one with the most clicks.
How do I measure marketing ROI without a CRM or expensive tools?
A spreadsheet is genuinely enough to begin. Record, for each month: what you spent, how many enquiries arrived, how many converted, and what those customers were worth. Three months of that will tell you more than a dashboard nobody reads. Given that only 10% of Australian businesses analyse their data at all, consistent basic tracking puts you ahead of most competitors before you buy any software.
How long should I run something before deciding it doesn't work?
Long enough to separate signal from noise, which depends on volume rather than time. A business getting five enquiries a month can't read anything meaningful from a fortnight of data. As a rough guide, paid channels need enough spend to produce a few dozen conversions before the numbers mean much; content and search need six to twelve months. Decide the review window before you start, because the temptation to call it early is strongest exactly when results are ambiguous.
Should I cut marketing when business is slow?
Cautiously, if at all, and never to zero. Long-running Australian research tracking brands that stopped advertising found sales fell about 16% after one year, 25% after two and 36% after three. That study covers mass-media advertising by consumer goods brands, so it doesn't transfer directly to a service SME, and it's observational rather than causal; brands that stop advertising may already be declining. Still, the direction is consistent and the mechanism is intuitive: stopping doesn't pause the results, it erodes what was already built. If you must cut, reduce breadth and keep the activity that reliably produces enquiries.
Sources
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Characteristics of Australian Business, 2024-25 financial year, released 25 Jun 2026 — abs.gov.au
CPA Australia, Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey 2025-26, Australia market summary, released 2 Apr 2026; more than 4,100 small businesses across the Asia-Pacific — cpaaustralia.com.au
Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey, published 12 May 2025; 402 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe, the vast majority reporting annual revenue over US$1 billion — gartner.com
Gelzinis, Kennedy, Beal, Hartnett and Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia, "What happens when brands stop advertising?" released 2018, subsequently published in the Journal of Advertising Research (2021); 70 Australian consumer goods brands, 57 cases of advertising cessation — marketingscience.info
The Australian measurement gap is wider than you'd think
The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts a hard number on this. In 2024-25, just 10% of Australian businesses actively collected or analysed data to make informed decisions, down from 24% in 2021-22, and only 6% used predictive analysis to plan business activities. Over the same period, 51% used social media for their online presence.
Read those two figures together and the picture is stark: about half of Australian businesses are publishing, while one in ten is measuring. That is the gap this article is about. The ABS notes the decline may partly reflect changes in how the question was asked, so treat the trend with some care; the absolute level is the point regardless.
CPA Australia's 2025-26 survey adds context, and it isn't flattering. Only 30% of Australian small businesses said their technology investment improved profitability, among the lowest results in the Asia-Pacific, and 44% earned more than 10% of revenue online against a regional average of 63%. Australian SMEs aren't behind because they're unusual; they're behind on the infrastructure that makes marketing measurable.
A word on the budget benchmark you keep seeing
Before setting targets, it's worth knowing where the most-quoted number comes from. The widely repeated figure that businesses spend 7.7% of revenue on marketing is from Gartner's CMO Spend Survey, which polled around 400 marketing leaders across North America, the UK and Europe, the vast majority at companies above US$1 billion in revenue. There were no Australian respondents, and no small businesses to speak of. It describes what very large Northern Hemisphere companies did; it is not a benchmark for an Australian SME, and using it as a target is how businesses end up justifying spend against a number that was never about them.
Why vanity metrics feel like progress
Likes, impressions and un-contextualised website traffic all feel like momentum. They're easy to report, they trend upward if you're doing anything at all, and they make a monthly update look productive. The problem is that none of them answer the question that matters: did this move someone closer to buying, how many, and at what cost against the value they brought in?
A campaign can generate excellent engagement and zero commercial impact. A business watching only engagement has no way to tell the difference until the revenue numbers eventually reveal it, usually months later.
What real marketing measurement looks like
It starts before a campaign runs, not after: agree what result counts as success, pick the two or three numbers that reflect it, and track them consistently enough to see a trend rather than a snapshot. That might be cost per qualified lead, conversion rate from enquiry to customer, or revenue attributable to a specific campaign; whatever ties most directly to the outcome the business cares about, rather than whatever is easiest to pull from a dashboard. This is
in its simplest usable form: connecting a result back to the activity that caused it, even loosely, rather than not connecting it at all.
None of this requires enterprise analytics. It requires agreeing on the handful of numbers that matter before the work starts, and looking at them honestly afterwards, even when the answer isn't the one you hoped for. Measurement is also what makes strategy more than an opinion, since it's the only way to know which parts of the plan to repeat.
The uncomfortable part
Real measurement sometimes tells you something you didn't want to hear: that a channel everyone likes isn't earning its budget, or that a campaign the team is proud of didn't move the number that matters. That discomfort is exactly why so many businesses default to softer metrics. It feels better to report a rising follower count than to report that last quarter's biggest campaign produced barely any qualified leads.
The discomfort is also where the value sits. A business willing to look honestly at what's working redirects budget toward what produces results, quarter after quarter, while competitors who avoid the harder questions keep funding the same underperforming activity out of habit. Over a year or two that difference compounds into a real advantage, not because the measuring business spends more, but because it spends more precisely.
You don't need a perfect system before starting. Asking every new customer how they found you, tracking which campaigns produced actual enquiries rather than clicks, and reviewing the numbers monthly rather than only when something feels wrong will move a business a long way from guessing toward knowing. If several of these habits are missing, that's often a sign the business has outgrown its current approach.
Our Strategy and Execution Excellence work is built around closing that gap: connecting activity to the numbers that actually matter to your business.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a good marketing ROI?
Be sceptical of anyone who answers this with a ratio. The commonly quoted "5:1 is good, 10:1 is exceptional" benchmark traces back to vendor explainer pages rather than to any study, with no sample, methodology or dataset behind it. A more honest answer is that "good" depends on your margin and your customer lifetime value: a 3:1 return can be excellent on high-margin recurring revenue and loss-making on thin-margin one-off sales. Measure payback period and cost per acquired customer against lifetime value instead of chasing a universal number.
How do I know which marketing channel is actually working?
Start with the least technical method available: ask every new customer how they found you and write the answers down. It's imperfect, since people misremember and journeys involve several touches, but it beats the alternative most small businesses have, which is no data. Layer in campaign-specific tracking such as unique landing pages, distinct phone numbers or discount codes for anything you spend meaningfully on. Then look for the channel that appears repeatedly in conversations with your best customers, not merely the one with the most clicks.
How do I measure marketing ROI without a CRM or expensive tools?
A spreadsheet is genuinely enough to begin. Record, for each month: what you spent, how many enquiries arrived, how many converted, and what those customers were worth. Three months of that will tell you more than a dashboard nobody reads. Given that only 10% of Australian businesses analyse their data at all, consistent basic tracking puts you ahead of most competitors before you buy any software.
How long should I run something before deciding it doesn't work?
Long enough to separate signal from noise, which depends on volume rather than time. A business getting five enquiries a month can't read anything meaningful from a fortnight of data. As a rough guide, paid channels need enough spend to produce a few dozen conversions before the numbers mean much; content and search need six to twelve months. Decide the review window before you start, because the temptation to call it early is strongest exactly when results are ambiguous.
Should I cut marketing when business is slow?
Cautiously, if at all, and never to zero. Long-running Australian research tracking brands that stopped advertising found sales fell about 16% after one year, 25% after two and 36% after three. That study covers mass-media advertising by consumer goods brands, so it doesn't transfer directly to a service SME, and it's observational rather than causal; brands that stop advertising may already be declining. Still, the direction is consistent and the mechanism is intuitive: stopping doesn't pause the results, it erodes what was already built. If you must cut, reduce breadth and keep the activity that reliably produces enquiries.
Sources
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Characteristics of Australian Business, 2024-25 financial year, released 25 Jun 2026 — abs.gov.au
CPA Australia, Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey 2025-26, Australia market summary, released 2 Apr 2026; more than 4,100 small businesses across the Asia-Pacific — cpaaustralia.com.au
Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey, published 12 May 2025; 402 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe, the vast majority reporting annual revenue over US$1 billion — gartner.com
Gelzinis, Kennedy, Beal, Hartnett and Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia, "What happens when brands stop advertising?" released 2018, subsequently published in the Journal of Advertising Research (2021); 70 Australian consumer goods brands, 57 cases of advertising cessation — marketingscience.info
