Cost per enquiry is the only marketing number most business owners actually need, and almost none of them know it.
You can probably tell me to the penny what you spent on marketing last year. The retainer, the ad budget, the website, the trade stand. All of it sits in your accounts.
What you almost certainly cannot tell me is what one enquiry cost you. And that is the number that decides whether any of the rest was worth spending.
Most owners assume working it out needs an analytics project and a consultant. It needs a calculator and about ten minutes.
TL;DR: Cost per enquiry is your total marketing spend for a period divided by the number of genuine enquiries it produced. Divide that by the share of enquiries that become customers and you get what it costs to win one. That figure has to sit comfortably below the gross profit on an average job. A UK business spending 2,000 pounds a month for 40 enquiries pays 50 pounds an enquiry; at a 20% close rate that is 250 pounds to win a customer, which is fine against £1,050 of gross profit but disastrous if enquiries fall to ten a month. The IPA Bellwether Report for Q2 2026 found 59.4% of UK companies left their marketing budget exactly where it was, which is what happens when nobody can prove the number either way.
What cost per enquiry actually is
Take everything you spent on marketing in a period. Divide it by the number of real enquiries that came in during that period. That is your cost per enquiry.
Everything means everything: agency fees, ad spend, the website, print, events, sponsorship, the lot. If it was spent to make the phone ring, it counts.
Use a quarter rather than a month. One month is too noisy in most UK businesses, particularly if you sell into construction, manufacturing or anything seasonal.
The number your cost per enquiry has to beat
On its own, that figure means nothing. Fifty pounds is cheap if you sell machinery and ruinous if you sell mugs.
So do two more sums.
- Divide it by the proportion of enquiries that turn into paying customers. That gives you the cost of winning one customer.
- Compare that against the gross profit on an average job, not the invoice value. Gross profit is what is left after the cost of actually delivering the work.
If winning a customer costs more than the gross profit they generate, you are buying revenue with your own money. Plenty of businesses do this for years without noticing, because turnover looks healthy the whole time.
A worked example on real numbers
Say you spend 2,000 pounds a month on marketing and get 40 genuine enquiries. Your cost per enquiry is 50 pounds.
One in five of those enquiries becomes a customer, so winning one costs you 250 pounds. Your average order is 3,000 pounds at a 35% gross margin, which is 1,050 pounds of gross profit.
You spend 250 pounds to make 1,050 pounds. That is a business worth feeding more money.
Now change one thing. Enquiries drop to ten a month while spend stays at 2,000 pounds. The figure becomes 200 pounds, winning a customer costs 1,000 pounds, and your 1,050 pounds of gross profit has almost entirely gone before you have paid a single overhead.
Same spend. Same margin. Same team. The business has quietly stopped working, and the only thing that showed it was this one number.
Why industry benchmarks are useless to you
Search for a good cost per enquiry and you will find plenty of confident benchmark tables. Ignore them.
They are averages drawn from other markets, other sectors and other business models, and they say nothing about a firm with your margins, your close rate and your order values. A number that is excellent for a high volume consumer brand can be a catastrophe for a specialist supplier, and the other way round.
Your own figure from last quarter is the only benchmark worth having. Beat it or explain why you did not.
Count the right enquiries or the number lies
This is where most businesses fool themselves. If you count every form fill, every newsletter signup and every wrong number, the number looks wonderful and means nothing.
An enquiry counts if a real person with a real requirement asked you to do something you actually sell. Recruiters, suppliers pitching to you, students doing coursework and people wanting a service you dropped three years ago do not count.
Get whoever answers the phone to keep a simple tally. It does not need software. It needs someone willing to be honest about what is actually landing, which is also the fastest way to find out that half your leads never came from the channel you credit. That gap is covered in why your best enquiries come from people who never clicked an ad.
When the number is too high, fix conversion first
The instinct when that number is too high is to cut the spend. Usually that is the wrong end of the problem.
Halving what you spend halves your enquiries and leaves it roughly where it was. Doubling the share of visitors who actually get in touch halves it immediately, and costs far less than a bigger budget.
So look at the site before the spend. Is it obvious what you do, who for, and what happens next? A site can be handsome and still fail commercially, which is the argument in why a great looking website brings in no enquiries.
What this tells you about your agency or your hire
UK businesses are not short of money going into this. The Advertising Association and WARC Expenditure Report, published on 30 April 2026, put total UK advertising investment at 46.7 billion pounds in 2025, up 6.4%, with 49.8 billion forecast for 2026.
What they are short of is a way to judge it. The IPA Bellwether Report for Q2 2026, published on 16 July 2026, found 23.8% of UK companies increased their marketing budgets and 16.9% cut them, while 59.4% left them exactly as they were. Three in five decisions were not decisions at all.
This one figure fixes that, because it turns a monthly report nobody reads into one question anyone can answer. Ask your agency, or your marketing manager, what it was last quarter and what it is now. A good one will already know. If the answer is a slide about impressions, you have learned something useful about what you are paying for, and the real cost of that choice is set out in what an in-house hire and an agency each really cost.
How do I work out my cost per enquiry?
Add up everything spent on marketing in a quarter, including agency fees, advertising, website work, print, events and sponsorship. Divide that total by the number of genuine enquiries received in the same quarter. The result is your cost per enquiry. Use a quarter rather than a month, because monthly figures are too volatile in most UK businesses. Count only enquiries from real prospects asking about something you actually sell, not newsletter signups, recruiters or wrong numbers.
What is a good cost per enquiry for a UK business?
There is no universal figure, and published benchmarks are drawn from other sectors and business models. The only test that matters is your own arithmetic: divide your cost per enquiry by the share of enquiries that become customers to get the cost of winning one, then compare that with the gross profit on an average job. A business spending 250 pounds to win a customer worth 1,050 pounds in gross profit is healthy. The same 250 pounds against 300 pounds of gross profit is not.
Should staff time count as marketing spend?
Count it when the time is substantial and dedicated. A marketing manager’s salary belongs in the total, because it is money spent to generate enquiries in exactly the same way an ad budget is. A director spending two hours a month on social posts does not need costing in, and adding it usually creates false precision rather than better decisions. The aim is a figure you can calculate the same way every quarter, so consistency matters more than accounting purity.
How long before I can tell if my marketing is working?
Allow two full quarters before drawing conclusions, and longer where the sales cycle is long. One quarter gives you a starting figure, the second tells you whether it is moving and in which direction. Businesses with long, specification-led sales cycles in engineering, manufacturing or construction may need three or four quarters before the enquiry count reflects work started this year. Judging marketing on a single month produces panic decisions and usually ends in cutting the activity that was working.
You do not need a dashboard to run this. You need one number, calculated the same way every quarter, and the nerve to act on it when it moves the wrong way. If you have worked out your cost per enquiry and do not like what it says, bring the figure to Damteq and we will tell you whether the problem is your spend, your website or your close rate, including the times when the honest answer is that your marketing is fine and your sales follow-up is the thing costing you money.
