Most window and door installers can't honestly say which marketing channel produces revenue and which loses money. They look at total monthly revenue, see it's up or down, and guess at causes. The installers who scale efficiently have built tracking systems that attribute every closed project to its source channel — and they cut what doesn't pay back while doubling down on what does.
Effective window and door installation marketing ROI measurement requires four layers. First, call tracking. Different phone numbers for each channel (GBP, website, Facebook ads, vehicle wraps, Google Ads, manufacturer co-op campaigns). Tools like CallRail, CallTrackingMetrics, or HighLevel handle this for $50-$200/month. Without call tracking, you can't attribute calls to channels. Second, form attribution. UTM parameters on every link from email, social, and paid ads, captured in form submissions. This tells you which campaigns produce form leads. Third, lead-to-project conversion. Every lead gets tagged with source, then tracked through to in-home consultation, proposal, signed contract, and completed project revenue. Your CRM or estimating software should support this; if not, a structured spreadsheet works. Fourth, cost-per-acquired-customer (CAC), not just cost-per-lead. A channel producing $40 leads that close at 15% has $267 CAC; a channel producing $200 leads that close at 50% has $400 CAC but might involve larger project sizes. Window and door installers especially need to factor average project size by channel because some channels (geo-targeted older-neighborhood campaigns) tend toward larger whole-home replacements while others (single-window inquiry forms) tend toward smaller projects. The metrics that matter: CAC by channel, average project size by channel, repeat business and referral rate by channel, and lifetime value where measurable. Channels with high CAC but high project size or strong referral generation often pay back when low-CAC channels with small project sizes don't.