Your best-performing campaign might be getting too much credit

The monthly report lands. Google Search has brought in the most enquiries at the lowest cost. Paid social looks less convincing. Moving budget into Search feels like an easy decision.

Before making that change, it’s worth asking what happened before people searched. Had they seen your campaign, met your team or heard your name from someone they trust? The report may show where they enquired without explaining everything that helped them get there.

A recent Marketing Week opinion piece by Mrunal Bhagat, published on 10 September 2026, questions the limits of judging marketing through return on ad spend alone.¹ It raises a useful question for businesses reviewing their results: how much does a channel’s reported performance tell us about the growth it actually generated?

An enquiry has a backstory

People rarely discover a business and enquire in one neat step. They might notice a social post, hear a recommendation, browse the website and return several times before getting in touch. By the time they search for the business by name, much of the decision may already have been made.

Depending on the reporting setup, the channel that brought someone back for that final visit could receive most or all of the credit. It played a useful role, but that doesn’t explain how the person first became interested or what gave them the confidence to enquire.

The longer or more considered the purchase, the more this matters. In sectors such as healthcare, people may need time, reassurance and input from others. Business purchases can also involve several decision-makers, each encountering different parts of your marketing.

The risk of changing the budget too quickly

When each channel is judged as a separate investment, activity that introduces a business to new people can look expensive beside activity reaching people who already know it. Comparing the two without considering their different jobs can lead to misleading conclusions.

That doesn’t mean keeping every awareness campaign running on faith. If activity isn’t reaching the right audience or contributing to the objective, it needs to change. Equally, a low cost per enquiry deserves a closer look if those enquiries rarely turn into suitable customers.

Before reducing spend, check whether the apparent winner is attracting new interest, capturing existing demand, or doing a mixture of both. Brand searches and broader service searches can provide useful clues, although they won’t prove the answer on their own.

Give the numbers some context

A more useful review starts with what the business needs to achieve. That might be qualified enquiries, sales opportunities, completed purchases or repeat business. Those outcomes provide a stronger basis for decisions than treating every recorded interaction as equally valuable.

Then ask a few practical questions:

• What counts as a conversion? Keep downloads and other early signs of interest separate from genuine sales enquiries.
• What happens after the enquiry? Bring feedback from the people handling enquiries and sales into the marketing review. Are you attracting the right people, and are they becoming customers?
• Are platforms claiming the same result? Check reporting definitions and attribution windows before adding their totals together.
• What do customers tell us? Asking how they first heard about the business can add context, while recognising that memory is imperfect.

For larger budget decisions, consider a controlled test where practical. Agree the change, the outcome to measure and a review period that reflects the buying journey. A rise or fall after a budget change can be informative, but seasonality and other activity may also affect the result.

Make the next decision a better informed one

Your strongest campaign may well deserve more investment. Understanding why it performs gives you a better chance of making that investment work.

Before moving the budget, look at how people discover you, what helps them choose you and what happens once they enquire. That gives the team a more useful conversation than simply choosing the cheapest number on the report.

Want a clearer picture of what’s driving your enquiries? Talk to Wish about reviewing your campaigns and how they work together.

Reference

1. Mrunal Bhagat, “Escaping the ROAS cyclops requires a Trojan Horse marketing framework”, Marketing Week, 10 September 2026.