The "Quadfecta" — Track These 4 Things to Make Your Marketing Profitable

They say "Marketing is an expense."

LOL... No, it's not...

Can it be an expense if you don't know what you're doing?

100%

But the practice of DIRECT-RESPONSE marketing shows us that — when done right — it's a measurable science.

Sure, there's an artistic and creative side to it...

But advertising isn't just Mad Men-era whisky drinking & waiting for a lightning bolt "Aha!" idea for a big campaign...

It's about quickly testing ideas over & over & over again... while keeping a sharp eye on the numbers...

...until you're profitable...

And then you test some more.

Luckily in 2025, we don't need to buy million dollar ad spots on TV to see what works...

We can spin up online ads for as little as $5 per day, or even post for free on social media to see what gets traction organically...

From there, we can turn off what's not generating sales... and crank up what is...

But it's also not EXACTLY as simple as that...

The "Quadfecta" of marketing metrics helps us get a fuller picture:

👉 CPA, AOV, LTV, and Payback Period

❇️ CPA - Cost Per Acquisition - Tells us how much we need to spend to acquire a customer/ client (Sometimes also called CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost)

❇️ AOV - Average Order Value - Tells us the average cart value of our individual sales

❇️ LTV - Lifetime Value - Tells us how much a customer/ client will spend over the life of their engagement with our business

❇️ Payback Period - Tells us how long it takes to turn a profit on a given customer if we acquired them at a loss

Now, why are these 4 so important?

Well, if we can bring in more $ per customer than it costs to acquire them (CPA)...

Then we officially have a viable business.

But here's where AOV, LTV, and the Payback Period start to play off of CPA in a cool way:

Most people think they need to turn a profit on Day 1...

They think "Well, we just spent X amount... and so we should make MORE than X right away..."

And IF you can do that?

Great...

But it doesn't always happen that way — nor does it NEED to...

As an example:

If you know your CPA is $100...

And your AOV is $50...

Then it seems you're just making a $50 LOSS on each sale...

BUT...

If you ALSO know your LTV is $1,000 on the backend... (they stick around via recurring revenue, upsell into bigger products/ programs, etc.)...

And your Payback Period is 30 days (takes you an average of 30 days to earn at least $50 more of their business to break even)...

Then you'd probably be happy with that initial customer acquisition, even though a loss...

Because you know you'll turn a profit soon & have them stick around for a long time.

That's why I love tracking this Quadfecta...

And why it's hard for me to ever see marketing as an expense.

Michael McGovern

The Wildman Path

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