What is being a best-kept secret costing you?
Enter three numbers about your business. See what one new customer is worth in a year, how many a month would cover Digital Engine, and how that compares to hiring a marketer. Your Growth Playbook opens the other Stacks.
About 1 new customer a month covers it.
A marketing hire costs about $102,388 a year with benefits.
Know your number
You pay for the full year, and customers count from month 4.
Three more Stacks, opened in your Playbook
Each costs less than Digital Engine, so it can return more at your numbers. Sign up for your free Growth Playbook to see them, checked against your market, your capacity and your competitors.
What ROI means for a service business
A new customer is rarely worth one sale. A family that books lessons comes back every week. A client who trusts their attorney calls again. Return on investment starts with what a customer spends with you in a year, not what they spend the first day.
Once you know that number, marketing becomes a simpler question: how many new customers a month would pay for it? Allow at least three months for the work to ramp up before new customers arrive, and the plan still has to be paid for during that time. The calculator above does that math with your numbers.
It's a starting point, not a forecast. It doesn't know your margins, your capacity or your market. Your Growth Playbook does that work with you.
The Scoreboard
We measure what matters to your business and report it plainly. We never promise a number we can't control.
- 01
Qualified inquiries
Calls, forms, bookings and messages from people who could actually buy, counted once and sorted from spam.
- 02
Where they came from
Search, Maps, AI answers, ads, referrals. Call tracking and analytics show which channel earned each inquiry.
- 03
What they became
Booked appointments, signed clients and sales, connected from your CRM when you have one.
- 04
What comes next
We review the Scoreboard with you and move effort toward what is producing customers.
Method and sources
Every figure in the calculator, and where it comes from. Change any number to match your business.
- Customer value is average sale times purchases a year. "Your first year of new customers" counts one year of spend from each customer who joins at your goal.
- Ramp-up is a minimum of 3 months before new customers start to arrive, so only months 4 to 12 count. The year-one cost still covers all 12 months. Customers who join late in the year keep paying into year two, and that spend is included in their one-year value.
- Digital Engine starts at $1,599 a month billed yearly, with setup waived, or $1,999 a month billed monthly plus $3,000 setup. Both are shown here as year one, and larger retainers are scoped to fit. Our one-time Signature Build is not part of this math.
- Marketing hire: BLS median pay for marketing specialists, $78,760 (May 2025), plus about 30% for taxes and benefits.
- Chiropractic $67 a visit (Chiropractic Economics survey, via GoodRx 2024) × 12 visits, an assumed monthly patient. Speech pathology $175, the midpoint of $100 to $250 a session (Expressable 2025) × 24 sessions, an assumed length of care. Physical therapy $150, the midpoint of $100 to $200 at an independent clinic × a 12-session program (Hinge Health 2026).
- Stacks in your Playbook are not named or priced here. "Can return more" reflects their lower cost, and your Playbook does the real math. A recommended one is a first read of your numbers, not a final pick.
- Music lessons $53 per 30-minute lesson × 44 weeks. Venue $135 an hour (Peerspace average party venue) × 5 hours, an assumed booking length.
- Private school $14,950 (Education Data Initiative, 2026 K-12 average). Medical practice $3,245 (CMS 2024 physician and clinical services spending, $1.11 trillion, per U.S. resident).
- Real estate $9,955 (buyer-side commission at 2.70% on a $368,697 median home, Clever 2026). Attorney $349 an hour (Clio 2026 national average) × 15 hours, an assumed matter size.
- Automotive $1,424 (AAA 9.83 cents a mile for maintenance and repair × 14,489 miles a year). Home repair $3,184 (Angi 2025: $2,041 maintenance + $1,143 emergency repairs).
- Construction $20,000 (Houzz 2025 median renovation spend). Restaurant $30 a visit × 12 visits, an assumed regular guest; U.S. households spent $3,945 on food away from home in 2024 (BLS).
- This is customer-value math, not a promised return.
Turn the math into a plan.
Your Growth Playbook checks these numbers against your market, your capacity and your competitors, then sets a target you can hold us to measuring.
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