The brief
“We spent £2.3M on marketing in Q3 and revenue came in 24% below target. Before I sign off next quarter's budget I need to understand where we're losing customers in the funnel and which channels are actually working. Can you pull something together by end of week?”
This is the kind of request data analysts get constantly. It's vague, it's urgent, and it doesn't tell you what to look at. Your job is to turn it into a structured analysis.
A note on the numbers before we start. The dataset shows £81,995 in Q3 revenue against £2.3M in marketing spend. That ratio, £0.04 of direct revenue per £1 spent, looks catastrophic. But it's an incomplete picture. It doesn't account for customer lifetime value (a customer acquired in Q3 may buy repeatedly over the next 12 months), attribution lag (a paid social ad seen in September may convert in October and show up as organic), or brand awareness effects. The CMO isn't asking whether the spend was worth it overall, she's asking where the funnel is leaking and which channels are actually driving purchase intent. That's the question we're here to answer.
