Marketing Costs
Track your advertising spend, agency fees, and other marketing investments so Nabu can calculate each campaign's cost per new client and return on ad spend.
Why marketing costs are tracked here
Marketing costs can live in two places in Nabu. You can add marketing as a lump-sum line item in Business Costs and it'll count toward your marketing cost and profit, just as spend entered here does. That works if you just want it in your cost structure. Marketing is never part of overhead, wherever you enter it.
But if you want to know which campaigns are working — cost per new client and return on ad spend — you need the detail that only comes from entering marketing costs here, in the Marketing Costs section.
This section ties your spending to specific channels and campaigns, so Nabu can show each campaign's cost per new client and return on ad spend on the Marketing Costs page and in the Promotions tab of Profitability.
Types of marketing costs to enter
| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Paid social | Meta/Instagram ads, TikTok ads, Pinterest ads |
| Search | Google Ads, Microsoft Ads |
| SEO / Agency retainer | Monthly retainer with a marketing agency, SEO firm |
| Influencer | Payments or service trades with influencers and content creators |
| Referral | Gift cards or cash rewards given to clients for referrals |
| Events | Booth fees, open house costs, pop-up events |
| Photo/Video production | Shoots, editing, content creation |
| In-clinic promotions | Printed materials, in-store signage, promotional gifts |
Fields
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Channel / campaign name | Something specific (e.g., "Instagram Botox Summer Campaign" not just "Instagram") |
| Category | Paid Social, Search, Influencer, Events, Referral, Agency, Production, or Other |
| Monthly spend | For ongoing spend (e.g., monthly Google Ads budget) |
| One-time cost | For single events or productions |
| Date range | When this spend applies — helps link costs to the right reporting period |
How marketing costs connect to campaigns
On the Marketing Costs page you can attach marketing costs to a campaign and enter the results it produced: the revenue, new clients and appointments you attribute to it. Results carry no dates, so each campaign is measured to date, against everything attached to it. Nabu then shows:
- Cost per new client (CAC) — the campaign's cost to date divided by the new clients you entered. If a campaign has more new clients than appointments, CAC is withheld until the count is corrected: someone who never booked has not been acquired.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) — the revenue you entered divided by the campaign's cost to date. A campaign's cost is the cash you spent plus what any giveaway cost you to deliver (not its menu price). Profitability also shows cash ROAS, the same revenue over the cash alone.
Marketing ROI is not shown. It needs the profit on the sales a campaign brought in, and results are entered as totals rather than as sales, so the cost of delivering them is not known. A campaign with no costs attached, or no results entered, shows its CAC and ROAS as unavailable.
Marketing in Business Costs vs. here
| Business Costs | Marketing Costs | |
|---|---|---|
| Counts in marketing cost and profit? | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign CAC and ROAS? | No | Yes |
| Best for | Lump-sum budgets you don't need to break down | Any spend you want to analyze by channel or campaign |
Both count toward marketing cost and profit, so enter each cost in one place only. A cost entered in both is counted twice, and Nabu flags a marketing retainer in Business Costs that matches recurring spend entered here.
Common questions
Do I have to enter marketing if I'm just starting out? Enter at least your regular monthly spend so your marketing cost and profit are accurate. Even a single line — "Monthly marketing budget: $2,000" — is better than nothing.
What if I run one-time campaigns, not recurring spend? Enter them as one-time costs with a specific date range. An open house event you spent $800 on in March is entered with a March date range and a one-time cost.
How is a recurring cost counted in a month or a quarter? A recurring cost runs from its start date (or its date, if you leave the start blank) through its end date, and each month it ran is charged its monthly amount, prorated for part months by the share of the month's days. A $500 monthly retainer is $500 in any full month, whether it has 28 days or 31, $1,500 over a full quarter, and $250 for the first half of a 30-day month. Archiving a cost stops it from the day you archive it; the months it already ran keep it.
How does Nabu measure a campaign's return? With return on ad spend: the revenue you attribute to a campaign ÷ what the campaign cost to date. For example, if a campaign cost $1,000 and brought 5 new clients who spent $2,500 between them, ROAS is 2.5x and the cost per new client is $200. ROAS of 2.5x means $2.50 of sales for every dollar spent, not $1.50 of profit: delivering those services cost money too, so compare ROAS with your contribution margin. At a 65% margin a campaign needs about 1.5x to cover its own cost.
Should referral gift cards go here? Yes. If you give a $50 gift card to a client for referring a friend, that's a marketing cost. Track it here under the Referral category.
Payment & Financing Fees
Map your payment methods to their actual fee rates so Nabu can count processing fees as a cost of each sale, beside product cost and commission, and show real net receipts.
Services
How to set up your service menu in Nabu — including pricing, duration, and what goes into each service — so Nabu can calculate service-level profitability.