Calculators & Tools
Real numbers for real decisions.
I’ve watched a lot of business owners make important decisions based on gut feel, rules of thumb, or whatever their competitor seems to be doing. None of those are strategies. They’re guesses.
I’m building a collection of tools here that let you plug in your own numbers and see what they actually mean. No email gates, no hidden agendas, no rigged outputs. Just transparent calculations you can use to make better decisions about your business.
I’ll keep adding to this as new topics come up that deserve better math. Use what’s helpful. And if you run the numbers and want to talk about what they mean, you know where to find me.
Joe DeMicco
What it actually costs to staff your marketing , and whether there’s a smarter structure
Most business owners compare an agency retainer to a salary. That’s the wrong comparison. By the time you add employer taxes, benefits, tools, training, office space, recruiting costs, and management overhead, that $80,000 hire is a $130,000 commitment. Multiply that by the five or six roles you’d actually need, and the in-house number is rarely what you expected.
This calculator lets you build both scenarios with your own numbers and see them side by side.
What’s Inside:
- Select the marketing disciplines you actually need , SEO, content, paid media, web development, design, automation, analytics, video, social, and strategy
- See fully burdened costs per role: salary + employer taxes + benefits + tools + overhead
- State-by-state salary adjustments across all 50 states
- Configure the hybrid model: one internal marketing leader + an agency retainer at three tier levels
- Side-by-side comparison with total cost, coverage gaps, and savings calculation
- The intangibles section: what’s changing in AI search, marketing automation, and compliance that no single hire can keep up with
This might help if:
You’re evaluating whether to hire more marketing staff, questioning whether your current structure is working, or trying to explain to your CFO why an agency retainer isn’t “too expensive”
The True Cost of Marketing:
Build vs. Partner Calculator
What a single client relationship is really worth, and what that means for every dollar you invest
When someone asks what a client is worth, most owners answer with an annual revenue figure. But that’s not the answer. The real answer accounts for how long they stay, how their spending grows over time, the referrals they generate, and the gross profit they represent over the life of the relationship. In industrial markets, that number is almost always significantly larger than what people carry around in their heads.
This calculator walks you through it step by step and then puts that lifetime value next to your cost to acquire one client, so you can see the true return on your marketing investment.
What’s Inside:
- Baseline lifetime revenue calculation with retention rate as an annual decay factor, grounded in real industry benchmarks (67% manufacturing average; 75–85% for well-managed relationships)
- Account growth compounding: how 8% annual spending growth transforms a client’s value over a decade
- Referral value attribution: a simple, honest way to quantify what word-of-mouth is actually worth
- Cost per acquisition: your combined marketing and sales investment divided by new clients won
- LTV:CAC ratio with visual breakdown – the single most important number in your marketing strategy
- Net lifetime profit per client after acquisition and retention costs
- Payback period: how quickly each new client recoups what you invested to win them
- The intangibles: market share displacement, business valuation impact, and client loyalty as a competitive moat
This might help if:
You’re trying to justify your marketing budget, you evaluate marketing on a monthly or quarterly basis instead of a lifetime basis, or you want to understand what you’re really earning through the investment of effective marketing and sales