Yeah, I said it: explaining marketing ROI to leadership should be an Olympic sport.
If you’re a marketing manager, especially in B2B or professional services, you already know the drill: you’ve spent more time defending your budget than actually using it. You walk into a meeting ready to share insights, and all everyone wants is a clean “dollars in, dollars out” story (queue the stock photo of a graph with the arrow going up and up!):
- “How much revenue came from this campaign?”
- “What’s the ROI on that brand awareness thing?”
- “Why are we paying to reach people who didn’t even fill out a form?”
You smile, nod, and start pulling numbers. Some clean, some… experimental. But deep down, you know the truth: it’s not that simple anymore.
And yet, that doesn’t stop leadership from treating every campaign like a vending machine: put money in, get customers out. When that doesn’t happen, the story usually goes something like this:
- Budgets get cut.
- Channels that don’t show immediate click-then-convert ROI get turned off.
- A new agency or manager gets brought in to “fix it.”
- And eventually, someone says the line every marketer dreads: “Digital just doesn’t work for us.”
Except it does. They’re just looking at it through a 2015 lens in a 2025 world.
You’re Not Crazy – It Really is Harder to Prove Marketing ROI Now
Let’s be honest: marketing used to be easier to “prove.” There were fewer touchpoints, clearer conversions, and more transparent data. Not to mention users have been less skeptical in the distant past and not yet exhausted by the eternal barrage of buy this, sign up for that, we’re really the best, only 01:04:17 and counting left to claim your deal!, etc., etc.
Now, the customer journey looks less like a funnel and more like a constellation. Prospects might see your ad on LinkedIn, Google your company later, read a blog post, see your brand name again on YouTube, click a retargeting ad, then talk to sales three weeks later.
Which of those moments gets the credit? Exactly.
Add in privacy restrictions, automated ad systems, and disappearing audience data, and the result is a modern marketing environment where proof doesn’t always look like profit… at least not immediately.
A Simple Analogy: The Dinner Party
Think of your marketing strategy like hosting a dinner party.
You’ve got a mix of guests (your campaigns) each contributing something different to the experience. One brings the main course (lead gen). Another brings the appetizers (brand awareness). Someone brings the drinks (remarketing), and another sets the mood with décor and entertainment (social and PR).
If you tried to figure out which single dish “made” the night a success, you’d miss the point. The combination is what made it a party. That’s how modern marketing operates. Each touchpoint plays a role and the full picture only comes together when you step back from the plate-by-plate analysis.
Traditional ROI Metrics aren’t Dead, They’re Just Incomplete
You should still measure hard ROI. That’s table stakes. But when it’s the only metric driving decisions, it’s easy to make short-sighted cuts that actually hurt long-term performance.
So the question isn’t “how do I make ROI go up?” It’s “how do I show the value that traditional ROI misses?”
Here are quality ways to explain that value for your leadership team:
1. Quality of Ads Traffic Engagement
If your ads are reaching the right people, you’ll see it in how they behave — even before they convert.
- Are they spending time on your site? Interacting with a quiz, zip code search, calculator, catalog, etc?
- Viewing multiple pages?
- Watching videos or exploring your resources?
That’s not wasted traffic. That’s qualified curiosity: the first sign your message is resonating.
2. Secondary Conversions Tell the Targeting Story
Form fills and calls are your “primary” conversions. But actions like quiz takers, location searches, video views, or newsletter signups tell you who is interested even if they’re not ready to have a sales conversation. If those are healthy, your targeting is sound. That means the next step isn’t fixing your media, it’s tightening your sales process.
Even if those prospects aren’t ready now, they’re entering your brand’s orbit; its reach and network. Especially in B2B, that orbit can pay off months later.
3. Look for Growth Everywhere
Rising direct website traffic, branded search, and referral volume are all proof that your marketing is doing its job and is building familiarity. Don’t just look at month-over-month or only conversions and traffic from ads. Observe how your traffic and network of contacts have grown in their entirety over the last six months, year, two years.
People can’t choose you if they’ve never heard of you. Also, people don’t choose you just because they’ve heard of you. That’s the quiet work of awareness and engagement campaigns: they fill tomorrow’s pipeline.
Editor’s note from Matt: Also, unless you’re selling a very specific and very cheap item, they probably aren’t going to purchase or convert strictly after clicking an ad once.
4. Don’t be the Sales Guy’s Scapegoat
Sometimes the leads are coming in, but the close rates aren’t. When that happens, ask:
- Are we following up fast enough?
- Are we nurturing the right leads?
- Are we missing a product or service we could be offering for this different-than-our-originally-thought audience?
Marketing’s job is to generate opportunity, not to close it. Don’t let poor sales execution masquerade as poor marketing performance. The most powerful sales teams find a way to make a customer out of as many leads as possible; even the “not ideal” ones.
Editor’s note from Matt: Lead nurturing. Email drip campaigns. Use it!
5. The Audience Development Argument
If you’re reaching new regions, industries, or buyer roles, that’s not failure, that’s expansion.
Building awareness in untapped segments is how you create tomorrow’s demand. Just because it hasn’t converted yet doesn’t mean it’s not working.
How to Talk About All This Without Leadership’s Eyes Crossing
When you present these insights, remember: leadership isn’t wrong to want numbers. They just need a clearer bridge between what they see and what’s actually happening. Use simple, confident language like:
- “We’re not just measuring who converted, we’re measuring who cared.”
- “This campaign didn’t generate instant revenue, but it expanded our reach among qualified prospects.”
- “If we paused this now, we’d lose the audience most likely to convert next quarter.”
- “Immediate leads are just the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of it, unseen, underwater, are all the other returns our marketing has.”
And when they ask, “Why can’t we just see where every lead came from?” try the dinner party analogy:
“Because modern marketing works like a dinner party. I’s not one dish that makes it successful, it’s the whole spread, the environment, the vibe, all together. You can’t judge the success of your party just by whether the yeast rolls came out well.”
The Bottom Line
Your job isn’t only to prove marketing works. It’s to help leadership understand what working looks like now.
ROI still matters, but it’s not the whole story. The brands that win today measure attention, intent, and trust just as much as transactions. So the next time you’re asked to “prove” your budget, don’t just show what’s measurable. Show what’s meaningful.
