ROI Realities: Part I

This is the first installment in a three-part series called ROI Realities. Over the next three posts, we're breaking down what marketing ROI and attribution actually look like in practice, and what it takes to measure them well. In this blog, we're covering three truths about ROI that are worth understanding before you try to measure it. Part two discusses how to build a more accurate picture from your own data, and part three covers the technology and team alignment required to track ROI effectively across your company.

Reality #1: ROI Is Not Easy to Find

Every executive would like to know the ROI on their marketing spend, but asking for a number and actually being able to calculate one accurately are two different things. While the desire is universal, what's less universal is having the data and infrastructure in place to actually calculate that return.

Say your company proposes spending a set amount on digital advertising. If new customers show up in the weeks that follow, it's tempting to credit the campaign for those results. But that assumption skips the actual work of calculating ROI. Instead, it notices a pattern and prematurely attributes a cause.

Determining ROI accurately requires specific data and technology infrastructure—namely,  a tracking system that captures how prospects are interacting with your company, and the correct attribution modeling that connects those interactions to results. Even with that infrastructure in place, the data still needs people who know how to analyze it, understand its nuances, present it clearly, and then determine what to actually do with it.

Reality #2: A Sale Is Never 100% Marketing or 100% Sales

No new customer your company gains is entirely the result of marketing or entirely the result of sales.

Today, prospective customers interact with your company across constant digital touchpoints long before they ever speak with a salesperson. Think about how you personally evaluate a vendor for your own business. You search for them. You check their website. You might read a case study or see a post on LinkedIn. You could hear about them from a colleague, run into them at an industry event, or get an email that happens to land at the right time.

By the time a salesperson enters the conversation, marketing has already done a significant amount of work—even if most of it was invisible to you as the buyer.

That has an important implication. Though a salesperson is more than likely the last interaction a customer has before signing, that result can't be credited to sales alone. Dozens of touchpoints likely led up to that final conversation, and each one played some role in the decision.

So what does that actually look like for a B2B buyer?

Example: A Hypothetical B2B Buying Journey

Say your company needs a new supplier for a piece of industrial equipment. You start where most buyers do: a Google search. A few companies come up, and you click into the ones whose websites look credible and current.

You spend some time on one company's site, reading their case studies and getting a feel for their experience in your industry. Their name shows up again a few days later, this time in a LinkedIn post about a project similar to yours. You remember it.

Around the same time, you mention the project to a colleague at another company, and they tell you they've worked with that same supplier and had a good experience.

A week later, you're at an industry trade show and happen to walk past their booth. You stop, ask a few questions, and leave with a brochure. A few days after that, you get a follow-up email referencing the conversation you had at the show.

By the time you finally get on a call with their sales team, you've already interacted with that company more than half a dozen times, and marketing was behind nearly all of it.

If you close the deal with them, is that a sales win or a marketing win? In reality, it's both, and separating the two with any real precision is close to impossible.

Consider everything that led up to that final conversation:

• The Google search that surfaced them in the first place.
• Their website and case studies, which built credibility.
• The LinkedIn post that kept them top of mind.
• The colleague recommendation that made them trustworthy.
• The trade show conversation that put a face to the name.
• The follow-up email that kept the conversation going.

Each of those touchpoints played some role in getting you to that final call. None of them, on its own, closed the deal. So where does that leave your ROI?

Reality #3: ROI Is Not the End-All, Be-All

Even if you could calculate an exact attribution number for a deal—say 65% marketing and 35% sales—that number still wouldn't tell the whole story.

ROI is important. Understanding it, tracking it, and calculating it accurately are worth the effort, which is exactly what we'll cover in part two of this series. But ROI as a single metric doesn't capture everything marketing contributes to your company.

Marketing builds brand awareness. It shapes how prospects and current customers perceive your company before they ever pick up the phone. It plays a role in client satisfaction and retention, not just new customer acquisition. And as we covered above, it's happening constantly, every day, across dozens of small interactions current and prospective customers have with your company.

That's a cumulative benefit that builds over time. Unfortunately, that doesn't always show up cleanly in a single ROI calculation, but it's just as important to consider when measuring results. Making the most of those numbers takes business intelligence about how marketing is actually influencing your company, beyond a surface-level statistic.

What Should You Do About Marketing ROI?

Let's be clear: ROI matters. It's worth pursuing, and it's worth measuring as accurately as your company can manage. Getting to that point starts with understanding the nuance behind it. Executives looking to "walk the walk" and not just "talk the talk" with their marketing ROI need the data, infrastructure, and expertise required to analyze it, and the knowledge that it's never a 1+1=2 equation.

So if ROI isn't a clean calculation, how do you actually get an accurate number? That's exactly what we'll cover in part two. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Doug Cofer is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Four Columns Marketing and Range Creative Agency. He received his MBA from Baylor University with a concentration in marketing. He has over 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, and executive management.