The divide between what marketing thinks is important and what finance actually cares about is bigger than ever. Even as marketing tech becomes more sophisticated, marketers often still push reports that tout Likes, Impressions, and Engagement as serious wins.
So how did we get here?
- Most ad platforms don’t offer easy access to the KPIs that marketers need to prove impact, so…
- We, as marketers, have been conditioned to chase easy wins (vanity metrics) instead of KPIs that affect the bottom line.
Marketers are facing a real crisis. Focusing on the wrong metrics is costing your brand money, cementing the view of marketing as a cost center, and devaluing any actual contributions your team makes toward revenue goals.
A mix of new tech and collective marketing inertia made us comfortable with metrics that made us feel good, even if they didn’t do good for the business. The outcome: the actual business results floundered or, worse, remained completely unmeasured.
What you can do about it.
Start by putting yourself in your Finance team’s shoes. Your CFO doesn’t care about your Instagram follower count. They care about revenue, profit margins, cost per acquisition, and market share.
Next, think about the impact of presenting metrics that don’t resonate with people outside of marketing. When Finance doesn’t understand what metrics you’re pursuing with your campaign or why, it makes marketing look like, at best, a necessary evil and at worst, first on the chopping block when budget cuts come around. When marketing talks about “brand awareness” and “storytelling,” while finance asks about “return on investment” and “customer lifetime value,” you’re not having the same conversation, which benefits neither team.
Finally, accept the reality that the days of throwing spaghetti at the wall and calling it “brand building” or “experiments” are over. Your finance department, your executive leadership, and ultimately, the whole company, need the marketing budget to yield business outcomes. Today, marketers are being held to a higher standard, and good marketers know that’s a good thing.
Build Better Habits
What’s the long-term solution? How can marketers simply leave behind the metrics we’ve been using to gauge “success”? What should we do instead?
- Speak Finance’s Language: Ditch the marketing jargon. Stop talking about “brand experiences” and “social engagement scores.” Start talking about sales lift, foot traffic, average order value, and market share growth. Find out which KPIs your CFO cares about, and start focusing on those.
- Focus on Real Business Results: Impressions? Forget about them. Sales keep the lights on. High-performing marketing teams meticulously tie every single campaign dollar spent to tangible business KPIs. They’re leveraging real-world data, like location insights, transaction data, and customer behavioral data, to prove impact. It’s not rocket science, it’s just smart, accountable marketing. Here’s what that looks like in the real world:
- Duke Cannon saw a 12% sales lift at Walmart stores and drove over 43,000 attributed in-store visits by combining mobile and CTV with precise on-premise targeting.
- Gary’s QuickSteak boosted their sales lift by 50% when they layered Digital Audio Ads onto their existing CTV and Mobile strategy.
- belVita drove 221,000 visits to Target stores and generated $476,000 in carted dollars using a blend of mobile and Digital-Out-of-Home.
- Demand Accountability from Your Ad Spend: If your ad dollars aren’t provably driving sales, increasing foot traffic, or growing market share, then why spend them? Stop following media plans that deliver visibility but no results. Hold your media buys and agency partners to the same standard your CFO holds you to. When you can pinpoint impact, you’re no longer spending money, you’re investing it.
- Become the Profit Center: This is the single most important point for your team. When you can definitively prove that marketing spend directly contributes to revenue and profit, you transform marketing from a cost center to a profit driver. That’s what will make the executive suite and finance care about marketing. Then, your team will start to see serious investment and a seat at the strategy table.
If this is all feeling a little overwhelming, here’s some good news for you. Today’s tools have the sophistication you need to leave vanity metrics behind, and your company leadership and CFO are certain to be receptive to the change (they’ll probably be thrilled). Stop living in the world of vanity metrics and start delivering real business results. Your brand’s future and your marketing team are counting on you!
Get started with a GroundTruth Ads Manager account today, and start exploring our platform (no minimum spend required). If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.
