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Written by: Eric Doyle (F.ISP)
Here’s a question for you:
How do you market your company?
What methods do you use?
No doubt you have it all listed on your 2025 plan. Perhaps the budget looks a bit like this:
- Your website
- Paid ad campaigns in key platforms
- Industry events you’ll attend and sponsor
- PR retainer for press releases
- Outsourced content creation
- A subscription to email automation tools
- Marketing consumables – brochures, flyers, and more
- CRM subscription to align sales and marketing efforts, boost ROI, and generate more qualified leads
- Purchased leads lists
- Paid industry directories
Now, add it all up, including your marketing team salaries and packages. This is your annual marketing investment.
Here’s the next question:
What do you get in return?
Not just as a whole, for each individual element..?
Missing the Point with Marketing
In today’s environment, where every pound/dollar/euro spent is scrutinised and tied to detailed business cases, it’s shocking how often leadership teams turn a blind eye to marketing spend.
Many are stuck in what we call an “acceptance loop.”
When we ask clients:
“You’ve been running this same marketing strategy for years, but your pipeline is shrinking, new leads are harder to find, and net new business barely moves the needle.
Why do you keep doing it?”
The answer is almost always the same:
“We need to be visible”
Visibility…?
In a digital-first world, visibility is not a measure of success. You can’t make payroll with visibility, nor can you pay suppliers with impressions.
Visibility Is Not a Marketing Measure
The mad dash for visibility is killing businesses.
Everyone is chasing attention, we can change this if we simply adjust our focus to creating qualified relevance. Instead of standing in a metaphoric, crowded marketplace holding up placards and shouting, “Look at us! We have a thing… do you want to buy it?”, adjusting the narrative allows you to stand out as the irresistible solution to your clients’ problems.
Recently, we designed and executed a multi-channel content plan for a client. It generated over half a million impressions and thousands of pieces of engagement. But when we reviewed the results, the head of marketing proudly said, “It got huge visibility,” and promptly moved on to the next topic.
I asked about follow-ups. Strong interest had come from five target organisations. Who had connected with those decision-makers? Who was continuing the conversation?
“Visibility is only the start of the process….Blank looks”.
Too often, the perceived win in marketing is simply launching the campaign. The true win, and all the value, lies in the attribution.
Attribution Is Everything - If we spend 1 pound/dollar or euro, we should know exactly what we get back, and when.
Every pound/dollar/euro spent on marketing should have a clear return and direct impact on revenue.
A simple spreadsheet can help track attribution across your marketing activity:
A simple marketing attribution tracker....
Once you factor in team costs, you’ll know exactly which elements of your marketing are working… and which aren’t. This clarity moves you from a place of “we need visibility” to “we know what delivers results.”
It also highlights weaknesses in your commercial processes and identifies where changes are required.
But for some reason, many seem to prefer not to analyse and continue to throw money, time and effort at something they don't measure.
Does Your Marketing Work for You?
When we engage with new clients, we don’t ask them to change a thing.
Instead, we help them start tracking detailed attribution across their marketing and sales activities. We run Digital B2B Influence pilot programmes alongside traditional methods and measure the results.
One CEO told me just before Christmas “80% of our revenue is now coming from our teams Digital B2B Influence efforts. We’ve cut most of what we used to do because it delivered nothing and cost us money. We’ve kept a few essentials, but we now understand why we’re spending and accept it as a cost we won’t recoup.”
Digital B2B influence transforms your commercial processes. It moves you from chasing vague visibility to driving measurable, scalable action.
What’s Next for Your Business?
It’s time to stop prioritising visibility and start prioritising attribution. It’s time to:
- Become the leading technical and commercial digital influencers in your sector.
- Position your organisation as the most desirable for new hires and investors.
- Build the centre of your industry around your business.
The digital commercial shift is here, its alive and well and its growing.
Your access point is becoming an organisation focused on creating technical and commercial influence is through the influence you create on Social Media.
You may be reading this thinking, “I don’t like Social Media”, that’s fine...instead think Revenue, Profit and Ebitda…think growth.
Related: Raising a Young Investor: Smart Strategies to Build Financial Skills