ROI Is Making Your Marketing Small

Overfocusing on ROI has pushed marketing into a very narrow role.

ROI is easiest to measure closest to the point of sale. Unsurprisingly, in this impatient, short-term thinking environment, that’s where modern marketing has chosen to focus most of its attention.

And so marketing becomes responsible for conversions on landing pages, email sequences, social media content, launches, calls to action, sales pages, etc.

It’s brought in after the offer has been decided, after the price has been set, or after the client experience has already taken shape. Then, it is asked to make those decisions sell. All the while forgetting that selling is Sales’ job.

Success is measured in short time frames, even for sales cycles, because those results are easier to quantify.

Longer-term benefits, or even longer-term damage, are far more difficult to attribute directly to a campaign, a post, or a single email.

They rarely fit neatly into a monthly or quarterly report.

But what is this dashboard-first marketing for? What is its purpose, other than being a backup singer to Sales?

When you only want to hear about return on investment from your marketing department, you’re judging it after many of the decisions that should contribute to its success have already been made.

Marketing should be involved from the start: in the offer, the audience, the positioning, the pricing, and the experience the business delivers.

ROI matters.

But when it becomes the primary way a business understands marketing, it inevitably reduces it to the smallest (and most measurable) part of what it can do for your business.