Why Your Marketing ROI Feels Unclear (and What Might be Missing)
There’s a question I’m hearing more often lately: “What is the ROI on this?”
It doesn’t necessarily come up in a confrontational or even a skeptical way. It comes up as a curious, measured, proactive way, and honestly, it’s a great question.
And right now? A practical one.
Especially at the executive level, where budgets are typically predetermined, and every decision must be weighed carefully.
When you’re making decisions about where to invest your time, your money, AND your energy, you should understand what’s working.
But here’s what I’ve been noticing, and it may surprise you. Most businesses aren’t struggling with ROI…They’re struggling with how they define and track it, especially from a marketing perspective.
What I’ve also noticed is that many well-established companies that started and built momentum through word of mouth and referrals are really wrestling with how the market has changed in the digital era.
It’s also worth noting that even experienced marketing teams cite measuring ROI and attribution as an ongoing challenge.
And now, with the quick rise of AI? The gap is widening. Especially for those who haven’t adapted to the online space.
The Hidden Gap in How We Measure Marketing
In many businesses, marketing and sales are operating in parallel, and this isn’t a new revelation. It’s pretty par for the course in most organizations, where it’s often referred to as “The right hand isn’t talking to the left.”
Marketing is responsible for visibility, and sales is responsible for conversion. On paper, that makes a ton of sense, but in reality, it creates a huge, possibly detrimental disconnect that can send many businesses into a downward spiral.
Here’s how it almost always shows up.
Marketing has been tasked with a to-do list of deliverables that may or may not be tied directly to a campaign. When it comes time to evaluate performance, marketing is often asked, “Did this lead directly to a sale?”
More often than not, if the answer isn’t immediate or obvious, the conclusion becomes, “Marketing isn’t working. Let’s decrease it, cut it, or try something else,” but that’s rarely the full picture.
What ROI Actually Looks Like in Real Life
Most buying decisions, especially in service-based businesses, don’t happen linearly.
They look more like:
Someone sees your content.
They don’t engage.
They hear your name again in a conversation.
They see some more of your content.
They check out your website.
They see what social media platforms you’re on.
They check out your reputation on Google.
They follow you quietly for a while (almost always longer than you want them to)
They read another post that deeply resonates.
They reconsider your reviews or ask someone they know if you’re good.
They finally reach out.
Source: Samuel Malpiedi
And when they do? It's often attributed to the last step because it gives the business what it’s really been craving… tangible proof that what they’re doing makes an impact on their bottom line.
For many business owners, what they’re seeing is this:
The inquiry
The referral
The conversation
The conversion
The revenue
The relationship
…which, you guessed it! It means sales typically gets the credit, which look, I get it, but let me add one of my personal favorite memes that brings it all together and gives a much deserved nod to marketers…
…because what about everything that happened before that? Was it really just fluff, or was it just under-reported effort?
Attribution isn’t Broken, it’s Just Incomplete
Traditional marketing attribution tends to prioritize what’s easiest to measure, like last-click conversions, direct inquiries, and closed deals, but those metrics only tell part of the story.
Marketing attribution, by definition, is meant to account for the entire customer journey, not just the final interaction.
This strategy doesn’t account for:
The content that built trust over time
The visibility that kept your brand top-of-mind
The consistency that made you feel credible
The alignment that made someone feel like, “this is the right fit.”
Those pieces can be harder to quantify, but they are often what create the opportunity in the first place. That’s why it’s important to have a clear, aligned strategy that you can measure.
According to a recent article by KEOMarketing, companies testing multiple attribution models achieve approximately a 43% improvement in budget accuracy because they better understand how marketing contributes to revenue.
Marketing and Sales Aren’t Separate Functions (but they aren’t the same either)
Marketing and sales are connected, whether we treat them that way or not. I personally see them as more co-dependent than most give them credit for, especially today, when a majority of the world is living and doing business online.
Marketing creates awareness, trust, and familiarity.
Sales creates clarity, confidence, and commitment.
One without the other creates friction, and without any connection at all creates dissonance.
When each operates in a silo, ROI becomes difficult to trace, and I would dare to say almost impossible. Not because it isn’t there, but because the full journey isn’t being captured or measured in a meaningful way.
When marketing and sales are aligned and sharing data, insights, and responsibility, businesses see measurable improvements in conversion rates, pipeline velocity, and long-term revenue growth.
Measured Marketing vs. Reactive Marketing
This is where a deeper distinction starts to really matter. Not all marketing is created or evaluated in the same way.
Often, more reactive marketing tends to look like:
Starting and stopping based on immediate results
Only investing when revenue feels slow
Expecting quick, trackable wins from every effort
Pulling back when attribution isn’t obvious
It’s understandable, but it’s also exhausting because if you don’t call it out, you can never fix what’s broken or maybe even identify what needs to change.
Because it keeps marketing in a constant cycle of:
Start → Question → Stop → Restart → Barely Rinse → Perpetually Repeat
Measured, intentional marketing, on the other hand, looks different.
The right hand DOES in fact talk to the left, and it should!
It’s intentional, informed, and it’s built to create momentum over time.
It considers:
What we are building, and not just what was converted today
The data we are gathering to make better decisions
The difference between a marketing-qualified lead and a sales-qualified lead
Patterns that are emerging across touchpoints
How marketing and sales are accountable to each other
It doesn’t ignore ROI, but it expands how it’s understood in a way that defines attribution. That’s how it becomes measurable, impactful, momentum-building, and ultimately profitable.
And sometimes, it is a slow burn…until it’s not.
That Doesn’t Make It Wasteful, It Makes It Strategic
Every business invests in areas that don’t produce immediate, trackable ROI:
Hiring and training a team
Improving operations
Upgrading systems or technology
Marketing is no different. Especially in today’s landscape, where:
Buyers take longer to make decisions
Trust is built over time (bonus: this is a huge opportunity in an AI world)
Visibility requires consistency
Consistency becomes a true test of going the distance
The Risk isn’t Investing in Marketing
The real risk is expecting it to behave like a short-term transaction when it’s actually a long-term growth function. I feel like I should mic drop right here, so 🎤🔥.
Because when marketing is only evaluated on immediate return:
• It gets paused too early
• It gets underfunded and deprioritized
• It never has the chance to compound.
• It’s more costly than it should be because of rework
And then the conclusion becomes, “Marketing didn’t work.”
When in reality, it was never set up to thrive in the first place.
Better Questions to Understand ROI
If ROI has felt unclear in your business, it may not be a performance issue.
It may be a visibility and awareness issue.
Here are a few questions worth exploring:
Where are our strongest leads first discovering us?
What touchpoints happen before someone reaches out? Have we defined and strategized around them?
How long does it typically take for someone to convert?
What content or interactions are building trust?
What is our sales process hearing that marketing isn’t capturing?
What is marketing seeing that sales aren’t bringing into conversations?
Are we tracking interest… or only outcomes?
Do we know why someone chose us over another option?
These questions don’t just measure ROI, they start to reveal it.
A Different Way to Think About ROI
ROI isn’t always immediate; it’s often cumulative.
It’s built through repetition, relevance, and relationship.
I hate to tell you, there are no shortcuts to doing that very important work.
And in many cases, the return isn’t just in the sale itself…
It’s in:
Shorter sales cycles
Higher-quality leads
Stronger client alignment
Increased confidence in your visibility
Here’s where to focus to actually see momentum.
Final Thought
If your marketing ROI feels unclear, it doesn’t automatically mean something is broken.
It may simply mean you’re only seeing part of the picture.
And when you zoom out…you might find that marketing and sales have been working together all along, just without a shared way to measure it.
If you’ve been trying to make sense of your marketing without a clear line to ROI, you’re not alone, and you’re absolutely not wrong for asking the question.
Sometimes the most valuable next step isn’t doing more…
