Marketing Returns That Matter

Let's talk about Returns today shall we?

But not ROI (Return on Investment).

"But, Tracy, what? That's the only return that matters, right?"

Sure. It's the metric every marketer is asked about, defends in budget meetings, and squeezes out of campaigns and events. And it's the number we tend to report to people who don't quite know what marketing does.

But what if there are some other returns that could tell a more meaningful story?

I think there are two other ones that do a better job, but before we get there, let's understand the limitations of ROI.

The Problem With ROI

Return on Investment assumes marketing is a transaction. Dollars in, dollars out, calculate the ratio, report the result. It treats marketing like a vending machine — insert budget, receive revenue — and ignores almost everything that actually compounds in a business.

It also fails on its own terms.

Most marketing "investments" can't be cleanly attributed. The returns show up on lagging timelines. The customer journey doesn't run in a straight line from ad to invoice. And the ROI number you eventually report is, more often than not, a story you told the spreadsheet — not a truth the spreadsheet told you.

It's backward-looking scorekeeping dressed up as accountability. It tells you whether you hit a goal you set six months ago, which is not the same as telling you whether you're getting better at the thing that actually matters now.

So if ROI isn't the return that matters, what is?

Let's take a look at two and you can decide which fits you 😉

Return on Assets

Most businesses are sitting on assets they don't measure, don't maintain, and certainly don't optimize. And then they spend their marketing budget trying to manufacture new ones.

But many assets already exist in these places (and answers):

• Existing customers. Are they buying more from you? Staying longer? Referring others? Or are you so busy chasing new logos that you've forgotten the ones already saying yes?

• Brand trust. Is your reputation doing work for you in rooms you're not in? Is it shortening sales cycles, opening doors, earning the benefit of the doubt?

• Team knowledge. What does your team know about your customers that nobody else in the market knows? And is any of that knowledge moving into how you market, or is it trapped in someone's head?

• Content you've already created. Is it still earning, or did you publish it and abandon it? Most content marketing graveyards are full of assets that were created once and were never used again (even if they worked).

• Customer conversations. The most undervalued asset on the list. Every conversation with a customer is intelligence — about what's useful, what's missing, what's working, what's next. And most marketers aren't having enough of them to know.

Return on Assets asks a different question than ROI. It doesn't ask, "Did this campaign pay off?" It asks, "Are the things we already have getting more valuable, or less?"

That's a forward-looking question. It's also the question most likely to grow a business, because the cheapest customer to earn is the one you already have, and the most credible marketing is the kind you've already done.

Return on Effort

The second option is one that catches teams off guard, because it forces an honest conversation about whether the work is actually working.

When effort goes up and impact stays flat, something is wrong. Not with the effort — with the system the effort is being poured into.

Return on Effort asks:

• Is the same effort producing faster results than it used to? (Cycle time)

• What did we learn this week that we didn't know last week? (Learning velocity)

• Are we making sharper decisions using the data we already have? (Decision quality)

• How much work does it take to learn one useful thing about a customer? (Effort-to-insight ratio)

• Does the team feel like the work is compounding, or eroding? (Energy)

If you're putting in maximum effort and your dashboard says "more clicks," you don't actually know if the effort worked. You just know it happened. Return on Effort is the metric that tells you whether the maximum effort is being measured by the right things — or whether you're just pedalling harder on a stationary bike.

The Shift

Here's the part that matters.

ROI is a number you report. Return on Assets and Return on Effort are questions you ask. And the difference between those two postures is enormous.

When you report, you're justifying the past.

When you ask, you're shaping the future.

The marketing industry has spent two decades getting better at reporting and almost no time getting better at asking. We've built dashboards that can tell us exactly what happened yesterday, and almost nothing about what's about to change tomorrow.

The returns that matter aren't the ones that prove you did your job. They're the ones that tell you whether your job is getting easier, your assets are getting stronger, and your customers are getting closer.

Track those, and the ROI tends to take care of itself.

Track only ROI, and you'll spend your career explaining a number that was never going to tell the whole story anyway.

Choose carefully.

That choice defines what kind of marketer you're becoming.

And what kind of business you're building 💞