Before We Debate Marketing ROI, Let’s Make the Evidence Easier to Follow

I would rather bring a clear account of what we know to a revenue meeting than a crowded dashboard that implies more than it proves.

That is my starting point for the argument in MarTech’s headline, “B2B marketing doesn’t have an ROI problem. It has an evidence problem.” The accompanying snippet calls for connecting buyer journeys, marketing influence, and revenue across the B2B sales cycle, beyond campaign-level reporting.

That is the source’s stated framing. My commentary here responds to that headline and snippet, not to details from the full article.

We at Leads.biz™ see a useful practical question inside that framing: can marketing and sales follow the same evidence without needing someone to translate it?

Separate the activity from the claim

I would not take the headline to mean that marketing returns are never a problem. Weak returns and weak evidence can coexist. Better measurement might reveal effective work, ineffective work, or a picture that remains incomplete.

Our view is that teams should separate three things before discussing ROI:

• Activity: What did marketing do?
• Observation: What happened afterward, or alongside it?
• Interpretation: What do we believe connects the two?

A campaign launch is an activity. An account entering a sales conversation is an observation. Saying the campaign caused that conversation is an interpretation that needs additional support.

Keeping those categories distinct does not diminish marketing. I think it makes marketing’s argument easier to examine—and harder to dismiss as a collection of convenient associations.

The goal should not be to make every activity look valuable. It should be to make the reasoning visible.

Start with one question, not another dashboard

My recommendation is to choose a narrow business question before changing the reporting setup.

For example: what marketing interactions can we document for accounts that entered an active sales process during a defined period?

That question does not establish causation. It does, however, give the team something concrete to investigate. It specifies the accounts, the outcome, and the time window.

I would begin with a short record containing:

• The account and relevant contacts.
• The documented marketing interaction and its date.
• The sales milestone and its date.
• The evidence available to connect those events.
• Any missing information or competing explanation.

This is a proposed working method, not a finding from the source. Its appeal is simplicity: each entry should help someone answer the question, rather than merely fill a reporting field.

Make the audience definition part of the evidence

We at Leads.biz think measurement should begin with a clear statement of whom a campaign was intended to reach.

If marketing targets one group while sales evaluates another, interpreting the campaign becomes unnecessarily difficult. Before launch, I would write down the intended company characteristics, relevant roles, exclusions, and reason for choosing that audience.

Teams preparing a campaign can build a prospect audience around that definition. The important editorial point is not the size of the list. It is whether the audience reflects the business question the team later expects its reporting to answer.

A defined audience provides a reference point. It does not prove that every contact is interested, ready to buy, or influenced by the campaign.

Agree on what “influence” means

I would ask marketing and sales to define influence before reviewing campaign results.

Does it mean a documented interaction before an opportunity opened? Engagement during an existing sales process? A buyer explicitly identifying a useful resource?

Those are different observations. I would not compress them into one undifferentiated label.

My preference is to preserve the distinction and state the limits plainly. “We recorded this interaction before the opportunity opened” is narrower than “marketing created this opportunity.” Where the evidence only supports the first statement, that should be the statement we use.

Unknown should remain an acceptable answer.

Use the evidence to make a decision

A useful review, in my view, should end with a decision rather than a contest over credit.

Keep the audience definition or revise it. Continue the message or test another. Improve a handoff. Fix missing records. Investigate an apparent connection before investing further.

The source’s headline invites a shift toward evidence. Our recommendation is to keep that shift practical: ask one clear question, document the relevant events, distinguish observation from interpretation, and name the gaps.

I do not need a report to claim certainty. I need it to show what we can reasonably say—and what we should do next.