Why most marketing teams can't tell you what actually works

When I start a new interim assignment, I use an assessment matrix to help me quickly understand which channels are actually delivering profitable growth.

In most businesses the answer usually involves three spreadsheets, a dashboard nobody trusts, and phrases like "it isn’t straightforward because…" Translation: they don't know.

This isn't about incompetent marketing teams. It's structural.

Many marketing teams use legacy measurement approaches that haven't kept pace with how consumers actually buy. They're using last-click attribution in an omnichannel environment, tracking vanity metrics that make activities look successful and working with agencies who have every incentive to protect their own budgets rather than optimise the total spend.

I commonly find that problem starts with how marketing success gets defined. Teams measure impressions, click-through rates, engagement, and reach—all activities, none outcomes. These metrics are telling them whether someone saw their ad or opened an email, but nothing about whether they bought profitably or came back. I've sat through multiple presentations where agencies showcased impressive engagement numbers but nobody notices that customer acquisition costs were up 30%.

Attribution is often a mess. Most businesses still rely on simplistic models that assign all credit to the last click before purchase, which systematically undervalues brand building, content, and early-funnel activity. But multi-touch attribution requires integration between systems that often don't talk to each other—your CRM, ad platforms, e-commerce system, and point-of-sale data all living in separate silos. So the team often default to whatever their agencies report, which coincidentally always shows that agency's channels performing well.

I've seen this play out repeatedly across sectors. A retail chain spending seven figures on TV and outdoor advertising while all their measurable growth came from email and the loyalty scheme they barely invested in. A hospitality group unable to separate branded search from generic paid search, so they kept funding expensive campaigns that were largely capturing demand that would have converted anyway. An FMCG brand with no clear view of trade spend ROI across different retailers, just acceptance that "promotional support is what the category requires."

The consequences compound over time. Agencies optimise for metrics they control rather than business outcomes and when growth inevitably stalls, nobody can definitively say what to cut or where to double down – there’s no holistic view.

Measurement needs to reflect reality. Proper marketing measurement actually looks like:

·      Contribution margin by acquisition channel that accounts for the full cost to serve different customer types.

·      Cohort analysis showing lifetime value by source, (so you know whether those cheap social media customers actually come back or immediately churn).

·      Attribution frameworks that reflect actual customer journeys—if people research for weeks before buying, measurement needs to reflect that reality.

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