The Number You Can’t Own
Marketing usually gets judged on revenue. But revenue is never marketing’s alone. Sales, product and pricing all move it too. This session is a frank discussion among marketing leaders about that problem: what we’re really measured on, how much of it we actually control, and what marketing could own and be judged on instead.
Example questions:
When you're asked what marketing delivered this year, what number do you reach for? And hand on heart, how much of it was yours to claim?
Who else in the business has their hands on that number? Where does your control over it actually begin and end?
When your CFO looks at the P&L, which line is marketing’s? You’re measured against the one at the top, but which line do you actually own?
When revenue misses, how much of the explaining lands on marketing, compared with the functions that also shaped the result?
If revenue was never marketing’s to own outright, what could marketing genuinely own, measure, and stand behind?
Do you know what a customer is actually worth to your business, and what you pay to win one? And if those numbers aren’t yours, why are you the one setting the budget to chase them?
What would have to change, in how marketing reports and how it’s measured, for the board to treat it as an investment rather than a cost?
The topic challenges conventional thinking about marketing's real contribution to revenue. It challenges attribution and the science and tech that has grown out of attribution modelling. It is a real conversation on what marketing is actually in the business to do.