The Strange Reason Experienced CMOs Can See What’s Driving Growth...

“We have a good sense of what works... but there’s no hard data to back it.”

That’s how one marketing executive described the spot he was in.

And he wasn’t exactly flying blind.

Far from it.

He’d been brought in two years earlier after a private equity acquisition to enhance the marketing and speed up growth.

His team had come a long way.

They were running digital. Direct mail. Billboards. TV. Radio. Print. Conferences. Events. Sales outreach.

A healthy marketing mix.

And after years in marketing, he had a pretty good feel for what was pulling its weight.

The problem came when he had to prove it upstairs.

Because his customers could take up to 24 months to buy.

Someone might see a billboard... meet the team at a conference... get a piece of direct mail... click an ad... talk to sales...

Then finally become a customer two years later.

Last-touch attribution might happily give the credit to whatever happened near the end.

But as he put it:

“We might have started connecting with that person two years ago, three years ago in some circumstances.”

So the normal attribution models were “kind of out the window.”

And that creates a strange problem for an experienced CMO.

Your gut can be right... while your numbers still can’t prove it.

That matters the second the conversation moves upstairs.

Because management doesn’t have your years of experience.

They can’t see all the little signals you’ve learned to recognize.

They see the numbers you put in front of them.

So when you say, “I think this is working”...

The next question is obvious:

“What’s the ROI?”

And Geoffrey was blunt about that:

“I gotta know my ROI. At the end of the day, I just do.”

Without it, a recommendation that feels obvious to you can turn into another meeting.

Another question.

Another request for proof.

Another delay before the dollars move.

And over time, the problem gets bigger than one budget request.

Because every time your recommendation depends on “I have a pretty good sense”...

Management has to decide how much they trust your judgment.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Perfect attribution may not actually solve that problem.

Think about what you’re asking the data to do.

Reconstruct every meaningful touch across a journey that could last 12, 18, even 24 months...

Then neatly decide how much credit each billboard, email, event, ad, sales call and conference deserves for the revenue that eventually appeared.

At some point, “perfect” attribution can create more certainty than the data deserves.

Which is why Geoffrey wasn’t asking for perfect.

“I don’t care if it’s perfect... but I do need really strong, confident directional metrics.”

That distinction changes everything.

Because the goal isn’t to replace the CMO’s judgment with a dashboard.

It’s to give that judgment better instruments.

Geoffrey had a great analogy for this.

A good CMO, he said, is like a pilot.

You want someone who knows how to use the instruments...

But if the instruments go down, you also want someone experienced enough to land the plane on gut feel.

The problem is having to fly that way all the time.

Imagine instead being able to see a strong enough signal across your marketing to say:

Here’s what’s working.

Here’s what isn’t.

Here’s where our dollars are being best spent.

And here’s the hard data behind why I want to put more money there.

Now your experience isn’t fighting the numbers.

The numbers are finally giving your experience something solid to stand on.

So the next time management asks...

“What’s the ROI?”

You don’t have to ask them to trust your gut.

You can show them why they should.