Diagnostic Pattern
"We spend on marketing and cannot tell if it works"
The symptom is real. The cause is usually somewhere else.
Money goes out monthly and nobody can say what it produced. It looks like an attribution or agency problem. It may actually be that the conversion between demand and acquisition was never defined, so there is nothing to attribute to.
What you think it is
We spend a fair bit on marketing and I honestly cannot tell you if it works.
So you change agencies, cut the spend to see what happens, or ask for a better report.
What it usually is
A hypothesis to test, not an indictment on you or the team.
In DARE to Grow the conversion between demand and acquisition is pipeline created - that is the converting metric, and over time it becomes pipeline developed and then business closed-won. If nobody has agreed what counts as a created opportunity, then no amount of reporting will settle the question, because the disagreement is about the definition and not the data. This is the difference between a metric and a KPI: you are usually being shown volume of activity when the question is about conversion.
How to tell
What did you spend last quarter, and how much pipeline was created from it? If you cannot answer, is what is missing the tracking - or an agreed definition of a qualified opportunity?
The move
Agree the definition of a created opportunity with sales and marketing in the same room, in one sentence, before touching a dashboard. Then measure that one conversion for a quarter. Most of the argument disappears once both sides are counting the same thing.
You might think you have an attribution problem. It may actually be that you never agreed what you were counting.
Not sure this is your real bottleneck?
Bring the symptom. We find the root cause together on a short call.
Book a Clarity Call