Your inbox is full of dashboards. Impressive impressions. Solid engagement rates. Record clicks. None of it answers the question keeping you up at night: what actually worked?
Boards and CEOs don't care about reach. They care about pipeline contribution, revenue influence, and ROI. If you can't answer these five questions below with confidence, your strategy needs sharper focus.
TL;DR: Need the quick version? Jump to the action framework, 30-day plan, and benchmarks at the bottom.
Before You Start: What You'll Need
Block 3-4 hours. Gather your full-year data—CRM, marketing automation, analytics, financial records. The goal isn't justifying what you did last quarter or last year, but building a smarter strategy going forward. Every dollar you stop wasting on what didn't work is a dollar you can invest in what will.
Question 1: Where Did Our Revenue Come From?
Attribution is messy. Everyone in marketing knows it. You can track traffic sources all day, but connecting those dots to actual revenue is harder, especially in complex B2B sales cycles where multiple touchpoints influence a single deal.
The good news is that directionally right beats precisely wrong every time. You don’t need perfect attribution. You just need clarity on where your revenue is coming from.
What to analyze:
Most analytics and ad tools default to last-touch attribution, showing you the final channel where conversion happened. That’s useful, but incomplete.
Pull your closed/won deals and examine first-touch attribution by channel. Which channels are starting relationships and generating awareness? What’s the cost per opportunity by source?
Then look at multi-touch attribution to understand the full journey. Which channels assist versus originate leads? Where do prospects engage before they convert? Map your typical buyer journey patterns, because the channel that gets credit for the conversion often isn’t the one that created the opportunity.
Finally, don’t forget the “dark funnel”: deals that appear as “direct” but aren't. Offline influence from events, word-of-mouth, and sales relationships matter, even when you can’t track it perfectly.
Red flags:
- Over 40% of pipeline showing as "direct" or "unknown source" (attribution red flag)
- Single channel dominating (a concentration risk if that channel becomes unavailable or expensive)
- Channels with high cost-per-lead that never close
- Misunderstanding channel roles (organic social media rarely shows last-touch conversions in B2B, but plays crucial awareness and nurture roles earlier in the journey)
What good looks like:
Clear understanding of your top three revenue-generating channels, an attribution model that sales leadership agrees represents reality, and documented buyer journey patterns by segment.
The decision: Which channels deserve more investment? Which need optimization versus elimination? Where are your attribution blind spots costing you strategic clarity?
Question 2: What's Our True Customer Acquisition Cost And Is It Sustainable?
CAC determines whether you’re building a business or just buying revenue. The challenge is calculating true CAC requires visibility into costs that often live in different budgets—marketing spend, sales costs, tooling, headcount. And when leadership is pressuring for immediate growth, it’s easier to focus on short-term metrics like cost-per-lead than the harder question of long-term unit economics.
But sustainable growth requires facing that question head-on.
What to analyze:
Calculate true CAC: all marketing spend (tools, agencies, headcount, programs) plus sales costs allocated to new customer acquisition, divided by new customers acquired in the same period.
Break this down by segment and vertical. Do high-CAC segments justify the cost with higher LTV? Examine trends over time. Is CAC increasing, decreasing, or stable?
Calculate your payback period: how long until a new customer generates enough margin to cover acquisition cost?
What good looks like:
The gold standard is a 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio. If you’re below that, it’s a signal that your unit economics needs attention before you scale—whether that means reducing acquisition costs, increasing customer lifetime value, or both.
The 2026 decision: Can you afford to scale your current acquisition model? Which segments offer the most efficient growth? Do you need to optimize for lower CAC or higher LTV?
Question 3: Which Marketing Investments Moved the Needle?
When resources get spread across too many initiatives, it becomes harder to identify what’s really driving results.
The 80/20 rule applies here: a small number of initiatives typically deliver the majority of impact. The question is whether you know which ones and whether you’re allocating resources accordingly.
What to analyze:
Run a channel performance audit comparing investment versus results. Calculate ROI or ROAS where measurable. At the campaign level, identify your top five campaigns by pipeline generated and by closed revenue. Then identify your biggest investments that didn't deliver.
For content, ask: which assets actually get used in sales conversations? What content correlates with deal progression? In B2B ecommerce, product documentation, ROI calculators, and implementation guides often outperform thought leadership content.
The honest assessment:
List your top marketing investments by dollar amount. Now rank them by business impact. The ones that don't match up are where your budget is misallocated and you should consider cutting or reducing these to fund what’s working.
The 2026 decision: What gets more budget because it's working? What gets cut because it's not? Where are you under-investing based on results?
Question 4: Is Our Marketing and Sales Engine Aligned?
Misalignment between marketing and sales is the silent killer of B2B growth. Even perfect leads may not convert if the handoff is broken.
What to analyze:
Start with lead quality and follow-up. What percentage of MQLs get worked by sales within 24 hours? What percentage of MQLs convert to SQLs, and why don't the rest?
Examine conversion rates through the entire funnel: MQL to SQL, SQL to opportunity, opportunity to close. Where are the biggest drop-offs?
The necessary conversations:
Sit down with sales leadership. Ask: "What do you wish marketing did differently?" Then listen.
Review follow-up behavior. Are leads being worked or ignored? Examine the handoff. Is the transition from marketing to sales smooth or broken?
Red flags:
- MQL to SQL conversion rate below 20%
- Sales and marketing operating with different definitions of lead stages and ICP
- No regular marketing-sales syncs
- Marketing measured on volume, sales measured on revenue (misaligned incentives)
What good looks like:
MQL to SQL conversion rate of 25-40%, documented and shared definitions of lead stages and ICP, regular (weekly) alignment meetings, and shared accountability for pipeline and revenue goals.
The 2026 decision: Do you need better leads, or does sales need to work them better? Where is the handoff broken and how do you fix it?
Question 5: Are We Marketing to Our Actual ICP?
Targeting the wrong audience is one of the fastest ways to burn budget. The solution starts with an honest analysis of who’s buying.
What to analyze:
Pull your customer data and analyze who purchased. Look at company size, industry breakdown, geographic concentration, and buyer personas.
For B2B ecommerce companies, this might reveal you're winning more with procurement managers than the C-suite you're targeting. For manufacturers, you might discover your sweet spot is mid-market companies in specific verticals. For SaaS, it could be certain company sizes or tech stacks.
Compare your stated ICP to acquisition reality. Who did you say you were targeting? Who actually converted?
Identify your best-fit customer characteristics: highest LTV customers, fastest sales cycles, best retention rates. Then identify worst-fit characteristics: high churn, longest sales cycles, smallest deals.
The reality check:
Pull your last 10-20 closed/won deals and analyze them for common characteristics. Compare this to your current targeting and messaging. Are you marketing to these people, or to someone else?
The 2026 decision: Who should you be marketing to? Where should you focus your limited resources? Should you narrow your focus or expand it based on results?
Moving Forward
Quarter-end, mid-year, or after a major campaign—any time is the right time to audit what’s working. Taking a few hours to answer these questions will sharpen your strategy and help you allocate resources more effectively.
The marketing leaders who regularly assess performance can enter each quarter with confidence and a plan backed by data instead of assumptions. They know where to invest, where to cut, and where they have gaps.
Block time in the next few weeks and answer these questions. Your strategy will be stronger for it.
Need a partner to help turn audit insights into action? Whether you're rebuilding your marketing strategy, optimizing customer journeys, launching targeted campaigns, or reimagining your customer experience, The Office of Experience works with B2B ecommerce companies to turn strategic clarity into measurable growth. Let's talk about your next move.
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Quick Reference Guide:
Turning Audit Into Action
Once you've answered these five questions, create a simple action matrix:
- Double Down: What's working deserves more investment
- Optimize: What's promising but needs refinement
- Test: New opportunities to pilot next quarter
- Cut: What to stop doing immediately
Reallocate resources and budget from low-performers to high-performers. Invest in closing gaps. Build your business case on performance data.
The Next 30 Days
- Week 1: Gather all necessary data and run the numbers for each question
- Week 2: Interview stakeholders (sales leadership, finance, executives)
- Week 3: Synthesize findings and create your action matrix
- Week 4: Present findings to leadership and lock in 2026 priorities
Benchmarks: How Do You Stack Up?
Financial Health:
- CAC:LTV ratio: 3:1 minimum (industry standard for B2B SaaS and B2B businesses, according to reports by HubSpot and Forrester)
- CAC payback period: 12-18 months, but this can vary by segment (according to a report by Chargebee)
- Marketing's % of pipeline: 30-60%, but this varies by business model and average selling price (according to a report by LeanData in collaboration with Salesforce, Atrium, Clearbit)
Operational Efficiency:
- MQL to SQL conversion: 13% average; 25-40% good performance (according to data from HubSpot)
- SQL to opportunity: 30-50% (according to data from HubSpot)
- Lead response time: <24 hours
Attribution Quality:
- "Direct" or "unknown" source: <40% of pipeline
- Top 3 channels: clearly identifiable
- Buyer journey: documented by segment
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