Short-sighted thinking doesn’t just stall marketing, it can quietly eat away at your entire business. I’m not just talking about your bottom line – it’ll hack away at morale, decrease employee tenure, and before you know it, you’re grasping at straws.

If you’re expecting a spike in sales the minute you hit “publish” on your first blog post or campaign, you’re thinking too small – or you spent $500k on some consulting juggernaut because you thought they’d fix all your problems. When it comes to strategic marketing, ROI shows up in less obvious ways – like finally attracting the right types of customers, streamlining sales conversations, and closing on deals not just faster, but more efficiently.

ROI Isn’t Always a Dollar Sign

Want to start some office drama? Walk up to your CFO and recite that headline. Half-joking.. Kinda (but please let me know if you do this). Anyway, an investment in strategic marketing can yield returns that might not show up in this quarter’s report, but are still measurable and meaningful. In terms of your customers, you’ll see increased brand trust and loyalty. You’re also likely to see improvements in cross-team functionality – after all, what’s more cohesive than a straightforward A-Z sales process? 

Believe it or not, the less tangible wins are often the ones that make the biggest impact over time. A clearer brand story can tighten up your recruiting efforts. Better positioning can weed out poor-fit prospects before they ever hit your pipeline. A strong content strategy can cut back on support tickets because your customers actually understand what you do. These aren’t vanity metrics – they’re operational efficiencies that create real business value.

How You Arrived Here: Short-Term Thinking (Probably)

In my previous post, Future Proofing Growth, I briefly touched upon the reactive mindset, which is all too prevalent in, well, everything. There are a number of metrics that will tell you when things are slowing down, but let’s all be honest with ourselves and each other – the one that gets the most attention is revenue. 

It’s easy to react to a drop in revenue with something tried and true like pumping up your ad spend or offering a discount, but you should be thinking of these approaches as a small hit of dopamine. Here’s another way to look at it: what’s going to be better off for you (yes, you, the person reading this) in the long run, picking up your phone and scrolling Instagram or picking up a book to flex those brain muscles? The answer is obvious, and for some, less exciting, but for all, more beneficial.

Sure, the tried and true methods are likely to boost revenue for a little bit, but what about the long-term? Picking up your phone = the same old; Reading a book = investing in marketing.

Strategic Marketing Builds Leverage

Marketing acts as a multiplier and builds leverage across every part of your business. Instead of chasing leads, you will start attracting the right ones. When you hone in on your messaging and provide clarity to your potential customers, they’ll come in with a better understanding of exactly what it is that you do, and your sales teams will spend less time educating and more time closing deals.

Clearer positioning, better-fit clients, and stronger retention don’t just boost revenue, they multiply it. This kind of ROI doesn’t just show up overnight, but it’s the difference between long-term growth and unsustainable grinding.

If your only measure of marketing success is this month’s sales, you’re missing the bigger picture. What would change if you started thinking about ROI in terms of momentum, clarity, and leverage?

Written by Paul Kettelle, Co-Founder & CEO