Modern marketing isn’t about vanity metrics – it’s about impact. The days of celebrating LinkedIn likes, website visits, and MQL volumes as standalone wins are over. If marketing doesn’t drive revenue, build trust, and create real demand, then it’s just noise.
A great marketing leader understands this. We’re not just storytellers; we’re strategic growth drivers. That means thinking like a hedge fund manager – allocating resources to high-impact activities, not just spreading budget across ‘feel-good’ tactics. It means holding marketing accountable to revenue and business outcomes, not just top-of-funnel activity.
So, let’s get real: what actually matters?
The MQL is Dead – Long Live Revenue Marketing
For years, marketing teams have optimised for MQLs, scoring leads based on engagement with gated content, webinars, and email campaigns. But here’s the problem – none of that guarantees revenue. The truth is, sales don’t generate demand. Marketing does. And if marketing isn’t directly accountable for revenue, something is fundamentally broken.
Why the MQL Model is Obsolete:
Marketing metrics must evolve – CEOs and CFOs don’t care about vanity metrics. They care about pipeline acceleration, marketing-influenced revenue, and customer lifetime value (CLV).
MQLs don’t equal revenue – A big lead list doesn’t mean more customers. Instead of celebrating lead volumes, we need to track actual conversion rates and revenue impact.
Marketing must own revenue – The best marketing teams directly tie their activities to revenue. That means focusing on Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), pipeline velocity, and marketing-attributed revenue. If you can’t link marketing to revenue, you’re in the wrong department.
Aligning Marketing with Business Outcomes
Marketing isn’t about generating leads – it’s about generating business. If we do our job right, sales should be closing more deals with less effort because demand has already been created.
Here’s what the business actually wants from marketing:
High-quality pipeline – Not just MQLs, but sales-qualified leads (SQLs) that convert.
Revenue ROI – For every pound spent on marketing, how much revenue does it generate?
Brand + demand generation – Long-term brand equity that fuels future revenue growth.
This shift requires marketing leaders to move beyond ‘vanity reporting’ and work closely with sales, finance, and customer success teams to ensure marketing is a revenue-driving function.
The Demand Generation Mindset
Revenue-centric marketing isn’t just about better metrics – it’s about a fundamental mindset shift.
1. Marketing’s job is not to generate leads – it’s to create demand.
2. Sales teams should be closing – not sourcing – opportunities.
3. Marketing must build brand credibility, establish thought leadership, and engage customers with real intent.
If you’re a marketer still obsessed with hitting MQL quotas, it’s time for a reality check. Marketing leaders should be aligning their KPIs with revenue metrics, influencing pipeline velocity, and ensuring they are accountable for business growth – not just lead generation.
Moving Beyond Vanity Metrics
It’s not that all marketing metrics are useless – but they must be tied to real outcomes.
A better approach:
Track MQL-to-SQL conversion – If leads aren’t moving deeper into the funnel, your marketing isn’t working. This is a big sticking point for many marketing teams – they don’t fully understand their hand-off processes or what sales fundamentally does, so they stop caring once they hit an MQL quota. The best results I’ve seen and achieved in marketing have come from deeply embedding myself and my team within the sales team. We reviewed, weekly, what we were passing to them and what they were doing with it. I sat with sales operations, pre-sales, and delivery teams to understand the process and timescales involved. If something isn’t working, stop it! Fail fast, but learn from it so you don’t keep repeating the same mistakes.
Reverse-engineer revenue goals – Work with sales and finance to determine revenue targets, then build marketing programmes that directly support them. Marketing teams need to stop fighting with Sales and Finance – the most productive stakeholder relationship I ever built was with my CFO. One of my top priorities when starting a new marketing role is sitting down with the CFO to get aligned. Learning to speak their language, understanding what they want to track, and demonstrating marketing’s value in the way they understand – revenue – is crucial.
Leverage AI & predictive analytics – AI tools can surface high-intent leads and optimise marketing spend, ensuring campaigns focus on revenue impact rather than clicks. Don’t be afraid of Generative AI – it’s not about letting AI write all your content for you (that’s an obvious no-no), but the power of AI tools to help marketers drill down into data, interpret intent signals, and create complex personalised journey maps is invaluable.
Final Thoughts: Own the Revenue, Own the Outcome
Marketing is no longer just about brand awareness – it’s a revenue-generating engine. If we can’t prove our value in direct contribution to pipeline and revenue, our budgets will always be first on the chopping block.
So let’s be real: if you can’t track your marketing back to revenue, what are you actually doing?
Louise Mahrra
Louise Mahrra, Marketing Director at CloudInteract
