This is Part 3 of the Revenue-Ready Marketing Playbook, a 4-part series for mid-market CEOs who want marketing to move the needle.
In many boardrooms, the prevailing sentiment is "Marketing is a black box - effective in parts, but it's unclear which parts." That kind of uncertainty is surprisingly common. For many growth-stage businesses, marketing still feels like a gamble. You spend, you hope, you wonder if it worked.
Some leaders treat marketing like a vending machine where you drop in a budget and expect pipeline to fall out. Others think of it as a creative project: subjective, occasionally brilliant, but not built for accountability. Both mindsets miss the mark.
Predictable outcomes don’t come from faster spend. They come from clarity about what marketing is for, what success looks like, and how it aligns with the business cycle.
This comes from research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the LinkedIn B2B Institute, and it has big implications.
Out-of-Market Buyers
- Not buying today, but will in 3, 6, 12+ months
- Need education, inspiration, belief-building
- Brand, thought leadership, category education
In-Market Buyers
- Actively evaluating or ready to engage
- Need frictionless conversion paths
- Paid media, outbound, retargeting, sales enablement
The research primarily looked at B2B categories with longer sales cycles and high-consideration purchases and found that the majority of buyers, 95%, aren’t actively shopping, but they will be at some point. It suggests that only around 5% of your total addressable market is actively in-market.
Now, if you’re in a business with shorter sales cycles, like professional services, home services, or transactional SaaS, you might think this doesn’t apply. But even in fast-moving categories, timing is everything. Your next customer might need you tomorrow, in three months, or not at all yet.
The principle still holds: if they don’t know or trust your brand before they need you, you probably won’t be the one they choose when they do. In these scenarios, the role of Marketing is to build familiarity, credibility, and preference before someone’s ready to raise their hand.
The best Marketing doesn’t choose one or the other. It balances both, because that’s how you get compounding demand and predictable outcomes.
So, what does “Predictable Outcomes” mean?
It’s about building a system that:
- Aligns to shared pipeline targets
- Owns specific buyer journey stages
- Builds both short-term performance and long-term preference
- Runs on regular feedback, not gut feel
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Marketing Maturity Playbook
Capability
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Ask Yourself
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Shared KPIs
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Do sales and marketing agree on what qualified pipeline means. And how to measure it?
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Funnel Ownership
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Is each stage of the buyer journey clearly owned and supported by a strategy?
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Balanced Investment
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Is budget allocated across demand creation (brand, education) and demand capture (paid, outbound)?
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Feedback Loops
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Do marketing efforts evolve based on sales feedback and pipeline movement, not just clicks and opens?
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Operating Rhythm
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Do sales and marketing meet regularly to review outcomes, not just activities?
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The magic isn’t in the tactics, it’s in alignment.
I once worked on a business intelligence platform that was competing with, and losing share in a highly competitive market crowded with point solutions that offered narrow, tactical features.
We clarified our value proposition and built sharply tailored campaigns mapped to roles in the buying committee. Importantly, we worked together with sales to track deal progression tied to specific content and plays.
This changed the impact of marketing from a “generator of leads” to a growth enabler, moving the right buyers faster through the cycle.
That’s what predictability looks like: when positioning, campaigns, and sales plays move in rhythm. Predictable outcomes come from clear roles, shared metrics, and a willingness to invest in both today’s pipeline and tomorrow’s momentum.
Marketing can absolutely drive measurable, repeatable results. But not if it’s only judged by this quarter’s output. That’s not how it works. And the best CEOs know that.
Tired of “black box” marketing? We help growth-minded CEOs build marketing functions that deliver results you can forecast. Predictable revenue starts with a smarter operating model.
*This is Part 3 of the Revenue-Ready Marketing Playbook, a 4-part series for mid-market CEOs who want marketing to move the needle.
**Up next: How a shared playbook across Sales and Marketing unlocks value**
Catch up on the full series:
Topics: Revenue Growth, CEO Business Strategy, Fractional CMO, Fractional CSO
Fri, May 2, 2025