Vistage Chairs: Is Your Member’s Marketing Really Working? Ask These 5 Questions.

Vistage Chairs: Is Your Member’s Marketing Really Working? Ask These 5 Questions.

After more than 125 Vistage workshops, I’ve noticed something interesting.

CEOs will challenge a major capital investment six ways from Sunday. They’ll question the assumptions, expected return, risks, timing—and what it will ultimately do for the value of the business.

But when it comes to marketing, I hear this all the time:

“Karen, we’re spending a lot of money on marketing. I’m just not sure it’s working.”

Marketing ROI is still one of the most misunderstood topics I encounter, and one of the recurring frustrations I hear from both Vistage Chairs and CEOs.

Here’s the good news for Chairs: You don’t need to be a marketing expert to uncover the problem. You just need to know what to ask.

So the next time a member tells you their marketing isn’t working, don’t start by asking about leads. Ask what should be changing in the business.

That one shift can lead to a very different conversation.

1. What Are You Trying to Change in the Business?

This is where I’d start:

“What exactly are you expecting marketing to do for your business?”

It sounds obvious. But you’d be surprised how often there isn’t a clear answer.

Instead, the conversation quickly turns to leads, website traffic, campaigns, clicks or cost per lead.

Those numbers matter. But they aren’t where I want the CEO spending most of their time.

I want to know the business outcome marketing is supposed to produce.

Are you trying to grow revenue? Improve margins? Build qualified pipeline? Enter a new market? Lower customer acquisition costs? Shorten the sales cycle? Improve retention? Take market share? Generate cash?

Or are you ultimately trying to build a more valuable company?

At the CEO level, marketing should be connected to outcomes such as revenue growth, gross margin, customer lifetime value, cash flow and enterprise value—not simply campaign performance.

And the right measures depend on the business.

A growth-stage company may be focused on pipeline growth, market share and customer acquisition. A scaling company may care about CAC payback, win rate and sales velocity. A mature business may focus on lifetime value, retention and EBITDA improvement. A turnaround may be looking hard at cash generation, marketing efficiency and time-to-revenue.

So here’s a great Chair follow-up:

“Are you measuring what matters to your business strategy—or what happens to be easy for marketing to measure?”

That question can uncover a lot.

2. Are You Attracting the Right Customers?

Notice I didn’t say more customers.

I said the right customers.

If your member tells you leads are up 40%, don’t stop there.

Ask:

“Are they the customers you actually want?”

Are they profitable? Do they fit the business? Do they buy enough? Do they stay? Do they have expansion potential? What does it cost to acquire them?

A marketing program can generate impressive lead numbers and still produce lousy economics.

That’s why I want CEOs looking beyond campaign metrics to measures like customer acquisition cost, lifetime value and retention.

More leads isn’t necessarily better marketing. Better customers might be.

3. Is Marketing Making Sales Better?

This is one of my favorite questions because I don’t believe sales and marketing should be treated as two separate islands.

Marketing can generate a mountain of leads, but if sales doesn’t want them, what exactly have we accomplished?

Ask your member:

“Is marketing creating qualified pipeline that sales can actually close?”

Then keep going.

Are win rates improving? Are deals getting bigger? Is pipeline moving faster? Is the sales cycle getting shorter?

The CEO should be able to see how marketing is improving the performance of the entire revenue engine not simply filling the top of the funnel.

And if sales says, “Marketing keeps giving us bad leads,” while marketing says, “Sales doesn’t follow up on our leads,” you’ve probably uncovered another worthwhile Chair conversation.

4. Are the Economics Getting Better?

Here’s where marketing ROI gets really interesting.

Imagine one of your members tells the group:

“We invested $750,000 in marketing and generated $3 million in revenue. Marketing tells me that’s a 300% ROI. I’m pretty happy with that.”

Sounds great.

What would you ask next?

Suppose that same investment also:

• reduced customer acquisition cost by 25%;
• increased win rate from 24% to 32%;
• shortened the sales cycle from 140 days to 95 days;
• improved customer retention from 89% to 94%; and
• increased customer lifetime value by 35%.

Now which number is more interesting?

The $3 million?

Or the fact that the company has changed the underlying economics of acquiring, converting and retaining customers?

I’d argue the second may ultimately be much more valuable.

Because those improvements don’t just affect this quarter.

They affect the future earnings capacity of the business.

So ask:

“Are you measuring what marketing produced this quarter—or what marketing changed about the future economics of your company?”

That’s a CEO question.

5. Is Marketing Making the Company More Valuable?

This is the question I wish more CEOs asked.

I think of marketing ROI as a progression:

Did the campaign work?

Did it create qualified pipeline?

Did it accelerate revenue?

Did it improve customer economics?

And finally:

Did it increase the value of the company?

If marketing is helping your member acquire better customers, lower acquisition costs, increase lifetime value, improve retention, accelerate sales and strengthen the company’s position in the market, then marketing is doing something far more important than generating leads.

It’s helping build a more valuable business.

That’s where I want the CEO conversation to end up.

Try My 5-Minute Marketing Test in Your Next One-to-One

You don’t need a marketing dashboard to do this. In fact, put it aside for five minutes and ask your member:

• What are the three most important business outcomes you expect marketing to produce this year?
• How much are you investing to achieve them?
• What has happened to customer acquisition cost, win rate, sales cycle and customer lifetime value?
• Which marketing investments would you increase tomorrow—and which would you stop? Why?
• How is marketing helping make your company more valuable?

If your member can answer all five clearly, terrific.

If they can’t answer them without calling their marketing leader or agency, you may have just uncovered a very valuable coaching conversation.

Here’s One More Question I Love

Let’s say you gave your member another $500,000 tomorrow and told them it had to be invested in marketing.

Ask:

“Where would you put it—and why?”

Can they answer?

Now flip it:

“If you had to cut 20% of your marketing budget tomorrow, what would you stop—and what business result would you expect to lose?”

I actually think the second question may be more revealing.

Because if a CEO doesn’t know where they would invest the next marketing dollar—or which dollar they would stop spending—how confident can they really be that marketing is being managed as an investment?

That’s the mindset shift I’d like to see: manage marketing as an investment portfolio, not simply as a cost center. Expect it to contribute to profitable growth and company value.

So the next time a member says:

“I just don’t know if our marketing is working.”

Don’t start with:

“How many leads are you getting?”

Ask:

“If your marketing were really working, what would be different about the economics—and the value—of your business?”

And then do what great Chairs do.

Listen.

The answer may lead to one of the most valuable conversations you have with that member all year.

Want to Use These Questions With Your Members?

I’ve put these questions, a simple scorecard and follow-up prompts into a Vistage Chair Guide to CEO Marketing ROI that you can use in your one-to-ones and member group discussions.

Email me and I’ll send you a copy.

Or, if this is a conversation your whole group needs to have, I’ll join your CEO member group for a complimentary 60-minute virtual session.

We’ll use real CEO situations to explore one deceptively simple question:

Is the money we’re investing in marketing generating activity—or actually helping us build more profitable, more valuable businesses?

No pitch. No fee. Just a practical CEO-level conversation your members can take back to their teams the next morning.

Email me at khayward@chiefoutsiders.com and put CHAIR GUIDE or GROUP SESSION in the subject line.

I’d love to help you get the conversation started.