Board-level metrics for a brand and web investment
Boards do not approve budgets on impressions. Four numbers travel: pipeline contribution, cost per qualified lead, retention, and the share of spend going long. The fourth item is what attribution cannot show.
Contents
A board will not approve a brand or web investment on impressions and sentiment. Present four numbers instead: pipeline contribution, cost per qualified lead, retention or repeat revenue, and the share of budget going to long-term brand work. Then state, in the same document, what attribution cannot tell you.
Key takeaways
- Gartner's 2023 CMO Spend Survey, with 410 marketing leaders surveyed in March and April 2023, put marketing budgets at 9.1% of company revenue, down from 9.5% in 2022.
- In the same survey, 71% of CMOs said they lack the budget to fully execute their strategy, which sets the standard of proof a request has to meet.
- The CMO Survey of March 2023, with 314 respondents, found firms spending 40% of budget on long-term brand building and 60% on short-term performance, against a stated ideal near half and half.
- The 60:40 guideline boards half-remember comes from Les Binet and Peter Field's The Long and the Short of It, published by the IPA in November 2013.
- Google removed four rules-based attribution models in 2023, and Universal Analytics stopped processing hits on 1 July 2023, so comparisons across that date are not like for like.
Start with numbers the board already reads
A board reads revenue, margin, pipeline coverage and churn. A brand or web investment has to be expressed inside those columns, not beside them in a slide with its own vocabulary. The translation is the work, and it is the part most decks skip.
Gartner's 2023 CMO Spend Survey, fielded with 410 marketing leaders in March and April 2023, put marketing budgets at 9.1% of company revenue, down from 9.5% in 2022. The same survey found that 71% of CMOs lack the budget to execute their strategy.
When budgets contract as a share of revenue, the request competes with headcount and capital expenditure. Both of those reach the board with a payback figure attached. A brand investment that arrives without one loses by default, whatever the quality of the work.
Pipeline contribution and cost per qualified lead
Define "qualified" once, in writing, with the person who owns the sales number. Two definitions produce two truths, and the board will notice within a quarter. Put the definition in the appendix, so next year's comparison is possible at all.
Report pipeline contribution as a share of pipeline created in the period, not as an absolute that grows whenever the sales team does. Report cost per qualified lead against your own prior period; a benchmark you cannot audit invites a debate about the benchmark instead of the business. Both numbers also move for reasons outside marketing: pricing changes, a new market, a hiring freeze. The logic behind a proposal that makes value legible applies here too — criteria first, number second.
Retention, repeat revenue and the long half of the budget
Retention is where brand work shows up last and holds longest, and a board already tracks it. Report repeat revenue and net revenue retention alongside acquisition, because a programme that lifts acquisition while retention slides has not paid for itself.
The CMO Survey of March 2023, with 314 respondents, found firms spending an average of 40% of budget on long-term brand building and 60% on short-term performance. Most reported that the ideal split would be around 50% each.
The gap between what firms spend and what they say they should spend is the argument, and it beats an appeal to craft. The 60:40 reference comes from Binet and Field's The Long and the Short of It, published by the IPA in November 2013; quote the date when you use it. What survives a brand programme is a reusable system rather than a folder of files, which is the case for treating a logo as a compression algorithm.
Say the limits of attribution out loud
The most credible page in a board pack lists what the numbers cannot show. It protects the rest of the deck, because a board that finds one overstated claim discounts every other line.
On 20 April 2023 Google announced the removal of the first click, linear, time decay and position-based attribution models. Remaining conversion actions switched to data-driven attribution from September 2023. Universal Analytics stopped processing hits on 1 July 2023.
Two consequences follow for any pack covering 2023: comparisons crossing 1 July measure different systems, and the models behind last year's channel splits no longer exist. Put that on the slide, not in the footnote.
Where a channel resists attribution, a time-boxed holdout is the cheapest honest test — pause it in one region, hold everything else constant, report the difference with its confidence stated. Label every number as measured, modeled or estimated. That column does more for credibility than another dashboard, in the same way a content model built to survive a redesign does more than another template.
FAQ
Which metrics should a brand investment be judged on?
Pipeline contribution, cost per qualified lead, retention or repeat revenue, and the share of budget allocated to long-term brand work. Each maps to a column a board already reads. Add a line stating which of the four are measured directly and which are modeled.
How do I justify brand spend that will not show results this quarter?
Show the split rather than the promise. The CMO Survey found firms spending 40% on long-term brand building against a stated ideal near 50%. The request therefore moves toward a recognized benchmark instead of asking for an exception. Pair it with a retention number.
What should I say about attribution I cannot prove?
Say it plainly and early. List which numbers are measured, which are modeled and which are estimated. Note that Google removed four attribution models in 2023 and that Universal Analytics stopped processing data on 1 July 2023. Credibility is the metric that compounds.
What to put in the next board pack
Agree the definition of a qualified lead with sales this month, then baseline the four numbers before any new spend starts. Add a confidence label to every figure and one page on what attribution cannot show. Six months from now you will know whether the definitions held under pressure. Definitions that drift are the governance failure that makes transformation programmes miss their targets, and that erodes trust in what a business was told it was buying.
