Measuring Marketing's ROI
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Brand drives growth. But without clear proof of ROI, CMOs struggle to secure the budgets they really need. Here’s a simple blueprint to fix that. Bonus side effect: proving ROI doesn’t just unlock budgets — it shows you exactly which channels and which levers make the difference. That’s how you get the money and how you deliver on it.
To build a marketing strategy that wins budgets, you need to create confidence and trust around three questions every CFO and CEO has:
What is the sales uplift of building brand equity?
Which touchpoint mix will deliver that uplift — and what’s the resulting ROI?
How can we make sure that ROI is secure?
Proving the Impact of Brand
A premium chocolate brand used to run a standard Marketing Mix Model that found an ROI of around 2x. We revisited this with a causal lens. Some variables (like “sales of yesterday”) drove impressive vanity metrics — but gave shaky results overall.
Our key improvement: we added brand consideration tracker data and upgraded the method to Causal AI. The result? The total ROI of their advertising campaigns came out closer to 9x. Two-thirds of that uplift came from mid- and long-term effects.
The main benefit of Marketing Mix Modeling is linking spend dollars to sales dollars. With strong first-party data, it can prove ROI. But that ROI relies on a causal assumption: investment causes return. That’s why you need Causal AI — and a reliable measure of brand strength. Translation: you must have an ongoing brand tracker.
But MMM can’t do everything. It works with aggregated data — ideally daily, but often just weekly or monthly. That means small datasets and limited granularity. It’s also tough to measure exactly when an earned media investment hits the customer’s eye.
And it assumes that the same spend in a channel always delivers the same results — which oversimplifies reality.
For all these reasons, MMM is great for measuring overall brand impact — and can point to some channel effects — but that’s it.
To answer question two — “Which touchpoint mix will create this brand uplift and what’s the resulting ROI?” — you need a more granular approach.
Impact of Touchpoints
One insurance brand had been extremely restrictive with brand building — but over time, brand awareness declined sharply. The real problem? A lack of trust that advertising could actually create awareness and consideration.
We ran our Touchpoint AI across the insurance market — and proved exactly how different touchpoints drive brand awareness and consideration. One finding shocked everyone: sports sponsorship turned out to be a powerful lever, delivering high ROI for both awareness and consideration.
How it works:
The method runs a survey among category buyers, testing two brands per respondent across funnel metrics, brand archetypes, and touchpoints. Touchpoint exposure is measured with an implicit association test — which even picks up contacts that people don’t consciously remember. The data then runs through Causal AI, which pinpoints the true impact.
One standout result: 1 in 5 sports sponsorship contacts drives brand awareness — the gate to consideration. Do the math on reach, and it becomes clear: this is a low-cost, high-impact channel.
Invest in the Impact Multiplier
Another large insurance brand wanted to crack the code for high-performing ads. We tested their own and competing ads, categorized them, and used Causal AI to find the true drivers of success. The result was unexpected.
Their own remastered ads from 40 years ago outperformed the market — even among people who weren’t alive back then. Those vintage ads ticked every causal success box. The expected ROI? Up to 5x higher than standard market ads.
Here’s a truth few admit: 50–70% of total advertising ROI comes from the creative itself. The biggest lever isn’t the media plan — it’s whether your ad is mediocre or exceptional.
Your MMM and Touchpoint AI measure the average market creative. If your work underperforms that average, your ROI tanks — and that’s your CFO’s nightmare.
SUMMARY — The Insight Tools to Secure Budgets and Results
What you really need:
Ongoing: An always-on brand tracker. Weekly interviews with category buyers on brand awareness and consideration. This is how you later prove your spend lifts sales.
Yearly (or every other year): Run Touchpoint AI to understand channel impacts, MMM to link brand impact to sales, and Creative AI to set clear guidelines for winning ads.
Ad-hoc: Every ad should be tested — AI first, then verified with real respondents. Because the tiny details in your ad are the biggest driver of ROI. No shortcut here.
This is how you 10x in marketing.
PS.: Or do it for free using our Marketing ROI GPT. Just click here to access this chapter’s workbook including all prompts.