Rethink Marketing Metrics: Get Your CEO on Board

For years, I asked my marketing team the usual questions:

How's traffic? Are leads up? What's converting?

It wasn't micromanagement — it was instinct. As CEOs, we're drawn to metrics we can quantify. We want something tangible to bring to a board meeting or use to justify the next investment.

Traffic, leads, and conversion rates offered a sense of certainty. And to be clear, those metrics still have value. Good leads signal early interest, and conversions show what resonates.

But here's where we get off track:

We prioritize volume over quality.

We measure performance by channel instead of seeing the bigger picture.

Chasing big numbers feels productive, but it often masks the real problem — whether we're reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right message. And when we evaluate results in siloes, we miss how all our touchpoints work together to influence the journey.

Today's buyers don't follow a straight line. They form opinions and consideration sets well before they land on your website — if they land there at all. They listen to podcasts, scan LinkedIn, read newsletters, and pull advice from LLMs and Slack threads.

Roughly 80% of your ability to influence a sale now happens before the click. But most dashboards are still wired to measure only what happens after it. We're optimizing for the last inch instead of the first 20 miles.

This is where I see many organizations stall: strategy evolves, but leadership keeps asking for the wrong proof.

As a CMO, it's your job to guide that shift.

Help Your CEO Rethink the Metrics

Today's buyers move through a pinball machine of touchpoints, each nudging perception in subtle, often untraceable ways.

They gather information passively, across a web of channels. They form opinions from content they may never even click on.

Yet, many executive teams still expect performance to fit a neat, linear funnel with clear inputs and clean attribution.

As Rand Fishkin shared on a recent episode of Content Disrupted, chasing attribution is a fool's errand.

And the issue isn't just conceptual. It's technical.

Attribution breaks down when referral strings go missing, cookies are blocked, or journeys span devices and private channels. Even if someone lands on your site, you often can't see what brought them there, let alone what influenced them.

In short, the journey isn't just fragmented. It's invisible.

Measurement frameworks weren't built for this. They favor what's easy to track rather than what's actually shaping decisions.

Rand said it well:

"Traffic is a vanity metric. I'm not saying give up on measurement. But attribution? Attribution is dead…The most measurable channels are paid ones, so we over-index on them — even when they're just taking credit for sales that would have happened anyway."

What to Measure Instead

Influence often happens where attribution can't follow. So when your cross-channel strategy is working — when your brand is showing up in the right conversations and contexts — it may not show up in your analytics. But here's what it looks like:

Your perspectives featured organically in third-party content
Organic mentions by trusted voices your buyers follow
Frequent citations in AI-generated summaries and LLM searches
Your customers spreading your ideas across platforms you don't own or control

These are signals of influence. They're harder to quantify but far more indicative of real market traction than measuring traffic spikes or form fills out of context.

Influence isn't unmeasurable. It just requires a broader lens.

Look for correlations between directional metrics and down-funnel KPIs:

You should see increases here…

Organic mentions/backlinks/pickups by credible third parties
Share of voice across key topic areas
Organic search rankings (yes, this is still a decent proxy for AI visibility)
Citations in LLM Searches and AI Overview impressions
Quality social shares and reposts

Correlate to lift here…

Direct traffic and branded search
Quality of meeting requests
Close rates
Sales cycle speed

Position Influence as the Leading Indicator

If your team's role is to build trust before sales enters the picture, then influence is the most meaningful measure of that effort.

It's not the tidy chart in a deck. But it's why your brand starts showing up in conversations you didn't initiate, in places you don't own.

And critically, it doesn't happen on your website.

Influence is earned off-site. It's built through third-party credibility, the spread of your ideas, and the authority your brand commands in the spaces your buyers already trust.

It's how your work:

Shapes perception before a sales conversation
Builds credibility without requiring a click
Reduces friction through early familiarity

Think of it like this:

Influence → Trust → Preference → Pipeline

Influence isn't won through vanity visibility. It's about showing up with authority, unique value, and relevance in the environments where decisions are being shaped.

That presence builds belief. And belief drives revenue.

If you're being asked to do more with less (and who isn't?), now's the time to shift the conversation from what's convenient to measure to what actually moves markets.

Questions to Reframe the Conversation

My conversations with marketing leaders improved when I stopped equating performance with pageviews.

Here are questions to help reframe the thinking among your marketing team:

Where is our perspective showing up beyond our owned channels? Do we have an active presence there?
Are our own SMEs and executives actively sharing our perspectives on their social channels?
What earned mentions or citations did we receive — and from whom?
Are we being referenced by credible voices our buyers listen to?
Is our content surfacing in AI tools or featured in expert roundups?

These questions connect strategy to signals that reflect real market impact.

To answer them, equip your team with tools like:

Social listening & sentiment analysis — to track visibility and tone
Backlink analysis — as a proxy for third-party trust
Audience research & community monitoring — to capture conversation trends in peer groups and forums
Surveys & interviews — to measure brand perception before someone becomes a lead

The message to bring to your CEO:

Stop optimizing for attribution. Start optimizing for influence.

Make the Business Case for Influence

If your CEO still measures marketing success by traffic and lead volume, the strategy is out of sync with how modern buyers make decisions.

Attribution blind spots can create budget pressure. If traffic is flat and form fills decline, leadership will start questioning investment — unless you reframe the value marketing delivers.

To earn buy-in for an influence-first strategy, focus the conversation on three core areas:

Strategic Risk

"We're optimizing for a buyer journey that no longer exists."

While you're driving clicks to your site, competitors are shaping buyer perception earlier, through peer discussions, AI-generated answers, and expert content. When someone lands on your homepage, they're likely already influenced. The only question is: by whom?

Portfolio Diversification

"We're not replacing what works — we're rebalancing toward what's working now."

Most content budgets are still built around the 40% of buyers who follow a traditional research path. Shifting 20-30% toward distributed influence ensures you reach the majority who aren't coming in through owned channels.

Competitive Intelligence

"Influence-building outside of traditional channels gives us visibility and insight."

Active participation in buyer communities doesn't just increase brand reach. It reveals how prospects evaluate opinions, what questions they're asking, and how competitors position themselves — intel you can't get from attribution reports.

Renowned messaging consultant Jay Acunzo shares additional tips for framing conviction-driven messaging and helping your CEO embrace an influence-first strategy in this clip: