B2B marketing measurement done right

You built the campaign, hit the KPIs and pulled together a clean report. But when it lands in the CFO’s inbox, the questions start.

What did this actually deliver? Why are we spending more here? How does this tie back to revenue?

In B2B, where deals stretch across quarters, the old ways of measuring marketing fall flat. Click-through rates, MQLs and last-touch attribution might tick boxes, but they rarely tell the full story. And when the numbers don’t resonate with the C-suite, budgets get cut and brand gets sidelined.

This isn’t just a data problem. It’s a strategy problem.

As Emily Gustin from LinkedIn points out, fewer than 4% of B2B marketers measure impact beyond six months. Sales cycles are long, but reporting is built for speed. The result? Misread performance, misaligned goals and missed opportunities to build real demand.

But there’s a better way.

We spoke to leaders from LinkedIn, BrainLabs, Magic Numbers and SYSTM who are reshaping how B2B measurement works. They’re aligning marketing with finance, elevating brand as a long-term growth driver and using data to influence decisions, not just dashboards.

If you’re serious about proving impact, justifying ad spend and making marketing matter across the business, this is where to start.

B2B marketing measurement is stuck in the short term

Most B2B sales cycles stretch beyond a year, yet nearly every measurement model stops at month three or six. 

That disconnect does more than create blind spots. It drives short-term thinking. And short-term thinking comes at a cost. When success is judged in weeks, not months, marketing teams double down on tactics that deliver fast clicks, and longer-term strategies get left behind.

Brand building is one of them. Mark Syal from BrainLabs highlights the problem: “If your sales cycle is a year long, it doesn’t make sense to only market to people in-market that month.” But with a short-sighted view of performance, that’s where the bulk of budget goes. And where does that leave brand-building? It becomes an afterthought.

This mindset also reduces measurement to a reporting exercise to assess what happened instead of a strategic tool to determine what to do next. Joyce Talbert from Magic Numbers calls it out: “Measurement loses its value if it doesn’t drive action. Too often it’s just reporting.”

The result? Marketing spend isn’t allocated in a way that will help drive long-term growth. Performance is misread. Valuable chances to influence buyers early in their journey are lost.

Fixing this short-termism starts with re-evaluating what many B2B organizations still overlook: brand.

Brand in B2B is a strategic asset, not a luxury

B2B marketing still leans heavily on lead generation. It’s measurable, immediate and easy to justify. But when it comes at the expense of branding, it undercuts long-term growth.

Emily Gustin from LinkedIn puts it clearly: “Businesses should view brand as a long-term investment and allocate budgets accordingly. Thought leaders recommend 60 to 65% of spend on brand, but few companies come close.”

She compares it to consumer buying habits. “When you’re ready to buy toothpaste, you think of Crest or Colgate. B2B is the same. Top-of-mind awareness drives action.”

Brand building makes future sales more likely, but many B2B strategies focus only on buyers who are ready to purchase today. Mark Syal from BrainLabs explains, “Focusing only on short-term demand means missing opportunities to build relationships with future buyers.”

That doesn’t mean you have to wait 16 months to prove impact. Brand can be measured through early signals. Mariya Tchoudakov from SYSTM suggests watching for spikes in engagement, downloads and funnel starts. These are clear indicators that brand activities are working, even before revenue shows up.

But how do you succeed with brand marketing in the B2B space? Brand needs two things: sustained marketing investment over the long term and the right metrics to guide your investment. Without both, it becomes the most important part of the strategy that no one is tracking.

Elevating brand is just one part of the solution to short-termism. Building a holistic view of performance is the next.

Holistic measurement needs to reflect the entire decision journey

Too many B2B teams still track performance with surface-level KPIs like MQLs, click-through rates or lead volume. These metrics are easy to measure but miss how buyers actually behave.

“If half of your buyers take six months to purchase, your measurement needs to reflect that timeline,” says Mariya Tchoudakov from SYSTM. “You can’t just measure the last click.”

That short-term bias skews insights. Joyce Talbert from Magic Numbers explains, “We use econometrics to understand what’s driving ROI. Often we find brands over-investing in search when awareness is what’s actually generating results.”

Search often gets credit because it’s measurable, not because it’s most effective. The problem here is that without a full-funnel view, marketing spend flows to the wrong places.

There’s also a language gap. Sales teams optimize for SQLs. Marketing teams report on MQLs. “You need consistent definitions,” says Emily Gustin from LinkedIn. Otherwise, every team tells a different version of success.

A better approach connects the entire funnel. Combine short-term campaign metrics with mid-funnel signals like account engagement and long-term outcomes like revenue. That kind of measurement maturity requires more than better tools. It takes cross-functional alignment.

When teams measure across the full journey, they gain visibility into which marketing efforts influence growth, which tactics accelerate deal cycles and where to double down. That clarity turns marketing metrics into real business outcomes.

Holistic measurement improves internal alignment — but marketers also need to bridge the gap with finance.

To prove value, marketing must speak the language of finance 

Marketing struggles to prove its value when it speaks a different language from finance. Framing work-around impressions or MQLs may resonate internally, but it rarely convinces a CFO.

Joyce Talbert from Magic Numbers is direct: “Finance leaders want marketers to frame spending as an investment, not a cost. Use financial language. Talk about payback periods and projected returns.”

She adds, “If you make projections and miss them, explain why. Show how you’ve adapted. Transparency builds credibility.”

Misalignment runs deeper than language. Mark Syal from BrainLabs points out a more fundamental issue: “If the business wants revenue but marketing is optimizing for leads, there’s a fundamental disconnect.”

That disconnect limits impact. Mariya Tchoudakov from SYSTM highlights the need for shared ownership: “Finance handles planning and reporting. Marketing owns insight. But if you’re not aligned on a growth model, investment strategy and payback period, you won’t get far.”

And the stakes are high. According to recent surveys:

• 66% of CEOs believe marketers focus too much on tactical analytics and not enough on real business outcomes.

• 55% of CEOs say digital marketing metrics that aren’t tied to sales are meaningless.

Marketing teams that understand financial expectations can better justify ad spend, defend marketing budgets and secure buy-in for long-term marketing investments. Better collaboration can also unlock revenue gains and achieve financial improvements of 20% to 40%. 

There’s no question that translating value across teams is essential, but so is evolving the tactics and tools marketers rely on. So, what strategies can help you measure smarter?

5 expert-backed strategies for smarter B2B measurement 

These five strategies help B2B teams move beyond vanity metrics and build a measurement practice that earns trust and delivers real impact.

1. Align early, especially with skeptics

One of the biggest reasons measurement fails is that it’s treated as a marketing initiative rather than a company-wide priority. Joyce Talbert from Magic Numbers puts it plainly: “Bring in every team, even the ones who don’t believe in the value of measurement. It drives buy-in later.”

That early involvement helps prevent the all-too-common situation where sales and finance receive reports they don’t understand or trust. 

Kick off with stakeholder interviews across departments. Ask what success means to them, what decisions they struggle with and what data they rely on. Then work backward to build shared goals and KPIs. When measurement reflects the broader business, it becomes a tool everyone uses, not just something marketing reports.

One practical way to build this alignment is to co-create a simple metric map. List the top three metrics each team tracks, how they define them and what decisions they inform. Doing this surfaces where definitions clash, where duplication exists and where new shared goals can be created.

2. Close the MQL-SQL gap

Too often, marketing teams celebrate MQL volume while sales teams ignore those leads entirely. “That disconnect hurts data quality and decision-making,” says Emily Gustin from LinkedIn.

Fixing it starts with shared definitions. Work with sales to align on what truly qualifies a lead. Go beyond form fills and look at firmographics, behavior and buying intent.

Take a SaaS company targeting finance leaders. After reviewing six months of closed-won deals, the team finds that webinar attendees from companies with over 200 employees convert at a much higher rate than ebook downloaders. By updating their lead scoring model and prioritizing high-fit engagement signals, they reduce sales friction and improve close rates.

Alignment like this boosts performance and rebuilds trust between teams, ensuring that the marketing funnel feeds real opportunities into the pipeline.

You can do the same by feeding your sales context into your CRM and reporting. When sales and marketing teams track performance using the same lens, they work together instead of pulling in opposite directions. This alignment also improves accuracy in tracking customer acquisition cost (CAC), a key metric both teams care about.

3. Stop chasing what’s easy to measure

Mark Syal from BrainLabs highlights a common trap. “The most visible channels get the most investment, but they’re not always the most effective.”

Platforms like Google Ads are easy to measure but rarely operate in isolation. Many buyers see brand content or talk to sales long before clicking an ad. If you only measure last-touch conversions, you overvalue short-term tactics and undervalue brand-building.

The solution here is to use attribution models that account for multiple touchpoints. Also, supplement platform data with surveys, post-sale interviews or econometric modeling. Real marketing success comes from understanding the full path to purchase, not just the last click.

4. Offload data complexity when it slows you down

Marketing teams are collecting more data than ever, but that doesn’t mean they’re making better decisions. “Managing data quality, integration and compliance is a real challenge,” says Gustin. “For many teams, bringing in external partners is what unlocks progress.”

If your analysts spend more time cleaning data than generating insight, you’re losing speed and focus. In fact, Gartner found that businesses lose $12.9 million annually due to bad-quality data. 

The fix? Consolidate your tools, eliminate redundant workflows and document your data sources. For complex environments, consider a managed data integration platform built specifically for marketing. The goal is to free up your team to focus on analysis, strategy and activation, not technical troubleshooting.

5. Make measurement-driven decisions, not just reports

Data that sits in a report is wasted potential. Joyce Talbert is clear about this: “If your measurement system isn’t influencing budget or strategy, it’s just noise.”

Make measurement part of your monthly business rhythm. Run regular reviews where data drives changes to budget allocation, creative testing or campaign rollout. Use insights to kill underperforming tactics quickly and double down on what works. Measurement should not be reactive. It should be proactive, directional and always tied to business goals.

These strategies create the foundation, but action is what turns insight into competitive advantage.

Where B2B marketers go from here

B2B marketing measurement is at a turning point. The old playbook, built for short sales cycles and single-touch attribution, no longer fits today’s complex buying journeys.

Leaders like Gustin, Talbert, Syal and Tchoudakov are calling for a new approach. One that treats brand as a long-term growth driver. One that brings marketing and finance into lockstep. One that uses data not just to report, but to decide.

The tools are available. The strategies are tested. What is missing for many teams is a shift in mindset. Measurement should not sit at the end of a marketing campaign. It should guide every decision from planning through to performance.

Now is the time to build measurement practices that drive marketing success, unlock smarter spending habits and align marketing goals with business outcomes.

Watch the full expert discussion for deeper insights into how LinkedIn, BrainLabs, Magic Numbers and SYSTM are reshaping B2B measurement.