The uncomfortable truth about marketing budget management.

Not all of your brand/marketing / PR budget is effective. And even less of it is measurably efficient.

The solution is not chasing a single magic metric. It’s building a measurement architecture that links activity → outcomes → business impact. Let’s break it down clearly.

1. Start with a Hard Distinction

Effectiveness ≠ Efficiency

• Effectiveness = Did it achieve the intended objective?

• Efficiency = How much impact did we generate per unit of spend?

You need both.

·      A campaign can be effective and wildly inefficient.

·      A campaign can be efficient and strategically useless.

2. Map Budget to Objective Buckets (Before Measuring Anything)

Every euro should sit in one of these buckets:

1.     Revenue Growth

2.    Pipeline Acceleration

3.    Brand Equity

4.   Reputation & Risk Protection

5.   Talent Attraction / Retention

6.   Market Education / Category Creation

If the spend is not clearly tied to one bucket, it is already suspect.

3. Use a Three-Layer Measurement Model

Layer A – Activity Metrics (Operational Health)

Examples:

• Content volume

• Media placements

• Campaign launches

• Events executed

Useful, but not ROI.

Layer B – Outcome Metrics (Behavior Change)

These show whether people reacted.

Examples:

• Website traffic quality

• Engagement rate

• Time on page

• Newsletter sign-ups

• Event attendance

• Share of voice

• Message pull-through

This is effectiveness territory.

Layer C – Business Impact Metrics (Real ROI)

Examples:

• Leads generated

• Opportunities influenced

• Cost per lead

• Pipeline value influenced

• Revenue attributed

• Customer acquisition cost

• Retention/churn impact

• Employer applications quality

This is efficiency territory.

If your reporting stops at Layer A or B, you do not have ROI.

4. Attribution: Accept Imperfection, Demand Direction

Perfect attribution does not exist.
Directional truth does.

Use:

• First-touch

• Last-touch

• Multi-touch

• Assisted conversion models

Then compare trends over time. If marketing + PR spend rises and:

• Pipeline influenced rises

• Cost per lead falls

• Sales cycles shorten

You have evidence of ROI.

5. How Much of the Budget Is Usually Truly Effective?

In most organisations (based on audits and benchmarks):

• 20–30% = High impact, clearly tied to business

• 40–50% = Moderately useful, loosely tied

• 20–30% = Low or no measurable impact

High-performing organisations invert this. Your goal is not perfection. Your goal is systematic reallocation.

6. The Single Most Powerful Question

For every major line item:

“If I doubled this spend, what business metric would move?”

If no one can answer clearly, then spending is probably inefficient.

7. Brand ROI Requires a Different Lens

Brand does not convert like performance marketing.

Measure brand via:

• Unaided awareness

• Consideration

• Preference

• Trust

• Share of search

• Price sensitivity

• Sales conversion rate over time

Strong brand shows up as:

• Higher close rates

• Shorter sales cycles

• Lower CAC

• Higher retention

Brand ROI is lagging, but very real.

8. PR ROI Is About Risk + Influence, Not Clicks

Good PR measurement includes:

• Share of voice vs competitors

• Message penetration

• Executive visibility

• Sentiment trends

• Crisis response time

• Issue containment success

PR’s biggest ROI often shows up as avoided losses, not new revenue.

Silence or bad handling is expensive.

9. Build a Simple Executive Dashboard

Limit to 8–12 metrics:

• Pipeline influenced by marketing

• Revenue influenced

• Cost per lead

• Conversion rate

• Share of voice

• Brand consideration

• Traffic-to-lead rate

• Time-to-close

• Retention rate

Track monthly. Trend > snapshots.

10. What “Good” Looks Like

You know your system works when:

• You can point to the top 5 initiatives driving results

• You can cut the bottom 20% without fear

• Finance trusts your numbers

• Budget discussions shift from “prove value” to “where should we scale”

Bottom Line

The real question is not: “How much of my budget is effective?” It is: “How fast can I move money from low-impact activity to high-impact engines?” Measurement exists to enable that movement. Everything else is reporting theatre.

About the Author

Steve Gardiner (exec MBA) is a senior marketing and commercial leader at Lighthouse PR, bringing global experience from Accenture, Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, Telekom, and Etisalat. As VP Business at Etisalat, he was responsible for $1.8B in revenue.

Today, Steve applies his strategic, marketing, and growth expertise to support Lighthouse PR clients as part of the agency’s service offering.