Marie Bahl and I both worked at Yahoo. Years later, we – and most CMOs, CEOs, CROs, and CFOs – are still debating how to prove marketing's value.
On Marie's show, CMO-to-CMO: ROI or Die, I made the case for starting with revenue and working backward: get the CEO, CFO, and CRO aligned on the metrics that matter most before anyone builds another dashboard.
Watch the full episode: Revenue Before the Tech Stack →
With shared OKRs and metrics in place, you can audit the customer journey to find and remove friction. Most of the time that means fixing a messy handoff between people and teams. Another AI tool won't fix that.
We also got into the measurement maturity gap – why so many marketing orgs are drowning in data, but starving for insight. Disconnected systems, inconsistent data, poor governance. The fix isn't more dashboards or mastering every technology platform. It's knowing your customers, understanding revenue, and building the measurement foundation to make better investment decisions.
One thing I'd add after the episode: some of that friction is there for a good reason. I wrote about that in If Human Interaction Is a Luxury Good, Why Are You Automating It?
The evolving CMO mandate isn't about producing more dashboards. It's about owning business outcomes.
– Dariusz Paczuski, Founder & Managing Partner, CLG Partners
#CustomerLedGrowth #CMO #MarketingROI #RevenueGrowth #CMOtoCMO