By The Kay Prince, Director, Growth Marketing, SalientMG
The B2B marketing world is obsessed with the wrong conversation. Walk into any marketing meeting and you’ll hear the same tired debate: brand versus performance marketing. But here’s the dirty secret—your executives don’t care about either. They care about ROI.
After building growth marketing strategies across multiple companies, I’ve witnessed a shift most marketing departments are missing. While traditional marketers argue over impressions and click-through rates, growth marketers focus on what executives actually understand: revenue accountability.
Growth Marketers Are Turning Marketing Upside Down
This isn’t just changing tactics—it’s revolutionizing how marketing operates. Growth marketers solve the problem traditional marketing created: disconnect from business outcomes.
The transformation starts with one question: Does your marketing department actually work with Sales, Customer Success, and Product? If no, your marketing will never work—regardless of how many impressions you generate.
I see marketing departments paralyzed by this disconnect. They complain “sales didn’t tell us” or “product moved on without us.” Stop. Growth marketers understand we need to be in those meetings, and if we’re not, we won’t make money.
The Full-Funnel Story Your CEO Actually Wants
Traditional marketing stops at lead generation. Growth marketing starts there.
When your CEO gives you $100K for a campaign, don’t show them “performance numbers.” Tell the complete story:
We spent $100K → drove traffic → spike in demos → sales picked up leads → personalized follow-ups → X leads progressed → Y probability of closing → $Z pipeline generated.
Show how that investment impacted existing customers through renewals and expansion. Growth marketers think about the entire customer lifecycle.
Why Traditional Metrics Don’t Matter
CEOs and CFOs walk into marketing meetings and see KPIs they couldn’t care less about—impression numbers, engagement rates, marketing qualified leads that may never convert.
These metrics don’t answer the fundamental question: “What did we get for our investment?”
Growth marketers speak business language: dollars in, dollars out.
Making the Shift
Ready to move from traditional marketing to growth marketing?
Get integrated. Force your way into sales, customer success, and product meetings.
Track revenue, not activities. Stop only reporting impressions. Start tracking how marketing dollars translate to closed revenue.
Own the full customer journey. Your responsibility extends through renewal and expansion.
Become sales’ partner. Equip them with tools and insights to close deals.
The Bottom Line
The future of B2B marketing isn’t about brand versus performance. It’s about accountability to revenue outcomes.
While traditional marketers debate methodology, growth marketers speak the language that matters to business leaders.
I don’t speak impressions. I speak revenue. And that’s the only language that counts.
