Measuring business impact: Why marketing metrics don’t tell the full story

Measuring business impact has been a central challenge for marketing professionals, alongside securing budget for the work they intend to deliver – but these challenges go hand in hand and can be solved together. In today’s data-driven world, there are more options than ever to choose from, but this doesn’t automatically mean that it's easier to prove the real difference your work is making to a business and its profitability. Here we discuss how using a framework, such as AMEC’s Integrated Evaluation Framework, is the key to unlocking a targeted approach to strategy creation – placing the greatest focus on the difference that really matters to your business.

Nowadays, whenever I tell someone that I work in marketing and PR, the first question is usually something like: How has AI impacted you? Is AI going to take your job? Can’t AI do that? This reflects something more concerning for the comms profession than the threat of AI itself. That is, from an outside perspective, marketing activity is often measured by outputs alone and how much “stuff” you are putting out into the world. 

Without going into detail here about how AI is being adopted – and more importantly, shaped – by marketeers, which we’ve gone into in more detail in another blog, its emergence provides a contemporary example of why an integrated strategy and method to evaluate it is essential if marketing teams are going to protect and increase their budget.

There are countless ways to consider and measure each marketing tactic but rather than get lost, start with understanding what the desired organisational impact is before looking at which tactics might help you meet them with the framework providing the guidance for potential barriers and key considerations, including time, resource and budget. Using this starting point is how to make marketing a central part of business planning and something that an organisation’s leadership will invest in – with both time and money. 

Meltwater’s State of PR 2026 report revealed three particularly interesting findings on what industry professionals struggle with most when it comes to measurement: 

Although this insight comes from PR professionals specifically, the only way to begin the creation of any communications strategy should be exploring where an organisation currently is and where that same organisation wants to be after a specified period. Perhaps the overarching objective is to increase revenue or profitability by a specific percentage; alternatively, it could be to increase talent retention or to launch a new product to market. 

It’s possible to dive further still by questioning motivation. Are these objectives in place to increase shareholder value or to reduce a sector skills gap? Whatever the objective may be, context is vital because marketing is not the only function contributing to efforts to achieve success. 

Tying communications objectives back to organisational objectives makes it clear to anyone questioning marketing that sight of the bigger picture hasn’t been lost, and the desired destination is the same. The questions that marketeers should then ask themselves are which outputs and metrics prove that the target audience has been influenced by marketing activity, how will this be converted into measurable targets, and how will results be explained to senior decision markers outside of marketing?

I started this blog by mentioning data, which is of course an essential element of marketing. It drives intentions, validates assumptions and proves outcomes. However, there can be a problem with too much of a good thing.

Marketeers, especially those that may have faced problems with feedback on planned strategies and activity, can be guilty of cherry-picking the most impressive metrics possible to increase the ‘wow factor’ but failing to see that, without context and without anchoring those to a business meaning, they can deliver long-term damage to marketing’s reputation that this approach can bring. We refer to these as vanity metrics, which we’ve written about in more detail already. 

Metrics that instead have a direct link to marketing-qualified leads and sales, for example, are much more likely to demonstrate to any naysayers why marketing can, and frequently does when well-executed, have business impact. 

Although it’s important to consider all the sophisticated sources of data that have the potential to reveal impact, the power of anecdotal evidence should also never be underestimated. 

That brings me to the Integrated Evaluation Framework created by the International Association for Measure and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC). Suitable for any length of campaign or project, the framework provides structure and flexibility to support marketeers with creating strategies that consider everything from organisational and communications objectives through to inputs, audiences, outputs, outcomes and impact. 

The framework helps to consider strategy creation holistically, by understanding what the potential barriers are and where the opportunities are to use a range of tactics. From PR and strategic content through to SEO and PPC, any combination that can be justified should be considered. Simply, no two strategies should ever be the same, because the context in which they exist will never be the same. 

If you plan to set marketing objectives, but barriers exist that may prevent them from being achievable or measurable, transparency is required. It’s at this point that marketeers should highlight the link to wider business impact and why intentions should be supported with the necessary tools – as you would if the intention was to build a house but you don’t have the hand tools, power tools and materials.

By deploying the framework, you’re starting a journey with the key stakeholders that encourages engagement, questions ‘why’ and focuses on meaningful impact. 

Marketing metrics will always use data to prove change, but critical thinking and strategic planning is the only way to prove business impact. This story will be different for every business. AMEC’s IEF helps to show the difference between an output and an impact. For example, counting backlinks is a very measurable metric based on PR outputs, but more website conversions from greater traffic is the business impact that links more clearly to the overarching objectives. It’s all about highlighting this link between marketing and separate business functions like operations and sales.

Using AMEC’s IEF, or using it to develop your own, means placing equal emphasis on planning and evaluation, to prevent bolting on measurement at the end of the process. It helps shift the focus during evaluation from ‘this is what we did and this is what we saw’ to ‘this is what changed because of what we did’. 

It’s important to always remain inquisitive and adaptable. Organisational objectives can change, which means communications objectives and strategies will need to be adjusted as a result. 

Meaningful measurement helps marketing teams to speak the same language as people not in the profession, which includes those that often set its budgets. This isn’t to say that bounce rate, key message penetration and cost per click all become redundant and shouldn’t be tracked, but they are not likely to form the bottom line when it comes to measuring business impact. Instead, they provide more granular detail as to how the wider marketing strategy has helped have meaningful impact on an organisation’s overarching objectives. 

Do you need help creating a targeted comms strategy that will really impact your business? Get in touch with us today.