Time to screenshot some charts, slap them in a deck, and call it your year-end review.
Except here's the problem: Your CEO doesn't care about impressions. Your board doesn't care about engagement. Your sales team DEFINITELY doesn't care about your LinkedIn followers.
They care about revenue.
Did Marketing make money or just make noise?
How to analyze how Marketing did in 2025:
1️⃣. Stop Trusting 1 Attribution Model. Use All 3 (Or You're Flying Blind).
The Reality: "Attribution is directional, not definitive."
Your CRM is lying to you.
Not maliciously. But it's giving you an incomplete version of reality.
If you're only looking at first-touch or last-touch, you're reading the first and last page of a book and pretending you know the plot.
These 3 sources I would look at:
System Attribution (What Your CRM Says)
Your baseline. Your starting point. NOT your answer.
First/last touch data, UTM performance, channel shifts, influenced pipeline. It spots trends but misses the actual buyer journey.
Behavioral Attribution (What Buyers ACTUALLY Did)
Go beyond the form fill:
- Anonymous traffic surges before they converted
- Content paths of deals that closed
- Social engagement patterns
- Time between content and demo
- Which assets showed up in 30%+ of wins
This reveals the dark funnel your CRM can't see.
Buyer-Reported Attribution (The Only Honest Signal)
Just ask your buyers.
Self-reported fields, Gong transcripts, rep notes, win/loss interviews, post-purchase surveys.
When someone says "I followed you on LinkedIn for 6 months," that's worth more than 100 UTM parameters.
Synthesize ALL 3 to see the full picture.
Here's what to do: Pull 1 deal that closed in Q4. Map the ENTIRE journey using all 3 lenses. What did the CRM say? What did their behavior show? What did they tell you?
That's your template.
2️⃣. Find Your 5-7 REAL Revenue Drivers (Not "Channels," Not "Campaigns")
The Reality: "Your job is to discover the underlying forces, not the tactical outputs."
Let me guess your current reporting.
"LinkedIn drove 40% of pipeline!" "Email had a 25% open rate!"
Cool. Now tell me what ACTUALLY made people buy.
Channels aren't revenue drivers. They're just distribution.
Real revenue drivers look like:
✅: A clear, differentiated POV that made you stand out
✅: Weekly LinkedIn content that created consistent demand
✅: High-intent SEO pages converting at 25-40%
✅: Partner ecosystems that influenced deal velocity
✅: Customer stories that became the backbone of sales cycles
✅: A frictionless demo experience that shortened time-to-value
✅: Product-in-action content that built trust before Sales touched them
These aren't tactics. They're SYSTEMS that create or accelerate revenue.
If something got impressions but didn't influence buying? It wasn't a driver. Cut it. Go through everything you did in 2025.
Ask: "Did this create or accelerate revenue?" If the answer is "maybe" or "it helped brand awareness," cut list.
Find your 5-7 true drivers and build around them.
3️⃣. Diagnose Your Structural Gaps (AKA "Where Did We Mess Up?").
The Reality: "Revenue rewards honesty, not positivity."
This is the part nobody wants to do. Looking at what DIDN'T work.
If you want to get promoted you need diagnose problems like surgeons and fix them.
Ask yourself:
❌: Which channels looked good in reports but didn't close deals?
❌: Which funnels generated volume but not revenue?
❌: Did our messaging resonate with our ICP?
❌: Where did our website create friction for high-intent buyers?
❌: Was there misalignment between demand gen and sales readiness?
❌: Which campaigns added complexity without adding dollars?
Be BRUTALLY honest.
Your CEO doesn't want a highlight reel. They want to know you understand the holes so you can plug them.
Write down your 3 biggest failures. Not "challenges"...actual FAILURES.
For each 1: What went wrong. Why it went wrong. What you'll do differently.
Put THAT in your review. Executives eat this up.
4️⃣. Mine Your Buyer Interviews For Gold (This IS Your 2026 Strategy).
The Reality: "This is the highest signal data in your entire review."
Want the secret weapon in Marketing?
Talking to customers.
Revolutionary, I know.
If you're not doing win/loss interviews, you're guessing at what works.
Extract from every buyer conversation:
🎯: Why they chose YOU over competitors
🎯: What messaging clicked (hint: not what you think)
🎯: What content they trusted most
🎯: What moments built confidence
🎯: Where they first discovered you
🎯: Where they researched BEFORE converting (dark funnel)
🎯: What objections almost killed the deal
🎯: What created urgency to buy NOW
When a buyer says "Your competitor's website was confusing, but yours made sense immediately," that's not feedback. That's a roadmap.
Document these quotes. Put them in your review. Let them shape your 2026 strategy.
Schedule 10 win/loss interviews before year-end.
Simple script: "Walk me through your buying journey."
Record it. Pull the quotes. Use them to build your messaging and positioning.
5️⃣. Build Revenue Levers, Not Channel Plans
The Reality: "Your levers are your strategy. Channels are just where you activate them."
Most Marketing plans are just channel lists.
"We'll do LinkedIn, email, SEO, webinars, podcasts, events..."
Cool. But WHY? And how do they work together?
Don't think in channels. Think in LEVERS.
Revenue levers are underlying systems that make money happen. Channels are just delivery.
POV & Narrative Engine — Your category position and differentiation
Distribution System — LinkedIn, partners, influencers, communities
High-Intent Capture — Website clarity, SEO, review sites
Trust Amplification — Customer stories, social proof, product demos, UGC
Mid-Funnel Acceleration — Demo content, ROI tools, competitive teardowns
Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, teams up Dr. Christopher Phelps and Genius Network founder Joe Polish to host 2 days on mastering ethical persuasion in 2026.
Dec 5-6. In Phoenix and online. Use code MILLENNIALS for $500 off and bring a guest for free.
