Stakeholder communication: How to translate marketing impact

More numbers don’t automatically mean more clarity – especially not when it comes to communicating with stakeholders.

Today’s marketing teams have access to tonnes of data and metrics. Even so, if you want to make sure your stakeholders actually understand and appreciate the results these data and metrics bring, it’s essential to keep your focus on the most crucial metrics.

Too many metrics can complicate communication, causing the actual message – the value marketing creates for your business – to be lost in a sea of numbers.

By trimming the fat and focusing on fewer, but more impactful metrics, you can better show the exact contribution of your marketing team, create better alignment between marketing and company goals and support essential investment decisions.

In this article, we’ll show you how to simplify your approach to metrics and ensure your marketing efforts aren’t just understood, but appreciated by management and finance departments alike.

Choose metrics that count

Communicating marketing value clearly and precisely is about focusing on a few key metrics – metrics that are essential to your business and easy for your stakeholders to understand.

Watch James Keating, CEO here at Pleo, explain how focusing on a few key metrics can help you make better decisions and support the right marketing investments. [Timestamp: 22.33 - 24.24]

So which metrics are most relevant? That depends on your specific company goals, your industry and your business’ maturity level.

Here are some examples of valuable metrics:

• LTV-to-CAC (Customer Lifetime Value vs Customer Acquisition Cost): Comparing the customer’s lifetime value with the cost of acquiring them shows if marketing is creating sustainable growth.
• Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio: This metric measures how effectively marketing converts investments to leads and sales opportunities.
• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): ROAS measures your return on ad spend and provides insight into which campaigns create the most value.

Find the right metrics for your business

For many businesses, the metrics above are a good indication of marketing impact. Still, it’s important to adapt your approach. If you work in SaaS, for instance, it’s essential to focus on LTV-to-CAC and pipeline efficiency. Meanwhile, an e-commerce business may prioritise ROAS and conversion rates instead.

Regardless, the most important thing is to choose the metrics that best reflect your company goals and show the value you gain from your marketing efforts.

By focusing on these key metrics, you can clearly demonstrate what your marketing team does for your business. This makes it easier for management and finance to understand and acknowledge the value of your marketing efforts and simultaneously strengthens your dialogue with stakeholders and supports better decision making and future investments.

Remember who you’re talking to

It’s important to remember that stakeholders aren’t a homogenous group. Management, finance and sales all focus on different things – and their different areas of interest should be reflected in the way you present your data and insights.

• Management: Typically, management focuses on strategy. They want to see how marketing supports overall business goals such as growth, revenue and market share. This makes it important to focus on high-level metrics such as LTV-to-CAC and pipeline efficiency. Present your results in a short and precise overview that clearly shows how marketing generates value for the company.
• Finance: The finance department focuses on financial efficiency and budget optimisation. To get them on board, you need to emphasise marketing ROI and document how each £ invested brings value to the company. Use metrics such as Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio, ROAS and CAC to show the distribution of your investments and how each investment affects your bottom line. Present your results in detailed analyses, transparent numbers and financial arguments.
• Sales: Sales want to understand how marketing supports lead quality and conversions. Here, some of the most relevant metrics are Lead Conversion Rate and Cost per Lead. Use them to show how marketing activities generate qualified leads that help sales achieve their goals faster. Present your results in a practical context – e.g. by showing how a new campaign has increased the number of ready-to-sell leads by a given percentage.

Example:

Imagine you’re presenting the results of a new marketing campaign. To management, you can say: ‘This campaign increased revenue by 15% and reduced the cost of acquisition by 10%.’ To finance, you can add: ‘With a ROAS of 6.5, this means each £ invested generated 6.5 times as much revenue.’ And to the sales team, you can explain: ‘The campaign generated 50% more qualified leads, which shortened the sales cycle by 20%.’

By adjusting the message and format to each group, you ensure your results are relevant, easy to understand and actionable. This doesn’t just create better dialogue with stakeholders – it also improves their understanding and support of your marketing efforts.

Create alignment between marketing and business goals

For marketing teams, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring their work is aligned with the company’s overall strategic goals.

When marketing and business goals aren’t aligned, it can be difficult for management to see the value in your marketing efforts – and this makes it harder to get support and investments.

The solution:

Focus on metrics directly related to business-critical goals such as growth, revenue and ROI. Working with key metrics that show clearly how marketing supports these goals makes it easier to create transparency and document the marketing team’s contribution to the company.

The benefits of alignment:

• Marketing becomes a strategic player. The marketing team doesn’t just work in its own silo, but instead contributes actively to the company’s overall success.
• It’s much easier to get support from management and finance for new initiatives and investments because your marketing efforts are directly aligned with the company’s strategic goals.
• Alignment improves understanding across the organisation, ensuring everyone is up to speed on why marketing is crucial for growth and development.

Example:

Let’s say your company has a concrete goal of increasing customer acquisition by 15% the coming quarter – without significantly increasing acquisition costs. To document the marketing team’s contribution, you can focus on two key metrics:

• CLV-to-CAC: An improved CLV-to-CAC ratio means that marketing generates more value per customer acquired. By optimising your campaigns and targeting the most valuable segments, you can increase CLV while decreasing CAC or keeping it stable.
• Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio: If marketing can reduce costs by generating ready-to-sell leads, it’s easier for sales to achieve their customer acquisition goals. This metric shows how efficiently marketing converts investments to valuable sales opportunities.

By focusing on these metrics, you can show exactly how marketing supports company goals of both growth and cost effectiveness. If CLV increases and CAC remains stable, your company gains more profitable customers – and with a lower Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio, you ensure that every £ invested works for you.

This approach makes it clear to management that marketing doesn’t just drive customer acquisition – it does it in a way that’s sustainable and generates value for the company.

From data to insights: How to get through to your stakeholders

When presenting your marketing efforts to management and finance, it’s not just about data: it’s about communicating your chosen metrics in a way that clearly shows their relevance.

No matter how strong the results are, the message can get lost if your communication is too technical or too heavy on the details.

How to improve your communication:

• Focus on context rather than complexity: Data alone rarely tells the whole story. Translate your metrics to concrete insights that show how they impact overall company goals. For example, a high ROAS can be presented as a direct indicator of how effective marketing creates ad revenue.
• Use visual formats: Present your results through easy-to-read graphs and overviews that simplify and emphasise the most important conclusions. Avoid diving too deep into unnecessary details – keep it simple.
• Tie your marketing efforts to financial results: Speak your stakeholders’ language. For example, show them how an improved Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio translates into lower cost per sale, which boosts efficiency in the sales funnel.

Example:

Imagine that your marketing campaign has improved lead quality, which has reduced your cost per sale. Instead of presenting click rates and impressions, here’s how you could present it:

• ‘We’ve reduced the Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio by 20% this quarter, which means we’re creating 20% more sales opportunities for the same investment.’

This relates directly to the company’s overall business goals and makes it easy for stakeholders to see the value the marketing team brings.

Presenting results in a context relevant to the company at large doesn’t just create clarity – it builds trust. Stakeholders understand exactly what marketing brings to the table, and that makes it easier to get their support for future initiatives.

Be consistent in your reporting

Consistency is the key to ensuring your stakeholders stay up to date with the results and developments the marketing team creates over time. Consistent reports make it easier for management, finance and other stakeholders to understand the connection and assess how marketing contributes to company goals.

1. Set a reporting schedule: Agree when to present your reports – whether it’s weekly, monthly or quarterly depends on your business needs and the frequency of your marketing initiatives. For example, monthly reports can give an overview of campaign performance and key metrics while quarterly reports can focus on more strategic results and trends.
2. Use standardised formats: Using consistent formats and visual elements – e.g. graphs, tables and accessible dashboards – creates a structure that makes reports easy to recognise and understand. When your stakeholders are comfortable with the format, they can easily focus on the contents and the most important points.
3. Focus on continuity: Emphasise the same key metrics in every report to show developments over time. For example, you can follow your Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio, ROAS and LTV-to-CAC quarter by quarter and contextualise the results: ‘We’ve improved our Cost-to-Pipeline Ratio by 10% this past quarter, which means we now generate more sales opportunities for the same budget.’

The benefits of consistent reporting:

• Builds trust: Showing stakeholders continuous development and improvement strengthens their trust in the marketing team’s efforts and reporting.
• Make results easy to follow: Repeating formats and focus areas ensures that even the most complex data will eventually be easy to understand.
• Highlights trends and patterns: Consistent reporting makes it possible to identify both positive developments and areas for improvement.

By being consistent in both the frequency and presentation of your results, you create a strong foundation for dialogue and follow-ups. Stakeholders know what to expect and can easily assess how marketing efforts contribute to the overall company goals.