Your Marketing ROI Is Lying to You (Here's the Real Math)

ROI = revenue ÷ spend is kindergarten math. Dale Harrison exposes why LTV:CAC is the only metric that matters

Author

Tyler Morian
August 21, 2025

This week: Marketing ROI has been lying to you, AI's getting away with murder, and buyers only trust their friends now. Plus why every B2B brand sounds like beige wallpaper, and the real job specs for 2026 sales hires. Giddyup!

Marketing ROI Has Been Gaslighting You

Dale Harrison just dropped the math that should tank your current ROI calculations. Two campaigns: $100K spend each. Campaign A drives $250K revenue (150% ROI). Campaign B drives $400K (400% ROI). But Campaign B was a 50%-off sale. When you calculate based on actual margin rather than topline revenue? Campaign B returns zero profit. Zip. Nada.

Most marketing teams are optimizing for revenue that isn't profit. Summit Partners research shows market leaders balance volume and efficiency metrics, not just revenue. Brian Balfour adds that AI is changing how buyers perceive value and friction, making margin-based optimization even more critical.

BIG IDEA: Your ROI calculations might be optimizing for campaigns that destroy profit while starving the ones that actually drive value.

WHY IT MATTERS: If you're allocating budget based on revenue ROI, you're potentially scaling campaigns that bleed margin while killing the ones that keep the lights on.

  • Comments reveal teams optimizing for revenue metrics because finance teams don't see the margin breakdown—they just see growth

AI's Zero-Accountability Crisis Is Here

Shiv Narayanan exposed AI's dirty secret: it faces zero consequences for being devastatingly wrong. When an agency gives bad advice, they lose clients. When AI hallucinates case studies or misinterprets data, it just confidently spews more fiction. And we keep taking notes.

The amplification problem is brutal. AI can scale bad advice faster than any human consultant. Anyword's research shows horizontal AI tools lack domain depth for channel-specific optimization, yet marketers keep feeding strategic decisions to them.

BIG IDEA: AI's confidence is the most dangerous drug in marketing—it makes fiction feel like fact.

WHY IT MATTERS: Every AI recommendation needs human fact-checking baked into your workflow, or you're optimizing for algorithmic hallucinations rather than market reality.

B2B Buyers Have Left the Building

Wynter's research just confirmed what you suspected: 58% of B2B buyers build their shortlist from peer recommendations, not your content. Liam Moroney drives it home—B2B buyers aren't the fictional first-time purchasers your funnel assumes. They're veterans who skip your educational narrative entirely.

The math is brutal: 80% of purchases happen within existing consideration sets. Unknown brands fight tooth-and-nail for the remaining scraps while established names close the lion's share.

BIG IDEA: Your current customers create your next customer's shortlist more effectively than any demand gen campaign you could run.

WHY IT MATTERS: Reallocate budget from trying to educate buyers toward making your current customers evangelical advocates. Your content builds mental availability, but peer recommendations decide who makes the cut.

  • Comments emphasize that B2B buyers have extensive category experience, making most educational content redundant

  • Discussions around the research reveal brand building secures access to 80% of buyers who only consider known entities

B2B's Fear-Driven Beige Wall

Peep Laja's survey found 94% of B2B marketing leaders admit their messaging isn't distinct. The reason isn't lack of creativity—it's strategic cowardice. 36% stick to "what works" because "breaking out is scary" and copying competitors feels safer than actually competing.

Robert Kaminski shows how Airtable won by choosing specific competitors (spreadsheets and databases) instead of trying to differentiate against everyone simultaneously. They gave buyers a mental anchor rather than generic utility claims.

BIG IDEA: Safe messaging is dangerous—invisible brands don't lose deals, they never get invited to compete in the first place.

WHY IT MATTERS: Category leaders can afford safe messaging. Smaller brands using generic language aren't just forgettable—they're consciously choosing to compete for table scraps while leaders feast.

  • CEOs in the comments admit they override marketing teams pushing for differentiation, preferring to copy competitor messaging

  • Positioning discussions reveal that choosing specific alternatives to compete against dramatically simplifies messaging and customer understanding

The 2026 Sales Job Description

Jason Lemkin's predition for 2026: AI eats email/text outreach, lead qualification, and simple closes. Humans dominate in-person, complex deals, and phone cold calling. The twist? AEs without deep product expertise become obsolete—not because AI replaces them, but because AI-informed buyers expect humans to know more than algorithms.

TK Kader identifies the four GTM failure points: mismatched budgets, unrealistic targets, wrong team composition, and lack of real strategy. The future belongs to "AI GTM orchestrators" who use AI strategically while maintaining human judgment for complex decisions.

BIG IDEA: AI won't replace salespeople—it will make average reps extinct while making exceptional ones unstoppable.

WHY IT MATTERS: Your 2025 hiring strategy should prioritize product expertise over relationship skills. The reps who master AI-assisted workflows will close faster and bigger. The rest will watch their pipeline evaporate.

  • Sales leaders highlight that qualification AI means humans need deeper product knowledge to provide value AI can't

  • GTM discussions confirm most teams are under-resourced for their targets, making AI efficiency essential rather than optional

Your Content Strategy for an LLM World

Lashay Lewis argues that LLM visibility happens at the bottom of your funnel, not the top. LLM prompts aren't "best CRM tools"—they're "what CRM works for a 15-person B2B SaaS company needing Salesforce integration under $50/month?"

Traditional BOFU content won't survive. Generic comparison tables and feature lists get ignored. Shiv Narayanan notes traffic declines aren't performance failures—they're structural shifts toward AI-driven answers that require context over keywords.

BIG IDEA: LLM optimization rewards customer obsession over keyword optimization—exactly what content should have been doing all along.

WHY IT MATTERS: Audit your content now for customer context and specificity. The companies writing deeply contextual content today will surface when buyers ask AI for specific recommendations.

🎥 Sound Bites

  • Parakeet’s AJ Kissh on building human-first voice: Listen here

  • Marc Hillander on micro-influencer dominance: Watch now

  • Fractional CRO Bindi on starting with “why”: Tune in

Until next week!