Oh the metrics trap!
We’ve talked about this a lot. The deck looks great: engagement up, impressions strong, click-throughs rising. But when the CFO leans forward and asks, “So… how’s this driving revenue?”, the room goes quiet.
It’s not that those metrics don’t matter. It’s that they don’t mean anything unless they link back to impact.
2026 is the year marketing in professional services has to get reporting right – from activity metrics to commercial ones. Because partners don’t care about awareness graphs. They care about clients, margin, and retention.
The best CMOs in professional services…
- Reframe measurement around value, not volume.
- Map campaigns to contribution margin, not just pipeline.
- Learn to speak in the same financial language as their boards.
- And maybe most importantly, they’re redefine marketing success as shared success.
Instead of “marketing influenced X leads,” it’s “marketing accelerated Y revenue streams.” Instead of “brand awareness up 20%,” it’s “client loyalty improved, referrals up, pricing power strengthened.”
It’s not always easy to quantify, but it’s absolutely possible.
You don’t need perfect attribution but you do need to show how how marketing made the firm faster, smarter, more profitable.
And here’s the unexpected bonus: when your team starts thinking in commercial terms, creativity gets sharper too. Ideas become grounded in outcomes, not output. Content becomes braver, more challenging, more strategic, and more aligned with what the firm actually needs to grow.
So maybe this is the moment we all stop reporting the numbers that look good and start owning the numbers that mean something.
Because in 2026, the marketers who can prove impact won’t just keep their budgets, they’ll shape their firm.