17 Jun 2025
Most CEOs rely on broad KPIs like revenue and ROI to measure marketing effectiveness. But if you're not looking deeper into the numbers, you may be missing the real story behind your brand’s growth.
Blog
It’s no secret that today’s CEOs wear more hats than ever before. One minute you’re steering high-level strategy, the next you’re fielding investor questions, managing operational fires, or weighing up the next big tech investment. Amidst all that, marketing metrics can feel like someone else’s job, delegated to the CMO, the agency, or the data team.
But here’s the truth: in today’s fast-moving, digital-first world, CEOs can no longer afford to ignore the data that drives demand. Marketing is no longer just a creative department, it’s the engine of growth, brand perception, and customer engagement. If you’re not tracking the right metrics, you’re essentially making decisions with only half the map in front of you.
Now, we’re not saying you need to spend hours buried in dashboards. You don’t need to monitor every bounce rate or A/B test result. But you do need to understand the core metrics that reflect your brand’s financial health, customer quality, and market influence, especially the ones that often go overlooked.
While traditional KPIs like lead volume, cost-per-click, and website traffic still have a place, they tend to be surface-level indicators. They tell you what’s happening but not necessarily why it’s happening or what to do next. That’s where deeper, smarter marketing metrics come in, metrics that link directly to customer value, growth efficiency, and long-term sustainability.
These are not just numbers. They’re levers. When used properly, they empower CEOs to:
So, let’s level the playing field. Whether you’re running a scale-up, an established brand, or exploring a new market, understanding these five key marketing metrics will help you lead with confidence, ask sharper questions, and demand better outcomes from your marketing function.
Here are five powerful marketing metrics every CEO should be tracking but probably isn’t. Let’s dive in.
Customer Lifetime Value is more than a financial metric. It’s a strategic indicator of brand strength, customer satisfaction, and retention efficiency. CLV estimates the total revenue a business can reasonably expect from a single customer account throughout the entire business relationship.
For CEOs, this metric offers unmatched foresight. Instead of focusing on what a customer buys today, it prompts you to ask: how long will they stay, and how much will they spend over time?
CLV informs your resource allocation decisions across sales, marketing, and customer service. It’s particularly crucial for subscription-based businesses and those with long sales cycles. A low CLV might reveal issues with customer churn, weak product-market fit, or poor after-sales service, all of which can be masked by short-term revenue spikes.
Another overlooked aspect is the segmented CLV. Not all customers behave the same. By analysing CLV by demographic, channel, or product category, you’ll uncover which customer cohorts drive your long-term profitability and which ones quietly drain resources.
CEO Action Tip: Ask your CMO or data team to generate a rolling 12-month CLV trend report across customer segments. Set benchmarks and tie this to your annual planning process. Explore more CLV tactics by Shopify.
While CLV tells you the value of your customers, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) tells you how much you're spending to win them in the first place.
CAC includes every dollar spent on marketing and sales from digital ads to events, software, team salaries, outsourced agencies, and overheads. It is often simplified too much. CEOs typically see a topline CAC number and move on. But CAC varies dramatically by channel, campaign, and conversion journey.
Here’s the danger. If your CAC is climbing while your CLV is shrinking, you’re in a financially unstable loop. Many companies fall into the trap of acquiring customers cheaply but losing them fast due to poor onboarding, low engagement, or mismatched expectations.
Modern marketing has made CAC both harder to calculate and easier to manipulate. Some digital agencies underreport CAC by focusing on cost-per-lead instead of cost-per-customer. As a CEO, your role is to challenge these metrics and demand transparency in the funnel.
Blended CAC vs Channel CAC is an area worth extra attention. A blended CAC might seem reasonable, but one high-cost channel could be pulling your average up. Drilling into channel-specific CAC helps you cut unnecessary costs and double down on what works.
CEO Action Tip: Set quarterly CAC efficiency goals for your marketing leads. Evaluate performance using CAC-to-CLV ratios and forecast their impact on revenue goals.
MER is one of the most underused but CEO-relevant marketing metrics today. It’s simple: Total Revenue ÷ Total Marketing Spend. Yet it is profound in how it reflects marketing’s contribution to real business outcomes.
Unlike ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), which focuses only on direct returns from paid ads, MER accounts for every dollar spent on marketing: content, PR, branding, SEO, events, software tools, and more. It is a high-level efficiency metric that shows if your overall marketing machine is profitable or bloated.
For example, if your MER is 5, you're generating $5 in revenue for every $1 spent on marketing. Sounds great? Not necessarily. If your competitors are achieving an MER of 8 or 10, it means you’re spending more than necessary for the same (or less) return.
In investor or board meetings, MER adds weight. It demonstrates control over marketing budgets and provides a holistic lens beyond performance marketing metrics. It’s also a fantastic way to align finance and marketing teams.
CEO Action Tip: Make MER a board-level metric. Track it monthly and review marketing allocations quarterly to maintain or improve this ratio.
This is not just about likes, views, or shares. Content Engagement Rate refers to how deeply your audience interacts with your brand’s educational or storytelling content: blog articles, videos, newsletters, case studies, and webinars.
As consumer behaviour changes, people expect value upfront before they purchase. The more engaging your content is, the higher the chances that a visitor will become a lead and eventually a customer. CEOs who ignore this metric miss one of the earliest signals of intent.
Key metrics include:
High engagement means your content is resonating with your audience. Low engagement could indicate poor targeting, uninspiring messaging, or broken user experience.
Tracking this over time also helps you determine which content formats or channels generate the most qualified traffic. For example, long-form thought leadership may outperform short LinkedIn posts in high-consideration industries.
CEO Action Tip: Set a KPI for your marketing team around content influence, not just production. Ask them to report on how engagement leads to sales-qualified leads.
SOV is your brand's visibility compared to your competitors across paid, earned, and owned media. It represents your slice of the industry conversation and directly correlates to future market share, especially in competitive sectors.
Many CEOs rely solely on market share and miss SOV entirely. The issue? By the time your market share drops, it’s often too late. SOV, on the other hand, acts as an early warning system. A dip in brand mentions, organic rankings, or influencer visibility can hint at waning relevance and giving you a chance to act before revenue is impacted.
Digital tools today make SOV analysis more precise than ever. You can track your performance across:
When your Share of Voice exceeds your market share, you’re in a great position. It means you're capturing attention faster than competitors. The inverse is a warning sign that you may be losing traction, even if your sales are holding steady for now. Brandwatch elaborates The role of Share of Voice in modern marketing.
CEO Action Tip: Include a quarterly competitive SOV report in your marketing dashboard. Align major campaign launches with SOV uplift goals.
As a CEO, your role is to drive vision, set goals, and lead with clarity. While traditional metrics like sales, pipeline, and ROI are important, they don’t always paint the full picture. The five marketing metrics above offer depth, foresight, actionability, and equipping you to challenge assumptions, ask the right questions, and lead your marketing team with confidence.
They allow you to:
Marketing is no longer a creative silo. It is a business-critical function. And CEOs who understand its metrics are better equipped to scale sustainably.
At Cemoh, we connect you with Fractional Digital Marketing Experts who know how to deliver real impact, not just reports. Whether you're trying to optimise CAC or understand why your SOV is slipping, our experts bring strategic clarity, executional expertise, and accountability. Hire a Fractional Digital Marketing Expert today and start making marketing work for your bottom line.
Here are some suggested articles that are closely related to this post
Your LinkedIn profile is more than a digital CV, it’s your marketing portfolio, elevator pitch, and first impression rolled into one. If you are serious about landing better roles or winning high-value clients, it needs to work as hard as you do.
A strong brand is more than a logo. It’s how people feel about your business. These ten proven strategies will help you boost brand awareness, build trust, and stand out in your market.
As demand for flexible marketing talent grows, standing out as a fractional expert means clearly defining your niche, showing measurable impact, and building a strong personal brand.
Only 5% of B2B buyers are ready to buy now. The rest? Future customers. Here’s how smart marketing prepares for both.
A strong CEO-CMO partnership drives growth. Learn how alignment and a Fractional CMO can help.
At the end of the day, success in marketing comes down to one thing: are you getting more out of it than you’re putting in? If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track. If not, something needs tweaking.