Marketing’s Biggest Lie: The Ugly Truth About Why Agencies Don’t Guarantee Results

Imagine if your CFO told you they couldn’t predict your company’s financial performance. You’d fire them on the spot. So why do we accept this excuse from marketing agencies? Why do so few marketing agencies guarantee marketing ROI? If finance, sales, and operations can be held accountable for performance, why should marketing be the exception?

With all of the deep data insights available today, marketing performance should be predictable. If you’re leading a business, you shouldn’t have to accept uncertainty in one of your most critical growth drivers, which is the premise of “The B2B Marketing RevolutionTM: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes.”

The marketing industry has perpetuated a dangerous myth—that results can’t be guaranteed. But they can. That’s what the revolution is about. As the CEO of a B2B marketing agency for nearly two decades, here’s my insider’s perspective on why agencies shy away from true accountability and what CEOs and senior marketing leaders can do about it.

My Industry’s Greatest Excuse  

Marketing agencies have conditioned their clients to believe that marketing success is unpredictable. The most common agency cop-outs are: Marketing is both an art and a science, and you can’t predict something as fickle as consumer behavior or as subjective as marketing. But these arguments don’t hold up in our data-driven world.

You can predict future customer behavior, within a reasonable margin of error, based on their past behavior and what they disclose to you about their future intentions—all of which can be uncovered through well-executed, targeted market research. This is one of the 12 BattlesTM that CEOs and marketing leaders must win to drive guaranteed marketing outcomes—championing market research as a do-or-die investment.

So, What Are the Real Reasons Marketing Agencies Won’t Guarantee Results?  

1. It’s Too Risky for Their Bottom Line
   The traditional marketing agency model is obsolete. Agencies don’t want to be held financially accountable for poor performance and what’s more, their clients aren’t demanding it. Many agencies rely on retainers, not results, to sustain profitability. But here’s what I don’t get. If we aren’t willing to stand behind our own projected outcomes, what are we doing? Shouldn’t this be the minimum bar for entry? Marketing without accountability is just creative experimentation. Creativity that doesn’t drive outcomes is art—not marketing.
2. They Lack the Research Chops to Predict Outcomes
   Most agencies aren’t investing in deep market research and attribution modeling. Without these tools, they’re flying blind—and so are you. In an industry filled with small agencies, more than 90 percent lack the highly specialized talent needed for market research and attribution modeling and the tools required for such predictability. They’re making educated guesses instead of data-driven projections. That’s why one of the most critical of the 12 BattlesTM—a framework for generating consistent guaranteed marketing outcomes—is embracing the power of attribution modeling and refusing to accept bad data. It’s imperative that you find a marketing agency with deep market research capabilities or a dedicated market research shop that can bring objectivity to your research efforts.
3. They Profit More from Inefficiency
   Agencies bill for time, not outcomes—so inefficiency is profitable. Many agencies rely on long-term contracts with no performance benchmarks. This outdated model is designed to protect agencies—not drive client outcomes. Let’s leave behind the days when paying for pretty but ineffective campaigns or for an agency’s time versus their performance is acceptable. You must stop settling for agencies that don’t have enough conviction in their own projections or the internal infrastructure to have skin in the game. If an agency isn’t willing to guarantee its own projections, walk away.
4. CEOS Aren’t Demanding Guarantees
   My industry hasn’t changed because too many clients accept the status quo. If more clients demand accountability, agencies would be forced to adapt.

Make today the day you raise your expectations.

What Does Demanding Accountability Look Like? 

Step 1: Stop Accepting Vanity Metrics 

Agencies love showing reach, frequency, impressions, clicks, followers, and engagement, but the only metrics that matter are revenue or gross profit growth, cost to acquire a customer (CAC), lifetime value of a customer (LTV), and marketing return on investment (MROI). These metrics cut through the noise to answer the only key question, “Are you earning more than you’re spending on marketing?”

Step 2: Require Rigorous Market Research and Transparent Attribution Modeling 

While it’s relatively straightforward to measure the overall impact of your marketing efforts, pinpointing why those results occurred—and how to replicate them—is far more complex. Too many agencies rely on guesswork and instincts rather than deep market research and attribution modeling, leading to costly inefficiencies. And that’s why, after analyzing the legacy marketing plans my team and I inherited from more than 300 clients—whether created by their previous agencies or internal teams—I found that an average of 60 percent of their marketing budgets were wasted on strategies that failed to deliver any meaningful outcomes.

Market research is essential for understanding customer motivations, predicting their future behaviors, and identifying what most influences them to make a purchase. Without it, marketing strategies are built on assumptions rather than data-backed insights. However, even with strong research, marketing dollars are often wasted when agencies fail to accurately connect specific campaigns, channels, and touchpoints to actual revenue impact. Attribution modeling is the intricate matrix of customer interactions with your brand, showing you which efforts are truly driving prospective customer behavior—not just generating activity. And for most companies new to attribution modeling, the results are often shockingly different from what they expected. Yet too few marketing agencies invest in this, leaving their clients with inconclusive data and misleading conclusions. Demand both rigorous market research and clear attribution between marketing spend and revenue outcomes. Any agency that isn’t prioritizing these should be fired.

Step 3: Insist on Performance-Based Compensation 

Agencies should have skin in the game. The best practice is for their earnings to be tied directly to the performance of your marketing strategy—ideally marketing return on investments (MROI), but marketing qualified leads (MQLs) or sales qualified leads (SQLs) are also acceptable as long as you mutually agree upon the qualification criteria. However, if they are going to guarantee their outcomes—essentially de-risking your marketing investment—then it’s only fair that they earn upside if they overperform as well. After all, you want them fired up to overachieve—just as you would an internal marketing team.

The Battle for Marketing Accountability Starts Now 

Bottom line, the marketing industry must evolve or risk losing CEO trust. It’s time for a shift—one where marketing is no longer seen as an expense but as a powerful, guaranteed revenue driver. CEOs and marketing leaders, you have more leverage than you think. Start demanding predictability and guarantees.

Marketing agencies should be held to the same standards as sales, finance, and operations. My hope is to inspire you to stop settling for less than you deserve, to defy the apathy my industry expects of you, and to declare:

“I deserve guaranteed marketing outcomes, and anyone standing in my way will be lovingly removed.” 

Join the revolution.

Written by Lori Turner-Wilson.
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