As Inspired by Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy…
Modern marketers have become tragically obsessed with quantifying every element of their craft. This fixation on metrics, while seemingly noble, has evolved into a full-blown madness that often distracts from what marketing is truly about: understanding and influencing human behaviour. This is equally true in B2B tech marketing. Goodhart’s Law states, “Any measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.” This principle highlights the idea that once a particular metric is used as a benchmark for performance or decision-making, individuals or organisations will inevitably attempt to game or manipulate that metric to meet targets. The result is that this distorts the true value or intention behind the measure. This warning couldn’t be more apt today.
The Data-Driven Delusion
Beyond the metrics and targets creating their own unhelpful distortions and behaviour, Rory Sutherland would go on to say how tech companies can ignore this unhelpful distraction. He would pronounce that you must be clear about defining your target audience and optimise for overall value and scale, for that is how you achieve maximum impact with the most effective customer experience. What Sutherland does not advise is to optimise for the efficiency of the transactional process, which misses the point by moving the focus away from the customer being the central factor.
Modern Marketing Madness
In response to the pressure from tech founders, the board and investors, the CMO’s office has become more of a control room for NASA than a hub of creative genius. However, marketing must be more about understanding human psychology: why and how people buy, how emotions influence decisions and how to create a brand that resonates. These days, marketers spend their time staring at dashboards, tracking clicks, impressions and conversion rates as if these numbers are the Holy Grail. As Sutherland is quick to point out, what is measurable isn’t always meaningful. Just because we can measure something, doesn’t mean it’s worth measuring. As Sutherland puts it, “We have a lot of data, but not a lot of insight.” If we’re all guilty of one thing, it’s mistaking data for wisdom.
Why Hyper Measurability is Unhelpful
For example, one of the many victims of this hyper measurability is creativity. Marketers now constantly tweak ads based on what performs better in a split test, often stripping out any semblance of creativity or risk-taking. The result? Bland campaigns optimised for engagement but lack any soul. We’re left with an endless parade of A/B-tested banner ads that may drive click-through rates but fail to build long-term value or brand affinity.
More dangerously, these metrics offer a false sense of precision. Sure, you can track a prospect’s journey from the first click to the final purchase, but how reliable is that data? Cookie policies change, people switch devices and attribution models, at best, provide an oversimplified view of a very complex reality. Sutherland argues, “We have elevated rationality and quantifiable data above common sense, which is the equivalent of trying to fix your marriage by measuring the number of times you’ve taken out the trash.” It’s not about the what but the why, and digital marketing is terrible at answering the why.
The ROI Fetish
Nowhere is the obsession with numbers more apparent than in Return on Investment (ROI). ROI has become the primary metric through which the value of marketing is judged. It’s neat, it’s tidy, it fits on a spreadsheet, but it’s often nothing more than a mirage. The inherent issue with ROI is that it assumes that every marketing effort should have an immediate, quantifiable impact on revenue. But real marketing, as Sutherland notes, “Works in more mysterious ways.” Brand building, for instance, is notoriously difficult to measure, often leading short-sighted executives to deprioritise it in favour of more direct response tactics.
However, without investing in brand-building, your business is just another faceless entity, indistinguishable from its competitors. It fails to recognise that prospective customers, irrespective of liking your product, must also want to do business with you and enter a commercial relationship with your company. Sutherland has often joked that, “Direct marketing is a bit like eating cereal; it keeps you going, but it doesn’t make you stronger.” What builds long-term value is emotional resonance, and that’s something numbers alone can’t capture.
A Double-Edged Sword
Data is important, but it’s a tool, and when used properly, it can unlock enormous potential. Predictive analytics, personalised marketing and AI-driven customer insights are all transforming tech marketing in their own way, but only if they serve the strategy, rather than dictate it. Too often, companies put data in the driver’s seat and lose sight of their bigger mission. As marketers, we’re trying to influence behaviour, and behaviour is an inherently irrational thing.
Even in B2B markets, people buy on emotion and justify with logic, not the other way around, and that’s as true when selling IT solutions to a board of directors as a hoodie to a teenager – the only people who should ever wear hoodies. While data might help us analyse past behaviours, it often struggles to predict the future, especially when those behaviours are driven by complex emotions and alternative scenarios.
The Paradox of Choice
There’s another irony in all of this. Modern marketers are now overwhelmed with data, as there are too many metrics to choose from. Click-through rates, bounce rates, open rates, conversion rates, customer lifetime value, Net Promoter Score and the list goes on. Even in slow moving niche markets, where there is little data to provide any kind of surety of insight, there is still a tendency to get caught up in the metrics trap. However, when you try to focus on everything, you may end up focusing on nothing.
It’s the paradox of choice: too many metrics lead to analysis paralysis, and marketers end up chasing small improvements in irrelevant areas, while missing the bigger picture. Sutherland suggests that sometimes the best decisions are made in the absence of data, by relying on intuition, creativity and experience. “If you wait for the perfect data, you’ll never make a decision,” he says, and tech industry marketers would be wise to heed this advice.
Measuring the Unmeasurable
What’s most valuable in marketing often can’t be measured, at least not in real-time anyway. How do you measure the impact of a brand’s story on someone’s subconscious? Or how do you measure the long-term effect of building trust with a prospect through years of consistent and relevant content? You can’t, at least not easily, but that doesn’t mean it’s not working.
Just as an iceberg is mostly hidden below the surface, much of marketing’s value is hidden from immediate view, unlike the clearly visible frustration demonstrated by tech founders when their growth stalls. This is why playing the long game is so important, and why knee-jerk reactions are to be avoided. It takes total commitment and intent to build a B2B tech brand, in the knowledge that you will arrive at your destination sometime in the future.
Find a New Equilibrium
The key isn’t to throw the data out with the bathwater but to rebalance the scales. Data should inform your decisions, but not dictate them. All tech startups operate in a vacuum of ambiguity, and you need to learn to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. It means founders must test their assumptions, rather than blindly believing them to be right, based on nothing but ego.
This is how we make sense of the unknown and furrow a path forward. This ambiguity is magnified in marketing’s need to understand target market behaviour. We need to accept that not everything worth doing can be measured in clicks in real-time, and that some of the most valuable outcomes are intangible, unpredictable and unquantifiable. B2B Tech marketers must now focus on what really matters, using defined core metrics to inform decisions, mixed with intuition, creativity and innovation.
The Human Touch
With all this in mind, tech marketers must, from time to time, step away from the dashboards, look beyond the numbers and into the hearts and minds of the target audience. Start thinking about the long-term, about the stories you’re telling and the emotions you’re evoking. In the noble words of Sutherland, “The problem with logic is it kills off magic. Without magic, marketing just becomes maths.”
While data can be useful, it doesn’t make people fall in love with your brand. In the end, what marketing needs is a return to human intuition, creativity and emotional intelligence. If we’re to be slaves to metrics, we’ll miss the very essence of what marketing is meant to do: connect with people. And you don’t need a pie chart to tell you that.
You may want to read: “Why B2B Tech Startups Must Invest in Marketing.”
