ROI Is the Benchmark — But Most Leaders Don’t Trust It
For most CEOs and CMOs, return-on-investment is the benchmark. If marketing is working, it should show up in ROI. If it’s not, ROI should reveal that too.
The problem is that most manufacturers don’t have ROI they can trust. Numbers come in from too many systems, attribution is fuzzy, and reporting feels like guesswork. Leadership teams end up hesitant to invest further, worried they’re throwing money away.
ROI is meant to bring clarity to marketing performance — but when it’s inaccurate, every other metric is too.
Why ROI Gets Messy in Manufacturing
Not every marketing channel is created equal when it comes to measurement.
Some efforts are easy to measure.
Google Ads, email campaigns, and retargeting programs generate clicks and conversions that tie neatly back to leads and sales. These numbers feel comfortable because they’re visible and direct.
Other efforts are ambiguous.
Trade publication ads, sponsorships, or AI-driven attribution models influence buying decisions, but don’t map cleanly to sales. They matter — but not in a way that can be tracked to the penny.
The result?
The result is apples-to-oranges comparisons. Trade shows, digital ads, and content marketing all get judged by different yardsticks. Add in vanity metrics like impressions and likes, and leadership is left with reports that generate more noise than clarity.
For B2C
Consumers:
ROI is most often skewed by chasing vanity metrics — traffic, likes, or clicks — instead of tracking the consumer’s path toward an actual purchase.
For B2P
Pros: Architects, Builders, Designers:
ROI is clouded by the long lead times of building projects. A product specified today may not generate revenue until a project is built months or years later.
For B2B
Dealers/Distributors
ROI gets trickier because dealer training events, co-op campaigns, and trade partnerships may not show up as results until months later. Without a consistent way to measure dealer activity, comparisons fall apart.
The Three Levers of Marketing ROI
Manufacturers often treat ROI as a single percentage: revenue divided by spend. In reality, it’s a system with three levers to understand and measure.
1
Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC)
True CAC includes more than ad spend. It’s payroll, commissions, software, and overhead. Most companies understate CAC by half or more, making ROI look healthier than it is. Source
When CAC is clear, leaders can finally see the real cost of growth.
Industry benchmarks suggest CAC often ranges from $250–$500, though this varies significantly depending on whether you’re selling to consumers, pros, or dealers. Source
Tip from Fásnua:
When calculating CAC, include all marketing and sales expenses — advertising, content creation, sales team salaries, commissions, software subscriptions, and overhead — divided by the number of new customers acquired in that period. Most manufacturers discover their true CAC is 40-60% higher than they initially thought.
CAC for B2C
CAC is your all-in cost to generate a new consumer sale — not just the ad spend that drove the click.
CAC for B2P
CAC equals the cost to win and support a professional relationship (events, CEU programs, rep visits). These costs may seem high, but the payoff comes from repeat specification across many projects.
CAC for B2B
CAC equals what it costs to acquire and activate a dealer account, including sales visits, onboarding, and support.
2
Lifetime Gross Profit (LTGP)
CAC can only be reduced so far, but LTGP can be expanded indefinitely.
LTGP = customer lifetime value minus fulfillment costs.
Upsell and cross-sell opportunities boost LTGP dramatically. Source
Churn matters: If customers stop buying too soon, LTGP collapses, and so does ROI.
Tip from Fásnua:
Aim for a Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio of at least 3:1. This provides a comfortable buffer, ensuring you aren’t overspending on marketing. If your ratio is below 3:1, focus on either reducing CAC or increasing LTGP through better retention and upselling.
LGTP for B2C
LTGP comes from repeat purchases or upsells (e.g., a consumer buys matching products over time).
LGTP for B2P
A single architect or builder may specify your product in dozens of projects over a career. LTGP here is about long-term loyalty and consistent spec-in, not just one project win.
LGTP for B2B
Dealer churn is one of the biggest threats. A strong dealer can be worth years of recurring revenue; losing one dealer can erase the ROI of dozens of consumer orders
3
Payback Period (PPD)
How quickly do you earn back the cost of acquiring a customer?
Short PPD = more confidence to reinvest.
Long PPD = riskier spend, requiring bigger cash reserves.
Tip from Fásnua:
Simple Calcuation: divide your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by the monthly gross profit per customer.
PPD for B2C
PPD is often short — weeks or months — because consumer sales are fast-cycle.
PPD for B2P
Payback is longest here — often months or years between initial engagement and revenue from completed projects — but the LTGP is massive once trust is built.
PPD for B2B
Payback may take longer since dealer activation has onboarding and training costs before orders ramp up.
What You Should Measure in ROI
ROI measurement only works if it reflects the actual journey your buyers take toward purchase. That means focusing on meaningful events that connect directly to sales — not vanity metrics that look impressive but don’t drive revenue.
Tip from Fásnua:
Spec-ins can be tracked through project databases (like Dodge or ConstructConnect) or inferred through signals such as sample requests and spec file downloads.
For B2C
Focus on measurable signals of intent like orders, quote requests, cart adds, and dealer locator searches. These actions show when a homeowner is actively moving closer to a purchase.
For B2P
Key ROI events include orders, spec-ins (your product written into a project), RFIs or RFPs with your product included, and sample requests. Educational engagements like CEU completions and downloads of BIM/Revit files also matter, as they signal long-term pro adoption.
For B2B
Critical ROI metrics include dealer orders, product returns, and sell-through rates. Supporting metrics — like pipeline conversions (how many leads provided to dealers turn into sales) and co-op participation (whether dealers are investing alongside you in marketing) — help explain performance patterns.
Setting the Right Marketing Budget
Too often, budgets get set as a flat percentage of revenue. Manufacturing companies typically allocate 5-8% of revenue to marketing Source, but this approach is arbitrary. A smarter approach is to align budget with business goals.
Example:
The same company with different goals
Imagine a $10M window manufacturer with these metrics:
- CAC: $400
- LTGP: $1,600 (4:1 ratio)
- PPD: 8 months
- Current marketing spend: $600K (6% of revenue)
Scenario 1: Planning a capacity expansion
The company is building a new production facility that will double capacity. Construction will take 18 months and cost $3M. Leadership needs to preserve cash flow to fund the expansion.
Budget decision: Keep marketing at $600K (6%) or even reduce slightly to 5% ($500K). Prioritize profitability over growth during the construction period. The goal is building cash reserves, not acquiring customers the facility can’t serve yet.
Scenario 2: Just completed expansion
The new facility is operational. The company now has capacity for $20M in revenue but is only doing $10M. Fixed costs have increased significantly with the new facility.
Budget decision: Increase marketing to $1.5M (15% of current revenue). With proven unit economics (4:1 LTGP:CAC and 8-month payback), aggressive spending makes sense. The goal is filling capacity as quickly as possible. Every month of underutilized capacity costs money.
The Lesson
Your business goals should drive your marketing budget, not arbitrary percentages.
Factors to consider when determining your marketing budget:
- The type of sale (one-time, repeat, or recurring)
- The upsell and cross-sell opportunities tied to each customer
- Your CAC by audience
- The LTGP of each audience
- Your current business constraints and goals
For B2C
Aggressive spending usually means heavier digital ad budgets to capture consumer attention.
For B2P
Aggressive spending may focus on education, events, and rep support that builds long-term professional loyalty.
For B2B
Aggressive spending could mean enhanced dealer incentives, more sales visits, or larger co-op budgets.
How to Build ROI You Can Trust
Here’s what it takes to restore confidence in ROI:
- Centralize your data. Scattered reports create confusion. Fásnua’s Rise system pulls metrics from every platform into one place, eliminating silos.
- Apply a consistent formula. Evaluate every channel with the same ROI yardstick.
- Strengthen attribution. Buyers don’t move in a straight line. They research, compare, and touch multiple channels. Use models that reflect this journey, not just last-click attribution.
- Review regularly. ROI isn’t static. Weekly reporting and quarterly reviews keep data sharp and tied to company goals.
Tip from Fásnua:
The biggest mistake manufacturers make is tracking too many metrics. Focus on the vital few: CAC, LTGP, and PPD for each sales channel. Until you master these, everything else is noise..
For B2C
Centralization makes it easier to see which campaigns generate real sales versus just traffic.
For B2P
Centralized data ensures spec-ins, sample requests, and CEU participation aren’t overlooked — all of which matter to long-term ROI.
For B2B
Data unification helps leadership compare dealer performance fairly, instead of piecing together spreadsheets and anecdotal reports.
What Happens When You Get ROI Right
When ROI is defined correctly and measured consistently, everything changes.
- Leaders know exactly which dollars drive growth and which go to waste.
- Teams gain confidence to test, scale, or shut down campaigns.
- Budgets shift from guesswork to deliberate investment.
One global manufacturer reallocated about 20 percent of its marketing funds using data-driven analysis, compared with an average of 12-15 percent it would have reallocated using traditional models. Source
For B2C
Clear ROI lets manufacturers cut spend on vanity-driven campaigns and double down on digital channels that actually generate profitable orders.
For B2P
Manufacturers that invest in CEU programs and BIM resources see consistent spec-ins by architects and repeat project wins, building LTGP that compounds over years.
For B2B
Manufacturers that shift dollars from trade sponsorships to focused dealer training and enablement programs see significant improvements in dealer orders and sell-through rates, often within 12-18 months.
How Fásnua Can Help
- Rise Membership: Aligns company goals, budgets, and ROI metrics into a unified growth system.
- Constraint-based strategy: Identifies the exact bottleneck that’s limiting ROI.
- Unified reporting: Rise pulls data from all platforms — consumer-facing, dealer-facing, and pro-facing — into meaningful, apples-to-apples reports leadership can trust.
Your Next Step
You, or your CMO, can start by finding your current biggest marketing constraint, so where to tactically focus first is clear.
The Growth Finder is a five-minute assessment that helps you identify your top marketing constraint.