The marketing time machine doesn’t exist, sorry

Let's imagine you're a typical B2B executive. You greenlit a new marketing campaign 90 days ago. There were strategy decks, maybe some moodboards, a few paid media line items. Now you're sitting in a QBR, looking at a revenue gap, and asking your CMO, "Where's the revenue?"

Allow me to translate that question into its more honest form:

"Why hasn't anyone made a large considered purchase in an enterprise category after we ran some ads?"

What you're actually measuring: basically nothing useful yet

In B2B, only about 5% of your addressable market is in-market at any given time. That number might be 3%. It might be 7%. It depends. But the point is: most of your ideal customers are not currently shopping.

So if you're evaluating a campaign after just two sales cycles—when your sales cycle is likely 6+ months—you're essentially looking at a slice of a slice of your market. You're trying to draw conclusions about a 100-page novel after glancing at the inside cover and skimming the introduction.

This is why Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)—the actuarial-grade method for measuring long-term marketing effectiveness—typically requires 4 to 6 sales cycles of data to identify a statistically meaningful signal. Until you’ve accumulated enough cycles, most "performance" (direct response) metrics are just noise that looks like insight.

Triggered, but not in the way you think

When people do come into market, it’s not because of your campaign. It's because of something Ehrenberg-Bass calls a category entry point (CEP)—a business event or situation that kicks off the buying process. Budget resets. A merger. A failed audit. A new CIO. You don't control these, but you can prepare for them.

Marketing’s job is to ensure that when a CEP occurs, your brand is the one that springs to mind. That means:

1. Understand what events trigger buyers to enter the market.
2. Ensure marketing messaging addresses those triggers.
3. Stay present even when buyers aren't buying.

It's why brand consideration and mental availability matter far more than "lead generation" if you’re playing the long game. Which you are. Or should be.

Awareness vs. consideration: What actually drives revenue

Marketers or consultants who obsess over lead gen and brand awareness often distract from the real objective: making the shortlist when it counts.

• Awareness just means the buyer has heard of you. It's a necessary condition, but far from sufficient. You're in the "I think I saw their CEO speak at a conference once" bucket.
• Consideration means your brand has made it into the mental shortlist for a specific solution to a specific problem. This aligns more closely with what Ehrenberg-Bass refers to as mental availability tied to category entry points.

To put it bluntly, anyone who claims 'the purpose of marketing is lead generation' doesn’t understand how buying decisions are made—and will eventually destroy your business.

The nonlinear funnel is not a bug, it's reality

The fantasy that someone sees an ad, clicks a CTA, books a demo, and buys a six-figure software license all in the same quarter is just that: fantasy.

Real buyers wander through a nonlinear funnel over months (or years), nudged along by content, conversations, reputation, peer signals, and—occasionally—your SDR’s 14th follow-up email.

When they finally do respond to a sales call, your CRM attributes it to "direct outreach," conveniently ignoring the years of podcasts, whitepapers, analyst briefings, and other marketing promotions they encountered beforehand. This is survivorship bias dressed up as reporting. And it's reporting the wrong input.

This isn’t theory—it’s backed by real buying behavior data. Substantial research by Kerry Cunningham at 6sense demonstrates how faulty and damaging this belief is:

• Early decision-making: Approximately 70% of the B2B buying journey is completed before buyers engage with vendors. By this point, 81% have already selected their preferred vendor, and 85% have defined their purchase requirements.
• Buyer-initiated contact: In 83% of cases, buyers initiate the first contact with vendors, often after forming a strong preference.
• Prior vendor experience: A significant 90% of buyers have prior experience with at least one vendor they consider, and they are already familiar with four out of five vendors they will evaluate.
• Complex buying process: The average B2B buying cycle spans 11.3 months and involves a buying group of 11 individuals.

If your company is not in the initial brand consideration set, you've (almost) already lost. If you're expecting measurable results inside 90 days, you're measuring the wrong thing—and incentivizing the wrong behavior.

What to tell the boardroom (without gimmicks)

If you're facing pressure to "show ROI," you don’t need to fudge pipeline reports. Just reframe expectations like a grown-up:

We're tracking campaign performance across sales cycles, not weeks. Given our average sales cycle is X months, we expect early signals after 2 cycles and meaningful insight after 4–6. That's a 6–18 month window, depending on deal velocity.

It's not magic. It's just math. Marketing works—just not like a vending machine!

So no, marketing won't deliver revenue on command. But give it the time and consistency to shape the buyer's shortlist, and you'll be the brand they think of when it matters.