What if your quarterly status update with your executive team wasn’t about marketing spend, but marketing results? Ally is a marketing manager for a large manufacturing company. Over the past 18 months, Ally has worked closely with the executive team to develop one master brand for the company, aligning divisions and products, strategies and messages. Gaining executive approval for a budget to support this effort was critical. Ally secured dollars to invest in an internal employee campaign, redesign the website, and develop collateral for distributors.Ally knew that reporting out on marketing spend and progress was important throughout the project, so executives understood she was being a good steward of the extra dollars allotted to her department. Fortunately, Ally was also savvy enough to understand that once all project items were complete, the executive team would need to understand how these dollars impacted the business. Ally realized she needed to focus on the effectiveness of the efforts as they related to their stakeholders: employees, distributors and end users, and find a way to succinctly share this information with executives. Ally worked with business unit leaders to understand specific goals in each area. She then crafted marketing metrics that were relevant to their areas, and were outcomes-focused, not activities-focused. For instance, instead of reporting out on social media, PR and advertising activity, such as number of posts and press releases, she focused on customer sentiment, engagement and preference metrics in areas that aligned with key leaders’ specific goals. Ally’s effort to change the conversation with the executive team around metrics was valued all around. Business unit leaders no longer looked at the marketing department as just another cost center. Ally was delivering better information to inform them about product offerings, and executive team members had richer information to share with the board. Executives saw her as a key leader in developing strategy and business leaders had better information to use to move the business forward. To take the focus off of spend, you need to put the focus on results. Dig deep to understand the key drivers of business for your industry, and develop targeted metrics to measure outcomes. A busy marketing manager is not as important as an effective one. Use numbers to show your worth.