Marketing KPIs that change a CEO's decision

TL;DR. We analysed the annual accounts of 17,940 Romanian companies with revenue above €3 million in 2024 that also filed accounts for 2025. At 6,039 of them, one in three, revenue and profit moved in opposite directions.

A marketing KPI built on revenue growth alone does not tell a CEO how the company is doing.

A marketing KPI, or key performance indicator, is a number a company tracks consistently to see whether marketing is moving it towards what it set out to do, such as more profit or better customers.

For a CEO, the only KPI that matters is the one that changes a decision about money when it moves, such as which budget a channel gets or what price you ask.

We talk almost daily with founders running companies with revenue from a few million to tens of millions of euros, and two complaints keep coming back. Profit is falling while revenue grows, and sales arrive in waves that nobody can explain. The monthly marketing report looks good, but the cause remains unclear.

Our guide to marketing strategy shows how the big decisions connect. This article looks at the numbers that tell you, month after month, whether those decisions are working. It also looks at the numbers that fill a report and change nothing in the company.

Our data comes from Romania, where every company’s annual accounts are public. That is what makes the exercise possible, and the logic holds wherever you can read a profit and loss statement.

What is a marketing KPI?

A marketing KPI is the number a company tracks consistently to find out whether marketing is moving it towards a business goal. Companies have many performance indicators, and only a few of them are key. You can recognise them by one thing, the decision that depends on the number.

Every company has plenty of metrics, the measurements platforms produce automatically. Clicks, click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), followers and site visits all fall into this category. They help the people working on a campaign. A metric becomes a KPI only when it has a threshold, an owner and a decision.

The threshold says at what value you step in. The owner is the person answerable for the number. The decision is what you do differently once the threshold is crossed, such as stopping a channel, raising a price or moving a budget. Without those three, a number informs everyone and obliges nobody.

The red link in the chain is the test we propose. Before a number enters a CEO’s report, ask what the CEO would do differently if it halved. If the answer is nothing, the number stays in the marketing team’s report. It can be very useful there, because click-through rate helps whoever writes the ad.

Why is revenue growth not enough as a CEO metric?

Revenue growth is not enough because revenue and profit do not always move together. At 6,039 of the 17,940 companies we analysed, 34% of them, the two moved in opposite directions in 2025 compared with 2024. For those companies, a report built on revenue alone sent the wrong signal.

Of the 17,940 companies, 10,567 sold more in 2025 than in 2024. Of those 10,567, a total of 4,021 ended the year with lower profit. For them, the report said growth and the bank account said something else. Another 2,018 companies sold less in 2025 and kept profit equal to or higher than in 2024.

The red slice is the one that should make you uneasy. The companies in it reported growth and kept less profit. The cream slice shows the reverse. A company can drop unprofitable customers, sell less and earn more, and a revenue report would call that a decline.

People running Romanian companies have said this in public too. Marius Badea, manager of the dairy producer Lactate Brădet, told FinanciarPress in January 2023 that “receipts are higher, but profit is lower, and expenses have grown” (our translation). The same article reports that he described this as forced growth, caused by price rises in the market.

Higher revenue can simply mean higher prices. The registry puts a size on this trap, and the figure below sorts companies by how much they grew. The smaller the growth, the larger the share of companies that ended up with lower profit than in 2024.

The red bar deserves a closer look. Of the 4,182 companies that grew by less than 10%, 2,137 ended with lower profit. According to Romania’s National Institute of Statistics, average inflation was 7.3% in 2025, and the annual rate reached 9.7% in December 2025.

In that economy, growth below 10% can mean the same quantities sold at higher prices. Wherever you operate, the check is the same, so compare your growth with your own inflation rate. The figure shows a link without proving a cause. “We grew 8%” is an unfinished sentence.

This is also where CEOs and marketers split. In McKinsey’s June 2025 survey, 70% of CEOs say they measure marketing’s impact by year-over-year revenue growth and margin. Only 35% of chief marketing officers (CMOs) track that as a top metric.

In the same 2025 McKinsey survey, only 30% of CMOs believe there is a clearly defined view of marketing ROI, the return on money put into marketing. In the previous survey the figure was 40%. The two people who should decide the budget together can end up looking at different numbers.

Which 5 marketing KPIs change a CEO’s decision?

The five KPIs are profit per 100 of extra revenue, meaning revenue above last year’s, months to recover acquisition cost, win rate, realised price and demand for your brand. Each answers a different decision about money, and together they fit on a single page.

We chose them with the test above, so the list is short, and most digital marketing KPIs stay with the team running the campaigns. These work as marketing KPIs for both B2B and consumer companies. Every row has a decision, or it would not be in the table.

1. Profit per 100 of extra revenue

This KPI tells you how much of every 100 (in any currency) you sold above last year stayed as profit. You calculate it from two annual accounts, and a negative result means revenue grew while profit fell.

Taken together, the 10,567 companies that sold more in 2025 grew revenue by 250.99 billion lei compared with 2024, about €50.5 billion, and profit by 13.32 billion lei, about €2.7 billion.

That works out at 5.31 per 100 in total. For the typical company, the one in the middle of the list, the result is 3.94. Those are your outside benchmarks. The inside benchmark is even better, and it is the profit you kept per 100 of revenue last year.

Below last year’s margin, every extra sale pulls your margin down. It happened at 5,370 of the 10,567 companies, or 50.8%. The decision that follows is to stop adding volume until you know where the difference comes from. Our guide to profit margin shows where to look for the money.

2. Months to recover acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is what you spend on marketing and sales to win a customer. For a CEO, what matters is how many months of profit from that customer it takes to cover the cost.

The full calculation of the ratio between a customer’s lifetime profit and acquisition cost is in our guide, so here we stop at the decision.

The number becomes useful when you tie it to the most you can pay for a lead, meaning an enquiry from a potential customer. At MovingBox (in Romanian), a Romanian moving company, we started from five years of company data and calculated that amount, so that campaigns would stay profitable.

From February to October 2026, compared with the same period of 2025, Google Ads conversions grew by 75%. Cost per lead fell by 14% and ended 58% below the company’s target, even though the budget grew. A calculated ceiling takes taste out of the budget discussion.

3. Win rate

Win rate shows how many quotes out of 100 become orders. When orders fall, this number tells you where the chain broke. You calculate it separately for each source, such as referrals, the website, ads or distributors, because a company-wide average hides exactly the answer you are looking for.

If the drop appears in one source only, check who comes from there and what you promised them. If it appears everywhere, check the offer, the price and how the sale is handled. The two diagnoses send money to different places.

In our methodology, this principle is called the double funnel. The first funnel, marketing, brings the right customers to the point where they analyse your offer. The second, sales, takes them from negotiation to contract and beyond.

Marketing materials must be tied to the stage the sale has reached, such as negotiation or contract signing. If you do not measure win rate, you do not know which funnel you are working on. We describe the whole chain in our guide to the B2B sales system.

4. Realised price

Realised price is the average price you get after discounts, compared with your list price. Revenue can grow because you gave bigger discounts, and the marketing report will show more orders. Realised price catches that trade before it reaches the annual accounts.

We put this indicator in the audit we published for Therezia (in Romanian), a Romanian dairy producer, as part of a test limited to one product and one channel for ninety days.

The audit says product rotation, meaning how fast the product sells, realised average price and demand for the name are measured against the same period of the previous year. Positioning shows first in the price you can hold.

The decision is direct. If realised price falls year after year, your marketing is buying volume with margin, and a bigger budget will buy more of the same. Our guide to pricing power shows what you can move before you offer another discount.

5. Demand for your brand

Demand for your brand shows how many people search for your company by name, and how often ChatGPT or other AI models name it when a customer asks them about your field.

You can see branded searches for free in Google Search Console. What counts is how they evolve and how they compare with competitors, because a single number says little.

The reason lies in how purchases get decided. The 6sense study from November 2025 shows that 94% of B2B buyers ranked their shortlist of vendors before speaking to a seller. Of those, 84% bought from the first vendor they spoke with.

Brand demand measures whether you are in the buyer’s mind before the quote. We call this cognitive ownership, meaning you own the mental space of your category. When customers need what you sell, they think of you first and come on their own.

At Cardio Clinic, a cardiology clinic in Bucharest, impressions from branded searches grew by 41.2% in May, June and July 2026, compared with the same months of 2025. Separately, the clinic’s revenue grew by 39% from January to April 2026, compared with the same months of 2025. We report the figures separately because they cover different periods.

What does the calculation look like on a real company?

At ADF, a Romanian maker of PVC and aluminium windows and doors, revenue grew by 14.81% in 2025 compared with 2024. Out of every 100 of extra revenue, 1.84 stayed as profit. We calculated this from the accounts filed with Romania’s Ministry of Finance for ADF Prod SRL, company number 6501868.

ADF is a strong company, founded in 1994, with an integrated factory and revenue of 216.33 million lei in 2025, about €43.5 million. Profit was 27.81 million lei, so 12.86 per 100 of revenue. A strong company shows most clearly what a report can hide. On the usual indicators, 2025 looks like a very good year.

The first two numbers in the figure look good in any report. The red one says something else.

Compared with 2024, revenue grew by 27.90 million lei and profit by 0.51 million lei. If the extra revenue had generated profit at the 2024 margin of 14.49 per 100 of revenue, profit would have been higher by roughly 3.5 million lei, about €0.7 million.

The three-year series sharpens the question. Out of every 100 of revenue, ADF kept 19.92 as profit in 2023, 14.49 in 2024 and 12.86 in 2025. The calculation shows only the order of magnitude of what is at stake. The accounts tell you where to look without telling you why.

The cause could be an investment, rising costs or a large contract at a low price. From outside, we cannot see win rate, realised price or acquisition cost. ADF’s management can pull them from its internal records, and we neither have them nor guess them.

We can see brand demand, from our public audit of ADF (in Romanian), dated 17 June 2026. Searches for ADF’s own name, in three variants, added up to 520 a month, against 4,400 for the competitor brand QFort.

At that time ADF had 0 Google Ads landing pages and 0 mentions in AI answers, against 23 pages for QFort and 27 mentions for another competitor, Barrier.

In that audit, our assessment was that ADF competes on price despite having the arguments to step out of that fight. It is a hypothesis, and 1.84 does not prove it. It does give a reason to test it. The CEO’s first step would be realised price on the 2025 contracts.

If the hypothesis holds, what follows is a decision about what the company sells and what it wants to be chosen for, more than one about campaigns.

In the audit we proposed that ADF become known as the leader in fire-resistant windows and doors. The KPI for that decision would be this product’s share of revenue and its realised price compared with standard products.

Comparing companies shows why the indicator is worth calculating. The table below puts side by side six Romanian companies we have analysed publicly, using the same formulas.

Bilka and ADF grew at almost the same rate. Out of 100 of extra revenue, Bilka, which we analysed separately (in Romanian), kept 28.07 and ADF kept 1.84. The same revenue growth can hide two different companies. At Zeelandia, revenue grew by 3.05 million lei and profit fell by 2.65 million lei.

A single pair of years can mislead. At Therezia, profit had doubled in 2024 compared with 2023, from 4.74 to 9.68 million lei, so 2025 started from a high base. That is why you read this indicator over at least three years and alongside profit per 100 of revenue, as the table does.

On which layer is each KPI decided, between L1 and L4?

Our methodology places the work on four layers. L1 is performance marketing and L4 is positioning and category. Between them sit L2, revenue and the commercial process, and L3, called the AI Brain, the artificial intelligence system that keeps the company’s data and decisions.

When a KPI falls, the repair happens on the layer it belongs to, wherever the number appears in the report. One of the numbers in the figure is ROAS, the revenue brought by each unit of money put into ads.

The figure shows why a report pulled from ad platforms is not enough for a CEO. It captures L1 well, with click-through rate, cost per lead and ROAS. The red layer in the figure, positioning, appears on no ad platform.

One principle of our methodology applies directly here, infrastructure before marketing, meaning systems and positioning come before campaigns. A company rarely has a marketing problem. More often it lacks part of this infrastructure, meaning systems, channels, positioning or a brand foundation.

If quotes are not logged by source, win rate cannot be calculated, and that is where the repair starts.

The second principle concerns budget. The marketing budget is for development, not for endlessly optimising the same channel. The right strategy lowers the real cost of a customer, while a change to an ad lowers it only slightly. A report made only of L1 keeps sending you back to optimisation.

Money makes the choice harder. Gartner’s May 2026 survey puts marketing at 7.8% of company revenue, against 7.7% in 2025, among 401 marketing leaders, most of them at companies above $1 billion. Our guide to the marketing budget shows where an extra unit goes when the foundation is not ready.

L3 is the layer that holds everything together. When numbers, thresholds and decisions sit in the same system, a language model (AI) can compare this month’s numbers with the decisions taken a year ago. Without that memory, every report starts from zero and the company repeats discussions it has already had.

How do you build a marketing KPI template?

You build a marketing KPI template in five steps, and the first takes about 15 minutes because all you need is your last two annual accounts.

The remaining steps depend on how long it takes to find the numbers inside the company. If you cannot find a number, you have already learned something useful, that you do not measure it, so write that down.

1. Calculate the first number. Take revenue and profit from your last two annual accounts, divide the change in profit by the change in revenue and multiply by 100. If revenue did not grow, the ratio means nothing, so look at profit directly.
2. Compare the result. Put it next to last year’s profit per 100 of revenue and next to the benchmarks of 5.31, the total for the 10,567 companies, and 3.94, the typical company among them.
3. Write the other four numbers on the same page. Where you have no number, write “not measured”, then name the person who will bring it.
4. Add the threshold and the decision. Next to each number, write the value at which you step in, who is accountable for it and what you do then.
5. Cut everything else. Any other number goes through the halving test, and if it changes nothing, it stays in the team’s report.

The row that says “not measured” is worth as much as the rest of the page. It shows you which decisions you make on intuition today. Intuition built your company this far. It becomes a risk when revenue growth stops guaranteeing profit, as the 4,021 companies above show.

The page needs no special software. It can be a document or a spreadsheet, because the tool matters less than the row with the decision. A marketing KPI dashboard, a panel that updates its own numbers, becomes useful once you have settled what is worth tracking. Choose the decisions first, then automate the numbers.

How often should a CEO look at marketing KPIs?

A CEO should look monthly at cost per lead and win rate, quarterly at realised price and brand demand, and at least yearly at profit per 100 of extra revenue. The rhythm follows the speed at which each number moves.

Horia Cardoș, founder of the Romanian agribusiness group Agroland, wrote in June 2026 about what changed in the company after its stock market listing. The budget is now set out rigorously, revised when reality departs from the plan and tracked month by month.

He names the difference between “I think we’re doing well” and “I know exactly where we stand against the plan, and why” (our translation).

The difference between those two sentences is all a good KPI gives you. A company that is not listed has no investors demanding this discipline, so it can impose it on itself, on one page. The gain is the same, because you know where you stand and why before the annual accounts tell you.

The rhythm also protects against the opposite mistake. Brand demand is judged over quarters and years. Judge it monthly and you will stop exactly the investment that has not yet had time to work.

The meeting gets shorter as a result. For every number past its threshold, the owner brings a cause and a proposed decision. For numbers within limits, nothing gets discussed that month, and the time saved goes to the decisions that actually move money.

Frequently asked questions

What are the 5 key performance indicators examples?

Five examples for a marketing leader and a CEO are profit per 100 of extra revenue, months to recover acquisition cost, win rate, realised price and demand for your brand. Each of them has a threshold, an owner and a decision that depends on it.

What are the top 5 sales KPIs?

Five sales KPIs worth tracking are win rate, average order value, the time from first quote to contract, the value of quotes in progress and profit per contract. The last one shows whether sales bring in money or only volume.

Which digital marketing KPIs are worth tracking?

For the team, click-through rate, cost per click, cost per lead, conversion rate and ROAS all matter. Only those tied to money reach the CEO, meaning cost per lead and months to recover acquisition cost, placed next to the maximum the company can afford.

What are brand KPIs?

Brand KPIs show how present a company is in the customer’s mind. They include branded searches, mentions in AI answers, comparison with competitors and realised price. You read them over quarters and years, because they move more slowly than campaigns do.

What goes on a marketing KPI dashboard?

A good dashboard holds few numbers, each with its current value, its value for the same period last year, its threshold and the person accountable for it. The five numbers above are enough for a CEO. The team can keep a separate, more detailed panel for campaigns.

What to do once you have calculated the five KPIs

A KPI earns its place in front of you only if, when it moves, it changes a decision about money.

Start with the first number, the one from two annual accounts, and compare it with the profit you kept last year per 100 of revenue. If it is above that, you have a reason to add more volume. If it is below, you have learned something the monthly report did not tell you.

Want to see the same analysis on your company, with everything visible from outside? Ask for a diagnostic and we will show you where the numbers point. A good report tells you what you have to decide on Monday morning.