A good marketing strategy can serve as an excellent GPS to guide companies toward an increasingly promising future. But how to calibrate it correctly to point the best way forward? For many companies, sales metrics end up being the main references for adjusting this route—something that will not always help them achieve the desired goals. Many other data points can be used to direct the planning to be followed, and it is up to each organization to shift this focus to achieve increasingly better results.
According to the 2025 Marketing and Sales Panorama study, 71% of companies did not meet their marketing goals in 2024. When delving deeper into the research to better understand what may have hindered this, 34% of these teams focused their efforts on generating more demand, 27% on strengthening the brand, 14% on digital innovations, and 13% on building closer relationships.
These numbers show how most businesses still prioritize increasing sales when designing the actions to be implemented, which does not always contribute to achieving real company growth. Within marketing, there are many other data points that can serve as references when defining business growth—however, the nuances are different, and thus, prioritizing sales may not always be the wisest choice.
Other metrics that can measure a company’s progress include new customers, loyal consumers, growth in social media followers, increased web mentions, store visits, number of contacts received, among many others.
With this greater diversity of data in hand, marketing can borrow a key concept from the growth field called the North Star Metric (NSM), which helps avoid illusions of growth and focus on the long term—showing what truly drives the business, ensuring retention, and aligning the entire company toward the same goal.
By using this result measurement tactic, one can avoid potential failures that other KPIs may present, such as optimizing for immediate revenue at the expense of the future, mistaking sales spikes for real growth, losing sight of the real value delivered to the customer, misalignment between departments, ignoring retention and engagement issues, and measuring what is easy rather than what matters.
Through the use of this tool, both marketing myopia (focusing only on what is in front while ignoring potential opportunities) and hyperopia (not focusing on the present, aiming only for the future) can be avoided. In this way, new marketing goals can be set, alongside metrics that will truly make sense for the business.
Applying this premise to the data presented in the study above, for example, we have a portion of respondents citing ‘digital innovation’ as a goal. But how can this be measured? How will this innovation impact the client’s growth? These are likely questions that cannot yet be answered but should be, so that this strategy can create real business value.
Breaking out of the bubble of focusing only on sales-related data can be a major challenge for many companies, as it requires stepping out of their comfort zone and beginning to analyze other important numbers and factors. However, viewing their operations from other angles can be far more advantageous and useful for long-term growth.
