A good marketing strategy can serve as an excellent GPS to guide companies towards an increasingly promising future. But, how to calibrate it correctly so that it can point to the best path? For many companies, sales metrics end up being the main references to adjust this course – something that does not always contribute to achieving the desired goals. Many other data can be used to guide the planning to be followed, with each organization responsible for shifting its focus to achieve increasingly better results.
According to a study by the Marketing and Sales Panorama 2025, 71% of companies did not achieve their marketing goals in 2024. When we delved into the research to better understand what may have caused this, 34% of these teams focused their actions on generating greater demand; 27% on strengthening the brand; 14% on digital innovations; and 13% on building closer relationships.
These data highlight how a large part of businesses still prioritize increasing sales numbers when developing the actions to be implemented, which does not always contribute to achieving the company's real growth. Within marketing, there are many other pieces of information that can serve as references to determine the growth of the business in question; however, the nuances are different, and therefore, highlighting sales may not always be the wisest choice.
Other metrics that can serve as a measure of the company's evolution include new clients, loyal consumers, growth in social media followers, increase in web mentions, visits to physical locations, number of contacts received, among many others.
With this greater diversity of data at hand, marketing can borrow a core concept from the growth area called the North Star Metric (NSM), through which it is possible to avoid illusions of growth and focus on the long term – showing what truly drives the business, ensuring retention, and aligning the entire company to a single goal.
By using this results measurement tactic, one can avoid potential flaws that other KPIs are prone to present, such as optimizing for immediate revenue and harming the future, interpreting sales spikes as real growth, losing sight of the actual 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 (seeing only what is in front of you, ignoring potential opportunities to be explored) and hypermetropia (not focusing on what is in front of you, only aiming at the future) can be avoided. In this way, new marketing goals can be set, along with metrics that will truly make sense for the business.
Taking this premise to the data presented in the above study, for example, we have a portion of respondents who list "innovating digitally" as a goal. But how can this be measured? How will this innovation impact the client's growth? They are probably questions that cannot be answered, but should be, so that this strategy can generate value for the business.
Leaving 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 starting to analyze other important numbers and factors. However, viewing your operations from other angles can be much more advantageous and useful for your growth over time.
