New guidance from the Nielsen Norman Group argues teams should report business outcomes like revenue, cost and retention, not activity or process metrics. The advice is aimed at UX teams but it lands just as hard on marketing.
Effort is not an outcome. A report full of things you did is a report that has not answered the only question the business is asking.
The Nielsen Norman Group has published guidance telling UX teams to stop reporting activity and start reporting business outcomes. Revenue, cost, risk, speed, retention. The argument is that leadership does not fund teams for how busy they are. It funds them for what they change on the numbers that matter. Swap "we ran twelve tests" for "we lifted retention two points" and the conversation about resources changes entirely.
It is UX advice, but read it as marketing advice, because the disease is identical. Marketing reports are stuffed with activity. Campaigns launched, impressions served, posts published, emails sent. All of it describes effort. None of it describes result. A leader looking at a wall of activity metrics has no way to tell whether the spend earned its place.
Why it matters
This is the gap that keeps marketing budgets vulnerable in Australian businesses. When the pressure comes on, the function that can only show activity is the first one questioned, because nobody in the room can connect the work to money. The function that can show a revenue or retention outcome is the one that keeps its budget.
It is also a self-inflicted wound. Activity metrics are easy to pull and comfortable to present. They make a team look busy without exposing it to a hard judgement. That comfort is exactly why they are dangerous. A metric that cannot fail is a metric that cannot prove anything either.
Teams that report revenue, cost and retention impact secure resources. Teams that report activity get questioned.
What to do about it
Lead every report with a business outcome. What moved on revenue, cost, retention or risk, and by how much. Put the activity underneath as supporting detail, not the headline.
Tie each major initiative to a number you committed to before it launched. A result only counts if you called it in advance.
Cut the vanity metrics from your dashboards. If a number cannot change a decision, it does not belong in front of leadership.
Learn the finance language of your business. Outcomes have to be stated in terms the CFO already cares about, not in marketing's own dialect.
The teams that survive the next budget review will be the ones who can say what they changed, not what they did.