Marketing View
Recurring performance first; a bounded test as one response.
Fictional teaching example. All circumstances, amounts, and thresholds are illustrative, not company results or benchmarks.
Qualified pipeline is 20% below plan.
August delivered $2.4M against $3M. Diagnose fit and progression before expanding acquisition spend.
Headline: August qualified pipeline is 20% below plan. Investigate weakening qualification and slower progression before expanding acquisition spend.
| Reporting block | Period | Result and comparison | Action / owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spend and allocation | August | $300K / $300K budget; $24K pilot spend and $276K other work | Keep incremental spend subject to a new decision / Head of Marketing |
| Qualified pipeline creation | August | 24 / 30 planned; $2.4M / $3M. Core: 18 / $2.1M; pilot: 6 / $0.3M | Examine shortfall by audience and program / Demand lead |
| Quality and progression | August starts; August 31 snapshot | 24/120 (20%) sales conversations admitted to evaluation, versus July 30/120 (25%). 8 of 40 open evaluations have no completed milestone for 30 days | Review fit and stalled milestones with Sales / Demand lead and Sales Operations |
| Acquisition and conversion | August versus July | 40K visits → 800 inquiries (2.0%), versus 40K → 1,000 (2.5%) | Diagnose source mix, message, and landing-page friction / Digital lead |
| Brand and discovery | August versus July | 2.4% Share of Search, up 0.4 points; 4,800 direct visits, up from 4,000 | Check search drivers and direct-traffic quality; do not equate either with buying intent / Brand and Digital leads |
Sales feedback: Unsupported workflows recur in paid-acquisition conversations. Review the requirement evidence and segment mix before concluding this is a messaging, targeting, or product problem.
Pilot drill-down: success is not yet established
Acquisition July 1–August 11; outcomes through August 31. Program totals below span two months and must not be added to August totals.
| Measure | Paid campaigns | Community outreach |
|---|---|---|
| Program spend | $36K | $24K |
| Accounts reaching a sales conversation | 40 | 20 |
| Qualified evaluations | 4 | 8 |
| Purchased / ended without purchase / still evaluating | 1 / 1 / 2 | 3 / 1 / 4 |
Against the agreed criteria: 12 evaluations meet the interim checkpoint. Four purchases and $200K contracted recurring value remain below the final criteria of six and $300K. Three customers are live ($150K ARR); one awaits activation. Spending reached the $60K cap. Delivery effort remains under review.
Decision: Finish the open evaluations and measure their 90-day outcomes. No automatic extension of spend. Any further work requires an explicit new allocation; the original test criteria remain unchanged. The different audiences and small samples do not establish causal channel superiority.
Owner: Head of Marketing with Sales. Monthly scorecard, weekly exception monitoring, and pilot checkpoints on the agreed schedule.