Why proving ROI is the new battleground for B2B marketers

Monthly budget justifications are now a reality for nearly half of B2B marketers, as pressure from the C-suite intensifies, a new study from LinkedIn reveals.

The new findings from LinkedIn’s B2B ROI Impact research reveal that marketers face continued pressure to find new ways to prove the impact of their work on company revenue.

Some 78 percent of B2B CMOs globally say that proving campaign return on investment (ROI) has become more important in the past two years, but key challenges - such as integration issues, lack of sales-marketing alignment, and time constraints - continue to stall progress.

For Australian marketers, the stakes are even higher. A massive 80% of the 1,000-plus CMOs surveyed say demonstrating ROI is at the top of their list, and new AI tools have emerged as a critical solution to bridge the measurement gap.

As B2B marketers face growing pressure to connect campaigns to revenue, AI is emerging as a key enabler in measurement and optimisation. Nine in 10 B2B marketers say AI has improved their ability to track and enhance ROI, with brands leveraging AI for audience segmentation and targeting, predictive analysis and lead scoring, automating routine tasks, and real-time optimisation of ad spend and creative.

AI strategies also ranked higher than traditional growth tactics like talent attraction and customer acquisition, reinforcing its role as a game-changer for B2B marketing teams.

“In 2025, B2B marketers must get one core operating priority right: proving ROI,” Matt Tindale, head of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, APAC, said. “To move beyond short-term reporting cycles, they need to work closely with senior leaders to identify the right metrics that truly reflect impact.”

From vanity to value

Despite mounting pressure to show immediate performance results, the research suggests that senior leadership remains too focused on short-term volume metrics.

While 47% of C-suite executives prioritise return on ad spend, B2B marketers argue that value-based metrics, such as marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) are far more indicative of true campaign success.

"Vanity metrics, like CPC or CPM, are transient and provide a false sense of performance,” Jae Oh, head of ads measurement at LinkedIn, said.

“B2B sales cycles take time, and the quality of your impressions matters more than quantity. Redefining measurement with senior leaders, helping them understand how your campaigns map to qualified leads - and the cost per qualified lead acquisition - is critical because those are the leads that will drive tangible results for the business.”

With 46% of B2B marketers shifting towards a buyer-group marketing strategy, understanding buyer intent has become a top priority. The research highlights that measuring Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and optimising for pipeline impact will be key differentiators in 2025.

Connecting campaigns to revenue

To help B2B marketers prove long-term impact, LinkedIn is expanding its measurement and attribution capabilities with a suite of new tools to optimise campaigns for high-value leads instead of just clicks and impressions.

The B2B platform is banking on the fact that this will lead to increased conversion rates, with a reduction in cost per action of up to 20 percent. One such tool includes Conversions API (CAPI), which allows B2B marketers to connect their first-party data - both online and offline customer interactions - to LinkedIn to target audiences that are most likely to take action.

For Aimee Simpson, head of digital at the Australian Institute for Business, conversion rates under this new model have improved significantly.

“Since launching CAPI, our lead-to-opportunity conversion has increased by 27 percent,” she said.