Maximize marketing ROI—before you waste another dollar

Your campaign performance is everything—are you setting it up to succeed?

Every campaign is a series of bets—on audience, message, creative, and channel. Each decision carries the potential to shape or sink results.

Today, those risks are magnified. Marketing budgets have dropped to 7.7% of company revenue—the lowest since 2021—while pressure to drive growth and profitability remains high. Marketers must move fast, stay relevant, and prove impact—all at once.

Yet many campaigns still go live without a clear view of how they’ll perform.

Modern audiences expect immediate clarity and relevance. If your message misses, visuals confuse, or tone feels off, they’ll disengage in seconds. And by the time metrics reveal a problem, it’s often too late to course-correct.

Despite a wealth of dashboards and data, teams often miss the most critical input: direct feedback from the people they’re trying to reach. Instead, decisions are shaped by internal assumptions, historical patterns, and ideas that “felt right.”

But gut instinct doesn’t scale. Metrics can’t explain why something didn’t land. And postmortems can’t fix what early insight could have prevented.

Marketing has evolved. How we build campaigns hasn’t. That’s the real gap—and the real opportunity.

When the stakes are high, guesswork gets expensive

Campaigns rarely fail all at once. They bleed ROI through a thousand cuts—small, preventable missteps that add up fast. And in a results-driven climate, those cuts aren’t just painful—they’re expensive.

Here’s what’s at risk:

• Wasted media and production spend: Launching without testing your creative or messaging is a gamble—and often means investing heavily in assets that were never set up to succeed.
• Underperforming campaigns: When your message confuses, visuals miss the mark, or strategy doesn’t connect, performance suffers. And metrics alone won’t explain what went wrong.
• Disjointed cross-channel experiences: Inconsistent messaging across formats, platforms, or regions creates confusion instead of cohesion—hurting both brand perception and campaign results.
• Slow response to market shifts: Traditional feedback loops can’t keep pace with changing expectations. By the time insights surface, the opportunity may be gone.
• Low stakeholder confidence: Without reliable inputs early on, it’s harder to defend creative decisions, align teams, or rally support for bold ideas.
• Creative burnout and guesswork: Tight timelines and recycled thinking lead to generic outputs, team fatigue, and diminishing returns.
• Inability to connect brand and business outcomes: When it’s unclear which elements drove impact, ROI becomes a black box—and future strategy is built on assumptions, not insight.

These aren’t theoretical risks—they’re real challenges playing out every day in campaigns that could have performed better. The longer teams rely on guesswork, the more budget, opportunity, and trust they risk losing.

If marketers know better, why do campaigns still fall short?

Marketers are smart. They’ve got data, experience, and strong instincts. But even the best teams still run into the same ROI-killing traps. Why? Because the systems and workflows behind campaign development haven’t kept pace with the speed—or complexity—of modern marketing.

Here’s why these challenges keep happening:

1. Campaigns are built on internal alignment—not audience reality

Under pressure, teams often prioritize stakeholder consensus over customer clarity. Creative gets approved in boardrooms, not validated with real audiences—leaving critical assumptions unchecked until it’s too late.

2. Feedback cycles are too slow for real impact

Traditional research takes weeks—by the time results come in, the campaign is live or the budget’s spent. What was intended to guide strategy becomes a retrospective.

3. Data explains what happened—but not why

Metrics like CTR, conversion rates, and ROAS report the outcome, not the drivers behind it. Without understanding what shaped those results, marketers are left guessing what to adjust—or mistakenly doubling down on what didn’t work.

4. Teams are working in silos

Strategy, media, creative, analytics, and brand often operate on separate tracks. That fragmentation leads to disconnects in messaging, inconsistent execution, and reduced impact across channels.

5. Time pressure kills iteration

Timelines are tighter than ever, and speed often outranks precision. Teams move from idea to execution with little space to pressure-test or refine—so fast decisions can lead to fast misfires.

6. Brand and performance goals are still treated separately

Marketing is still divided into “brand” and “performance” efforts. But today’s campaigns must do both—build emotional connection and drive results. When those goals aren’t aligned, neither delivers at its full potential.

These aren’t isolated issues—they’re patterns playing out across the industry. And they’re not happening because marketers don’t know better. They’re happening because the systems surrounding them make it incredibly hard to do things differently

Is your campaign ROI slipping? Here’s how to tell

Performance issues don’t always show up as flashing red alerts. More often, they creep in quietly—masked by familiar KPIs. But the warning signs are there, if you know where to look.

Here are common signals that your campaigns may not be reaching their full potential:

• Stagnant or declining return on ad spend (ROAS): If media efficiency is slipping—even with smart targeting and budget optimizations—the issue could be messaging or creative that simply isn’t resonating.
• Rising customer acquisition costs (CAC): When it takes more spend to drive the same results, something isn’t landing. It could be a mismatch in audience, offer, or execution.
• Low or flat conversion rates: Strong impressions or clicks don’t matter if they don’t lead to action. If conversion is low, the campaign may be confusing, forgettable, or misaligned with audience needs.
• High cost per conversion or lead: If acquisition costs are climbing without a lift in quality, your campaign may not be reaching—or convincing—the right audience.
• Weak engagement signals: Low click-through rates, short view times, or high bounce rates all point to one thing: your message isn’t cutting through.
• Inconsistent performance across channels: If a campaign performs well in one channel but flops in another, the issue could be fragmented execution or messaging that doesn’t translate across formats.
• Low MQL to SQL conversion rates: If leads check the boxes but stall in the funnel, your campaign may be setting the wrong expectations—or targeting the wrong segment.
• Delayed access to performance insights: When feedback comes weeks after launch, it’s too late to pivot. That lag stalls agility—and ROI.
• Misalignment on what success looks like: If creative, strategy, and performance teams aren’t aligned on goals, it’s no surprise when results fall short.

Whether you’re tracking ROAS, CAC, cost per lead, MQL-to-SQL rate, or ROMI, these metrics don’t just reflect performance—they reveal where things may be breaking down. These aren’t just numbers; they’re signals of deeper process issues. The good news? Once you can spot them, you can start to fix them.

The one thing high-performing campaigns do differently

Most marketing teams focus on optimization after launch—tweaking budgets, retargeting audiences, or swapping out creative. But if the core idea doesn’t land, no amount of fine-tuning can salvage performance.

High-performing teams do one thing differently: they validate early. They bring customer insight into strategy and creative development before the spend is committed—so their campaigns aren’t just well-executed, but well-directed from the very beginning.

Yet according to Nielsen’s 2024 Annual Marketing Report, 70% of marketers plan to increase performance marketing spend this year—often at the expense of brand building. This shift makes early validation more essential than ever. Without it, performance marketing efforts risk being built on shaky foundations.

High-impact marketing starts with the right inputs

Many teams try to fix performance in-flight—adjusting spend, rewriting copy, or launching A/B tests. But when the foundation is flawed—when the message doesn’t resonate or the creative doesn’t connect—downstream optimization won’t be enough.

Top-performing teams don’t just move faster. They plan smarter. They validate ideas before the budget is locked, before the launch clock starts, and before performance is on the line.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Clarity of message: Testing whether your positioning, value props, and calls-to-action are clear, compelling, and aligned with what your audience cares about.
• Creative effectiveness: Understanding how visual elements, tone, and narrative are received emotionally and cognitively.
• Audience fit: Ensuring your concept speaks directly to real people—not just abstract personas.
• Channel alignment: Checking that your assets hold up across platforms, formats, and use cases before rollout.
• Strategic confidence: Making decisions based on real evidence—not assumptions or gut instinct.

Leading marketing teams use customer insights to:

• Uncover friction before it costs performance: Spot misaligned messaging, irrelevant offers, or confusing creative early—before launch, not after impact.
• Validate bold ideas with real people: Pressure-test high-stakes creative directions to avoid wasted spend and reputational risk.
• Refine earlier, not reactively: Shape smarter concepts during planning, not while scrambling mid-campaign.
• Align faster and reduce rework: Unite stakeholders with customer-validated insights that drive faster reviews and clearer decisions.

Customer insight accelerates clarity, speed, and impact. And in a performance-driven environment, that’s the edge that separates teams hoping for ROI from those consistently delivering it.

Boosting ROI starts with how you build

High-performing teams don’t wait for results to show up on a dashboard—they engineer success from the start. By building insight-driven, strategically aligned campaigns, they design for performance across the entire customer journey.

Validate your campaign strategy before it becomes expensive

• ​​Run early messaging and creative audits to confirm clarity, relevance, and differentiation—before anything hits the market.
• Test bold or high-stakes concepts with your actual audience to reduce risk and amplify impact.
• Challenge internal assumptions about customer needs, motivations, and behaviors before finalizing your direction.
• Review historical performance to identify repeatable wins, avoid past pitfalls, and surface new opportunities.

Align creative and media for performance across every channel

• Validate tone, story, and CTA alignment across platforms to ensure your message remains consistent and compelling in every format
• Test how assets translate across channels to confirm that emotional resonance and clarity hold up, whether it’s a video ad, social post, or landing page
• Identify disconnects between ad and destination experiences to eliminate drop-off points and reduce friction in the customer journey.
• Evaluate concepts for dual performance—ensuring creative drives both emotional engagement and measurable outcomes.

Optimize for conversions: without sacrificing customer connection

• Test messaging for clarity and persuasion to ensure compelling offers aren’t lost in confusing language or delivery.
• Run CTA and form-flow experiments to identify and eliminate friction points that hinder completion rates.
• Assess landing page and content layouts for visual hierarchy, ease of comprehension, and audience relevance.
• Check message hierarchy to confirm that your most important points come through clearly, quickly, and persuasively.

Build agility into your measurement and optimization cycles

• Establish real-time feedback loops to capture insights quickly and optimize campaigns while they’re still live.
• Track early friction signals—like bounce rates and drop-offs—to identify where performance is stalling.
• Segment results by audience, channel, and creative to pinpoint what’s working—and what’s not—at a granular level.
• Align on shared success metrics to reduce guesswork, eliminate internal friction, and improve cross-functional collaboration.

Make insight a core part of how you plan—not just how you react

• Embed testing checkpoints into your workflow to ensure key decisions are validated before spend is committed.
• Replace intuition with audience validation during strategy and concept development—so bold ideas are backed by real feedback.
• Bring brand, creative, and performance teams in early to align on direction—not just review deliverables after the fact.
• Use insights to shape investment strategy—not just explain results after launch.

Customer success stories: Turning customer insights into measurable ROI

When marketers integrate customer insight early in their workflow, they don’t just improve experiences—they drive real, measurable business impact. These leading brands used UserTesting to uncover friction, optimize strategy, and boost ROI across channels, campaigns, and conversions.

Sage: Increasing conversions through messaging clarity and usability

Sage’s marketing team needed to reduce friction on key product and support pages, where confusion was leading to lost conversions and lower lead quality.

Solution:
Using UserTesting’s Human Insight Platform along with QXscore™ and the Insights Hub, Sage: 

• Tested page flows and messaging clarity with target users
• Identified and eliminated friction in support navigation
• Validated updated designs and content prior to rollout

Results:

• 22% increase in conversions on Sage Intacct pages
• 31% increase in form completions from improved support experiences
• 170+ personalization and experimentation initiatives launched
• 6-point average QXscore increase across key digital experiences

UserTesting has been a key partner in helping us transform feedback into impactful digital experiences that resonate with our users.

Susan Liu Senior User Research Manager, Sage

ROI impact: Better user experiences led to improved lead quality, higher conversions, and increased marketing-generated revenue at scale.

Zenni Optical: Unlocking growth by improving the checkout experience

Zenni’s performance marketing team identified cart abandonment as a major revenue blocker—suspecting mandatory account creation as a key barrier.

Solution:
With UserTesting, Zenni:

• Validated friction points through usability tests and customer feedback
• Compared guest vs. account-required checkout flows
• Prioritized guest checkout based on direct user input

Results:

• 2x revenue compared to projections following guest checkout launch
• 900% increase in sales from guest checkout users
• 23% reduction in checkout exit rates

Leveraging UserTesting's Premier Support has allowed our team to scale and help designers and other stakeholders run their own tests. We do that with guardrails so we can ensure that everything they test aligns with our standards.

Justine Issavi Director of Research, Zenni Optical

ROI impact: Streamlining the path to purchase removed friction and unlocked significant revenue growth—driven directly by customer insight.

Panera Bread: Elevating brand and digital performance through journey optimization

Panera’s marketing and UX teams set out to redesign their catering site to better reflect the warmth and ease of the in-store experience.

Solution:
Using UserTesting, Panera:

• Captured user input on layout preferences and navigation behaviors
• Refined messaging and visual hierarchy for clarity and emotional impact
• Personalized landing flows based on customer expectations

Results:

• 18% year-over-year increase in revenue per visit
• 9% increase in conversion rates
• Stronger alignment between digital and in-store brand experiences

ROI impact: Enhancing the end-to-end journey boosted conversion and revenue per session—without increasing media spend.

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Boost marketing ROI with insights—not afterthoughts

The most effective marketers don’t wait for campaign results to tell them what went wrong. They test, validate, and refine before anything goes live—so every decision is set up to perform.

Teams that consistently deliver results don’t rely on gut instinct or wait for post-launch metrics to guide them. They put customer insight at the core of their strategy—from initial concept to creative execution to in-market optimization. And in a landscape where budgets are tight and expectations are high, that mindset isn’t just smart—it’s essential.

The good news? You don’t have to guess. Leading marketing teams use fast, actionable insights to shape campaigns that resonate, convert, and deliver measurable ROI. By gathering feedback earlier, you avoid costly missteps and launch with confidence—knowing your message will hit, your creative will connect, and your investment will pay off.

ROI isn’t something you fix later. It’s something you build in from the start. Test earlier. Launch smarter. Perform better.