Too many CEOs accept vague promises from their marketing partners.
“Trust the process.”
“It takes time.”
“We can’t control the market.”
Let’s stop pretending these are legitimate answers. They’re not. They’re mediocrity disguised as strategy.
The B2B Marketing Revolution™, a research-backed framework built on 12 critical battles that middle-market CEOs must win to achieve guaranteed outcomes, calls for something radically different.
“Battle 1 asks you to do something radical. It asks you to believe you deserve it. It asks you to believe you will achieve your desired marketing results. It asks you to believe that success can be guaranteed.”
The truth is simple: If your agency or internal team won’t guarantee results, they’re protecting themselves—not your growth. And in all likelihood, they simply don’t have the infrastructure to predict, let alone, guarantee outcomes.
Accept That You Deserve More Than “Best Efforts”
Most agencies still sell “time and creativity,” not outcomes. That model is dead. It doesn’t matter how clever the campaign looks if it doesn’t move the needle on revenue. If it isn’t lifting gross profit or strengthening your company’s valuation, it’s wasted effort.
Ask yourself: why would you keep paying an agency that won’t stand behind its own projections? If a partner won’t put skin in the game, walk away.
That’s the first mindset shift in the 12 Battles™ Framework. CEOs must stop accepting industry excuses and start demanding accountability.
The Myth of “Unpredictable” Marketing
You’ve heard the excuses:
- Marketing is part art, part science.
- Consumer behavior is too fickle.
- Competition makes prediction impossible.
- We don’t control the whole sales process.
It’s all bullshit.
The reality: predictable outcomes are possible when marketing is rooted in disciplined research and strategy, then held accountable with real-world performance measures. You can forecast customer behavior within a reasonable margin of error when you know their past patterns and future intentions—data revealed through robust market research.
That’s the backbone of a results-guaranteed strategy. Or, as the book puts it:
“Maybe you’re asking yourself what a results-guaranteed marketing strategy is? Refined down to its purest form, a results-guaranteed marketing strategy is how you expand while everyone else is contracting.”
CEO Reality Check: Why Is Marketing the Exception?
Think about the standards you demand from every other division in your business:
- Finance must deliver accurate reporting to the penny.
- Operations must hit efficiency and safety benchmarks.
- Operations must hit efficiency and safety benchmarks.
Sales must close deals tied directly to quota.
Miss those marks, and you hold people accountable.
So why is marketing the lone department allowed to get away with excuses instead of outcomes? Why do we accept “best efforts” when we’d never tolerate that mindset anywhere else in the company?
The answer: habit. The industry has trained leaders to expect less. But CEOs who buy into that narrative are unintentionally subsidizing mediocrity.
What the Data Says About Guarantees
RedRover’s landmark 2024 U.S. Middle-Market B2B Marketing Performance Study uncovered staggering proof of this gap:
55% of agencies don’t offer any guarantee.
Only 14% of B2B companies receive an MROI (marketing return on investment) performance guarantee.
And yet, 83% of leaders say they’d be more likely to partner with an agency that offers one.
Here’s the kicker: satisfaction spikes when guarantees are in place. CEOs working with agencies that guarantee outcomes are nearly three times more likely to be highly satisfied with MROI. Without a guarantee? Only 15% say the same.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s accountability in action.
What Demanding Guarantees Looks Like in Practice
If demanding guarantees feels foreign, here’s what it looks like in real terms:
- Set Growth KPIs That Matter – Stop tracking vanity metrics like impressions or clicks. Insist on gross profit, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and lifetime value (LTV).
- Tie Compensation to Outcomes – Reward agencies and internal teams based on hitting projections, not producing activity.
- Require Research-Driven Strategies – Demand that every marketing plan be grounded in both qualitative and quantitative research—customer interviews and surveys, market sizing, competitive mapping, and conversion analysis.
- Benchmark Relentlessly – Compare marketing ROI to other investments you make in the business. If it doesn’t clear the same hurdle rate, it’s not worth your dollars.
- Say No to Vagueness – If a partner can’t project results with specificity—dollars in, dollars out—walk away.
Guarantees aren’t about perfection. They’re about clarity, discipline, and accountability.
Mediocrity Is Expensive
Every time you settle for “best efforts,” you’re losing market share to competitors with the guts to demand more.
Settling looks like:
Celebrating vanity metrics instead of gross profit.
Accepting vague timelines instead of hard growth projections.
Paying for “activity” instead of outcomes.
This mindset drains millions from middle-market companies every year. Predictable growth isn’t a luxury—it’s your competitive advantage.
The Path to Predictable Growth
Demanding guarantees isn’t about magical thinking—it’s about adopting a results-guaranteed marketing strategy. That means:
- Research-backed insights – Deep qualitative and quantitative research that uncovers customer truths and exposes market gaps while pinpointing opportunities for optimization.
- Disciplined strategy – A documented plan with measurable projections, including clear expectations for MROI, CAC, and LTV that leave no room for ambiguity.
- Accountability structures – Teams (internal or agency) rewarded and retained based on outcomes, not effort.
It’s not easy. But neither is leading a B2B company in today’s cutthroat market.
Stop Settling. Start Demanding.
At the end of the day, the question is blunt:
If your market team or agency isn’t willing to guarantee outcomes, and you’re willing to invest in the research that would allow them to, why the hell are they in this business?
As a CEO, you already demand accountability from every other division. Why should marketing be the exception?
Stop tolerating excuses. Stop rewarding mediocrity. Start demanding guarantees.
Because in this revolution, only one truth matters: predictable growth belongs to leaders who refuse to settle.
Start a Revolution: ACCEPT that you deserve and will achieve guaranteed marketing outcomes.
By Lori Turner-Wilson, RedRover CEO/Founder, Internationally Best-Selling Author of The B2B Marketing Revolution™: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes
Taking Action
The above insights are part of hundreds of best practices found in The B2B Marketing Revolution™: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes — the playbook that middle-market B2B CEOs and marketing leaders lean on to scale. Backed by a groundbreaking research study, this book offers time-tested best practices, indispensable KPIs for benchmarking, insights on where your dollars are best spent, and, above all, the proven 12 Battles™ Framework for generating guaranteed marketing outcomes. The B2B Marketing Revolution™ is a battle-hardened approach to becoming an outcomes-first leader who’s ready to shake up the status quo, invest in high-payoff market research and optimization, and — yes — even torch what’s not serving your endgame. Download more than 50 templates, scripts, and tools from the book on the Battle Reader Hub.
If you’d like to talk about how to build a marketing engine that delivers predictable results — whether you want to build it yourself or tag in our team to lead the way — we’d be delighted to help you get started.
