What Marketing KPIs Should Actually Appear in Your Board Deck (A Fractional CMO's Answer)
Your last board meeting included a slide with website traffic, social followers, and email open rates. An investor asked what those numbers meant for revenue. You did not have a clean answer. This is a fixable problem. But it starts with knowing which metrics belong in front of a board and which ones belong in an internal marketing report. What Most Startups Get Wrong About Board-Level Reporting? Boards are composed of people who think in business outcomes: revenue, growth rate, unit economics, capital efficiency. When marketing presents activity metrics — traffic, clicks, impressions — the board has to do mental work to connect those inputs to outcomes they care about. Most of the time, they cannot make that connection. Neither can you. The result is credibility erosion. The board does not understand marketing's contribution to growth, so they question the budget. Marketing feels misunderstood and undervalued. The funding conversation for next quarter...