EF News
By Jimmy Dodgson, Client Services Director at Maitland
Jimmy Dodgson of Maitland shares why a focus on outcomes, not activities, is the only way to GROW in 2026 and beyond.
For decades, business leaders have been sold a version of marketing that is fundamentally broken. You pay for activities, four blogs a month, twenty social posts, a monthly newsletter, then wonder: “What did that actually do for my bottom line?” This is the ‛Activity Trap’, and in 2026, it’s a death sentence for growth. Traditional marketing delivers vanity metrics: website traffic, social impressions, email open rates that never connect to your bank balance.
High traffic is useless if it doesn’t convert; thousands of followers are a cost if they never buy. Fragmented across multiple agencies, it creates chaos, confusing reports, and zero accountability. You’re paying for activity, not outcomes. The data confirms this crisis. 70% of UK CMOs report being forced to ‛do more with less’, yet only 17% are satisfied with their marketing performance. 56% don’t have enough time to analyse data properly, and 35% struggle with channel coordination. When measurement is fragmented and resources stretched thin, you’re making critical budget decisions on incomplete information. Marketing as a list of siloed deliverables is dead. What’s risen is a singular focus on commercial results. Businesses no longer ask “What did my agency do?” but “What measurable outcome did my investment produce?” So what should ambitious businesses be doing?
Define a single commercial goal
Before you spend a pound, define success in concrete terms. Not ‛brand awareness’, but ‛achieve a 4:1 gross profit return on spend within 12 months’. This North Star aligns every decision. The Data and Marketing Association UK reports £42 return for every £1 spent on properly executed marketing, but this requires clarity and rigorous measurement from the outset.
Demand an accountable partner
A supplier completes tasks. A partner is accountable for outcomes. Find a team whose senior members are actively involved, whose success is contractually aligned with yours, and who focus on business metrics like Return on Spend and Customer Acquisition Cost rather than vanity metrics.
Insist on cohesive planning
Every activity must serve your primary commercial goal. SEO insights inform social content; paid ad data highlights which value propositions resonate. Cohesion turns disparate activities into a single growth engine. Without it, you’re left with the fragmented chaos that 33% of UK marketers struggle with.
Measure what matters
Focus on business metrics over vanity metrics. UK marketing emails deliver 3,600-3,800% ROI (£36-£38 per £1 spent). Understanding these benchmarks helps you allocate resources to your highest-return opportunities.
The technology exists
Modern platforms have evolved dramatically, with businesses using sophisticated technology reporting 32% higher ROI. But many UK marketers cite keeping up with change as a key challenge. What’s missing isn’t the tools, it’s the strategic framework and accountable partnership to deploy them effectively. At Maitland, we built our GROW partnership model to replace the broken system. Rather than charging for activities, we align our success with yours through outcome-based partnerships. We define a measurable commercial goal together, typically a specific return on spend target over 12 months. Every strategy, campaign, and content piece serves that goal. GROW delivers complete transparency through unified dashboards tracking business metrics, not vanity metrics. We bring together all capabilities under one roof: strategic planning, creative execution, technical implementation, and rigorous measurement. One partner, one plan, one clear measure of success.
The world has changed. It’s time marketing did too!
