Launching a company podcast or sending a team to man a conference booth can be among the most expensive marketing bets – and the hardest to justify. Founders often find themselves reasoning that “we have to be there, even if we can’t fully track the return.” Venture capitalist Jason Lemkin has noted that some of the lowest ROI marketing tactics (like writing a book) can have payoff if done right, but only with exceptional execution. In practice, many startups make these investments based on faith or fear of missing out rather than data. This article explores how to decide whether such an investment is worthwhile and offers a framework to evaluate the ROI of these murky marketing moves.
The Temptation of Big, Intangible Bets
It’s easy to see why software founders get tempted by strategies like industry podcasts or trade show booths. These tactics promise brand exposure, credibility, and relationships that are hard to get through purely digital channels. For example, attending major events puts you face-to-face with customers and partners – as Lemkin puts it, “buyers show up to the best ones”. In one early startup, his team only generated one lead from a big conference – but that lead turned into a $1M/year deal, instantly justifying the expense. The mental model here is that even a single whale customer or a boost in industry buzz can make the big spend worthwhile. Founders also worry that if they don’t show up (or don’t produce thought leadership content), competitors will seize the spotlight.
Another common justification is long-term brand building. A podcast series might not drive immediate leads, but it can slowly position your team as thought leaders. A flashy booth might not yield instant sales, but it “leaves a mark” on the market’s memory. As one marketing leader observed, some campaigns start with unknown or murky ROI but later drive significant revenue. Others create indirect value – e.g. content that sales reps reuse, or buzz that fuels a flywheel of word-of-mouth. In short, intangible benefits (like brand awareness, trust, and community) are real – they just don’t show up on a spreadsheet right away.
The ROI Dilemma: Why It’s So Hard to Measure
The flip side is that these investments come with ambiguous ROI signals. By definition, it’s tough to attribute revenue to a podcast listen or a hallway conversation at an expo. As marketing author Aazar Shad notes, the value of conferences is “difficult to quantify” – you never know when a conversation or contact will later yield an opportunity. Often people attend events to learn and browse, not buy on the spot, which means the sales payoff (if any) surfaces months down the line. Similarly, corporate podcasts tend to spark interest or nurture relationships early in the funnel, rather than trigger immediate conversions. This indirect influence makes it tricky to tie specific leads or deals to the podcast.
Another challenge is the prevalence of vanity metrics. It’s easy to count podcast downloads, booth visitors, or social media impressions – but those numbers mean little if they’re not the right people. “What matters is who, not how many,” advises Lemkin. You might celebrate 1,000 podcast listeners, but if none are in your target customer segment, the ROI is effectively zero. A small, engaged audience is far more valuable: “If 30 people listen and one is a prospect who now decides to buy, that’s a big win,” Lemkin says. The key is that impact often comes from quality over quantity, but quality is harder to measure.
Finally, there’s the issue of opportunity cost. Money and team bandwidth spent on a hazy-ROI project could have been spent on something trackable like performance ads or outbound sales. These indirect campaigns need to clear a higher justification bar: you must believe their strategic value outweighs the loss of more measurable opportunities.
A Framework for Evaluating Murky-ROI Investments
Before you write that big check or commit dozens of hours, run the decision through a structured evaluation. Here’s a framework (and checklist) to guide your thinking:
Define Your Objective Clearly
What do you hope to achieve from this initiative? Be specific. Is it lead generation (how many?), brand awareness (in what segment?), customer retention, or something else? Setting a concrete goal forces clarity. For instance, are you starting a podcast to generate 10 sales-ready leads per quarter, or to educate existing customers? Align these goals with overall business objectives and make them as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) as possible. Without a clear purpose, you won’t know how to judge success or failure.
Identify the Target Audience (the “Who”)
Pinpoint who you are trying to reach or influence. Ensure that this channel actually connects with them. If your ideal customers are CTOs in fintech, will they listen to a niche podcast on your topic? If enterprise buyers attend only two big conferences a year, is your event one of them? Do your research: for events, get attendee demographics; for content, define buyer personas. This step is crucial because, as noted, engaging 50 right people beats 5,000 random ones. If you can’t reasonably expect to get the right eyeballs or conversations, the ROI will be illusory.
Estimate the Potential Benefits
Next, try to quantify what a win would look like – even if it’s a rough estimate. For an event, calculate how many leads or meetings would make it pay off. (E.g. “If we spend $50k on this trade show, we’d need at least 5 qualified opportunities or 1 closed deal to break even.”) For a podcast, consider the value of an influenced deal or the cost savings of content reuse. This exercise is part math, part educated guessing. It helps to leverage any available benchmarks or data: for example, at SaaStr Annual (a large SaaS event), booth sizes correlated with lead volume – Diamond sponsors (~2x cost of Gold) averaged ~661 leads vs 207 for Gold. If bigger sponsors are getting 3x the leads, that hints at the upside of investing more (provided those leads are good). Similarly, if a competitor’s webinar draws 500 signups of your target buyers, a great podcast might tap a comparable audience. Sketch best-case, average-case, and worst-case scenarios for outcomes. If even the best-case ROI is minimal, that’s a red flag.
Weigh the Costs – Both Hard and Soft
Tally the full cost of the investment. Hard costs include sponsorship fees, travel, booth fabrication, podcast production, equipment, advertising, etc. Soft costs include your team’s time and focus (e.g. hours spent preparing talks or editing audio). These soft costs are easy to underestimate. Sending 5 people to a conference isn’t just airfare and tickets – it’s also dozens of hours away from day-to-day sales or development work. Ask yourself: “Can we truly afford this right now?” and “What else could those resources do instead?”. If you didn’t do the podcast/booth, could that budget accelerate pay-per-click campaigns or hire an extra salesperson? This opportunity cost check ensures you’re not just chasing shiny objects at the expense of proven channels.
Consider Strategic Value
Some investments have value beyond immediate dollars and cents. For example, an industry conference might also be an PR moment (media coverage, analyst impressions) or a morale boost for your team. A company podcast could be a way to court key relationships by inviting influential guests (who might become partners or clients). These strategic angles can tip the scales, but be honest about them. Do they align with your strategy? If partnership-building is a goal, is the conference known for having the partners you want? It helps to rank the importance of intangible benefits. If brand awareness or “being seen as a player in the market” is the real aim, acknowledge that and ensure the investment actually serves that aim (e.g. the event has the right press and crowd).
Plan How You’ll Execute (aka “If we do it, do it right”)
A critical best practice is only undertake these big bets if you can commit to doing them well. Half-hearted efforts waste money. For events, that means training your team to actively engage every visitor (no staff sitting idle on their phones) and possibly investing in an eye-catching booth or promotions to draw traffic. The difference in results can be dramatic – Lemkin shared that at one SaaS event, two similar companies with identical booths had widely differing outcomes (221 vs 507 leads) because one team aggressively worked the floor while the other did not. If you’re not prepared to stand out and follow up, even the biggest booth won’t yield ROI. For a podcast, “doing it right” means crafting high-quality, valuable content consistently. If you can’t line up compelling topics or guests and stick to a schedule, you’ll end up with a forgotten series that helped no one. Be realistic: do you have the bandwidth and skill to execute at a level that justifies the spend? If not, either scale down the initiative or hold off until you can.
Establish Success Metrics and a Tracking Plan
Even if you can’t measure everything, decide in advance how you will gauge success. Identify a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that relate to your original objective. For a lead-gen driven event, KPIs might be number of scan badges, demo requests, or pipeline dollars generated within 3 months. For a podcast aimed at thought leadership, you might track the number of target accounts who tune in, or an increase in direct traffic/queries that mention the podcast. Use tracking methods where possible: unique promo codes or URLs for event leads, post-event surveys (“How did you hear about us?”), or CRM tags for leads influenced by the podcast. Modern marketing teams also use attribution modeling to distribute credit to touchpoints – for example, giving partial credit to a podcast if a prospect listened to episodes and later converted. The point isn’t to get a perfect ROI calculation, but to have some evidence to analyze later. Set a calendar reminder to review these metrics post-campaign (e.g. 3 months after the conference) and compare against your goals.
Explore Lower-Cost Tests or Alternatives
Before going all-in, consider if you can dip a toe in the water. For instance, rather than launching a full-fledged company podcast straight away, you might start by guest-appearing on relevant industry podcasts to gauge audience interest. Or produce 3 pilot episodes and see if they gain traction. For events, if the $100k mega-booth is daunting, try attending with a small team and doing a modest sponsor package, or host a private dinner during the event as a test. These experiments can validate whether the channel has promise. That said, note that some tactics only work at scale – a tiny booth at a huge trade show might get completely overlooked. Still, creative alternatives exist: “hacking” an event by networking in the lobby or setting up meetings around the conference can work for scrappy founders, though it requires extra hustle. Weigh if a more cost-effective approach can achieve a similar outcome.
Make the Decision and Commit
After weighing all the above, make a go/no-go decision. If you decide the investment is worth trying, commit fully and don’t shy away from the spending necessary to execute well. (As the data showed, a larger booth that doubles your qualified leads is actually cheaper per lead in the end – the same principle can apply to podcast quality and reach.) On the other hand, if the justification isn’t there, be disciplined enough to say no. Many founders have a fear of missing out, but remember: focus is key in early-stage companies. You can always revisit the idea later when resources grow. Document the reasoning behind your decision so you can learn from it.
Review Results and Learn
If you went for it, analyze the outcomes against your success metrics and capture learnings. Did you get the leads or brand lift you hoped for? If not, why? Maybe the audience was different than expected, or your execution needed improvement. If yes, what was the real cost per lead or impact, and does that justify doing it again? Sometimes you won’t see the full ripple effects for months or years (e.g. a podcast episode might bring an unexpected client a year later). Keep anecdotal evidence too: sales team feedback (“everyone at the event knew our brand!”) or notable shout-outs. These qualitative results are part of the ROI story. Use all this to decide whether to continue, double-down, or pivot your strategy next time. In some cases, you might conclude that the ROI just isn’t there, and that’s okay – better to reallocate efforts to higher-yield activities. In others, you may find the intangible investment paid off in ways you can articulate to stakeholders, which helps justify future budget.
Quick Checklist: Should We Do This Marketing Investment?
- Is our target audience likely to attend this event or consume this content? (If not, reconsider – no audience, no ROI.)
- Does this initiative align with a clear goal (leads, awareness, etc.) and do we have a way to gauge success? (Define what “success” looks like beforehand.)
- Can we realistically execute this at high quality? (Do we have the budget, time, and skills to do it properly? Half-measures won’t yield half the ROI – they might yield zero.)
- What is the opportunity cost? (What will we not do if we pursue this, and might that alternative have a better return?)
- Do potential returns justify the costs in a best-case scenario? (Gut check the upside; if even the best case is weak, that’s a red flag.)
- Have we exhausted lower-cost alternatives or tests? (Could we pilot on a smaller scale or try a different approach to validate the idea?)
- Are we prepared to follow through on post-investment work? (E.g. nurture the leads from the conference, or promote the podcast episodes consistently. The ROI often materializes in the follow-up.)
If you can check off these boxes with confidence, the big bet may well be worth a shot. If not, you might decide to hold off or refocus on marketing tactics with clearer ROI.
Maximizing the ROI When You Proceed
Let’s say you decide to move forward – how can you increase the odds of success? For events, a key tip is to “be where your customers are.” Focus on industry conferences that your buyers actually attend, even if that means fewer events overall. It’s often more efficient to invest in one or two major conferences (where the concentration of prospects is highest) than to scatter budget across 10 minor ones. And once you’re there, remember the threefold purpose Lemkin highlights for events: lead generation, pipeline acceleration, and customer engagement. Even if a trade show doesn’t deliver tons of new leads, it can still be hugely valuable for closing existing deals (meeting a prospect in person can speed up a sale) and for solidifying relationships with current customers (which aids retention and upsells). Measure and staff your booth with those goals in mind – e.g. bring sales reps or execs to meet pipeline prospects, and customer success managers to host customers. Don’t judge the event only by new leads if it also helped renew key clients; account for all three areas of impact.
For content plays like podcasts or webinars, differentiation and value are everything. The world doesn’t need a copycat podcast; your content must provide unique insight or expertise that your target niche craves. One best practice is to tailor the scope narrowly to dominate a specific topic. Instead of a generic “startup podcast,” for example, a software company might create “The AI in Fintech Podcast” if that’s a space where they have deep knowledge and a defined audience. This ensures the right people find it valuable. Additionally, integrate your podcast into your broader marketing efforts – promote episodes through email newsletters, social media, and even in sales conversations. This multi-channel approach maximizes the return on the content by driving more of the right listeners to it. On the back end, track engagement in qualitative ways: which accounts are downloading episodes? Are prospects mentioning the podcast on sales calls? Such feedback is gold for understanding impact.
Follow-up is the unsung hero of ROI. A podcast listener might quietly enjoy your content for months – until one day they fill out a form on your site. Make it easy for content consumers to take next steps: clear calls-to-action in show notes, dedicated landing pages, etc., so you can capture and attribute those leads. For event leads, immediate and personal follow-up (emails, demos, etc.) after the conference will prevent cold leads from fading away, converting more of that hard-won pipeline into revenue.
Finally, know when to pull the plug or iterate. Give the experiment a fair shot, but if after a reasonable period the needle hasn’t moved, be ready to tweak the approach or stop. Perhaps your podcast needs a format change (e.g. shorter episodes, different topics) to resonate. Or maybe sponsoring that big tradeshow is too expensive, but hosting a smaller regional meetup yields a better ROI for your audience. Treat it as a learning process. The beauty of modern marketing is that we can be agile – try things, measure, learn, and double-down on what works.
Bottom Line: Expensive marketing investments with murky ROI – like podcasts, conferences, even writing a book – aren’t inherently good or bad. They can create massive leverage for your brand or become money pits. The difference lies in having a strategic plan and execution behind them. By rigorously evaluating the decision upfront, setting clear goals, and following best practices in execution, you tilt the odds in favor of a positive return. And even when ROI is hard to quantify, approaching these projects with a data-informed mindset will earn you credibility with your team (and investors) that the gamble is a smart one, not just a vanity play.
Sources and Additional Reading
- “Events Work. Events Are Back. But Are They Worth the Big Expense?” – Jason Lemkin, SaaStr (2024). Lemkin’s in-depth take on the value of in-person events, with guidance on when they’re worth it and how to measure success (lead gen, pipeline, customer impact). Great section on why 40% of many marketing budgets go to field events. (SaaStr Blog)
- “You Are Not a Media Company” – Jason Lemkin, SaaStr (2023). Advice for startups ramping up content marketing. Emphasizes focusing on quality over quantity and targeting the right audience (e.g. measure who engages, not vanity metrics). Contains tips on making webinars, podcasts, and blogs actually pay off. (SaaStr Blog)
- Case Study – To Exhibit or Not? Conference as a Growth Channel – Aazar Shad (2019). A first-hand account of a startup’s experience as a first-time conference exhibitor (at SaaStock). Discusses goals, preparations, and detailed outcomes (30+ leads, 1 enterprise deal), as well as the intangibles like networking and product feedback. Concludes with lessons on measuring ROI and whether they’d do it again. (Read on Aazar’s Blog)
- “How CMOs Can Measure and Attribute Leads to Podcasting” – Zoe Haimovitch, Oktopost (2025). Explores the podcast attribution challenge and offers techniques to integrate podcasts into multi-channel campaigns for better measurability. If you’re considering a B2B podcast, this piece provides tactics for tracking engagement and tying episodes to pipeline. (Oktopost Blog)
- “Is a Bigger Booth Worth It at Top Industry Events?” – Jason Lemkin, SaaStr (2023). An analysis of lead data from sponsoring SaaStr Annual. Surprising findings: larger booth packages yielded disproportionately more qualified leads (e.g. Diamond vs Gold sponsors), but only when teams put in the effort. Reinforces that doing events “big” can pay off, with the caveat of proper execution. (Available on SaaStr’s blog)
- LinkedIn Post – Marketing ROI and Murky Projects – Yoav Guttman (via LinkedIn, 2024). Short commentary debunking the notion that marketing must always show immediate ROI. Shares that some programs with unclear ROI initially turned out to drive significant revenue later, or added value in indirect ways (content repurposing, sales enablement). Good perspective on balancing creativity with accountability. (Search on LinkedIn for the quote by Yoav Guttman)
