Wrong framework, wrong battle
Every budget season, the exact same scene plays out: the CFO lays marketing expenses on the table, the CMO defends them using concepts like "brand equity" and "long-term impact," and the meeting concludes with a vague compromise. The root of this conflict is not a difference in personalities, but a difference in language. Marketing has not learned to speak the language of finance—or it hasn't wanted to.
The common belief is this: marketing is fundamentally a creative and intuitive activity; it cannot be precisely measured, which makes it natural to account for it as an "expense" rather than an "investment." This belief is partly true—but it functions largely as a defense mechanism. And this mechanism is exactly what pushes marketing away from the strategic decision-making table.
We see it differently: marketing is not an unmeasurable field. It has simply been a field that did not want to be measured.
ROAS Misleads You
With the rise of digital advertising, marketers finally acquired a language of measurement: ROAS, CTR, impressions, reach. These metrics appear real—they are quantitative, instantaneous, and colorful. The problem is: the vast majority of these numbers are generated by the platforms themselves, and platforms have strong incentives to inflate them.
What does a 4x ROAS actually mean? It means revenue was generated at four times the amount of the ad spend. But how much net profit in TL did this revenue actually leave the company? How much of this profit consists of sales that would have happened organically anyway? Would the same customer still have bought if the competitor wasn't there?
Asking these questions is not about rejecting ROAS—it is about putting it in its proper place: as a platform metric, not a financial indicator for supporting business decisions. The real question is this: Exactly how much net TL does 1 TL of marketing spend contribute to the company's gross profit? The number of companies that can consistently answer this question is far fewer than one might think.
Portfolio Logic: Thinking of Marketing as a Financial Instrument
How do you build an investment portfolio? You analyze the risk/return profile. You diversify the assets. You track the performance of each position separately. You define the time horizon: is this a short-term or long-term position?
Marketing can be structured using the exact same logic.
Every channel is an instrument with its own unique risk/return profile:
- SEO and content: Low volatility, compound returns. When you stop, its value erodes slowly—but the gains are never completely wiped out.
- Performance advertising: High liquidity, fast turnaround, high dependency risk. When you stop it, it stops instantly.
- Brand building (ATL): The longest time horizon, highest uncertainty, and the most defensible capital. It is the hardest to measure—but it makes you the hardest to disrupt.
These three layers are not competing against one another. A healthy growth portfolio includes all three; but different expectations, different measurement criteria, and different time horizons must be defined for each.
This is exactly where growth engineering comes into play: understanding the profile of each instrument, allocating the budget accordingly, and backing every decision with traceable, verifiable data.
Asking Data the Right Questions
When we begin working with a client, the first step is always the same. It is not asking, "How many TL are you spending on which channel?" but rather, "How do you measure the contribution of this spend to your business profit?"
Most of the time, the answer is, "We look at ROAS" or "Our agency reports it." This is akin to a portfolio manager opening a Bloomberg terminal and only looking at the percentage change in a stock's price. The data is there, but the context to support a financial decision is missing.
We have encountered this exact same picture in both established legacy brands and digital-native companies. When marketing begins speaking the language of the CFO, the budget discussion changes fundamentally. The question "How much is it bringing in?" transforms into "What is the expected return of this position?"
The former defends an expense; the latter scales an investment.
A Question to Close With
If you were to cut your company's marketing budget in half today—which expenses would stop generating returns instantly, and which would continue to have an impact for years to come?
If you cannot answer this question, you are not yet managing marketing as an investment.
Sellf — Growth is an engineering discipline.