That means building your framework around the pipeline you’ve created, the deals you’ve helped advance, and the revenue you can tie back to marketing.
These eight essential areas will help you consider how to become more revenue-first and update your plans for the new year.
1. Review Your KPIs
Leads and MQL handoffs are important, but they’re not the end goal of marketing.
In fact, Forrester found that less than 1% of marketing inquiries turn into closed-won deals in a typical MQL-driven process.
If you’re reporting on MQL volume alone, your CFO might be questioning the value of your activity. But you can counter this by setting your goals further down the funnel.
That means tracking and reporting on how marketing creates sales-qualified pipeline, new opportunities, and closed revenue.
For example, instead of celebrating 1,000 leads from a webinar, focus on the 50 opportunities and 10 deals that came from the activity.
2. Decide a Revenue Target
You might already have a revenue target that you’re working towards – but even if you don’t have one formally agreed, you should work as if you do.
If you can shift your mindset to focus on hitting that revenue goal, your team’s focus will shift too. For example, you’ll see your demand generation colleagues centering on quality and intent, and your content marketing team aiming for sales engagement, rather than just page views.
3. Align Your Team With Sales
Sales and marketing alignment has been a big topic of 2025, and that’s only going to become more important next year. That’s because companies with strong sales and marketing alignment see 36% higher customer retention rates, according to Brainstorm Club.
Close alignment builds trust between both teams. After all, when marketing-sourced deals convert regularly, sales teams follow up more eagerly. Some companies even combine teams, like Revenue Ops, to highlight shared responsibility for the pipeline.
It’s a worthwhile investment: when you break down barriers between departments, you can unlock new levels of growth. Research suggests that businesses with strong alignment achieve growth rates 10-28% higher than their peers.
4. Agree What an Actionable Lead Looks Like
To pursue closer collaboration with the sales team, you need to work with them to agree on what constitutes an actionable lead. Partner with the CRO or Head of Sales to set criteria that predict a win, such as the right firmographic fit they need, what kind of buying intent converts well, or what sort of engagement behavior they’re looking for in MQLs.
It’s also helpful if you can agree on what qualifies a prospect as being ready for a handoff to sales, and include those standards in lead scoring and SLAs.
5. Prioritize Channels by ROI
Many marketing teams find that high-volume channels, such as broad paid social or content syndication, bring in many names but few real opportunities.
At the same time, smaller efforts like targeted webinars or customer referral programs may bring fewer leads but have a much higher close rate.
To build a revenue-focused marketing plan, you need to review your ROI by channel and ensure you’re investing in the channels that have a genuine impact on revenue, not just lead volume.
6. Review Results by Revenue Generation
When you look at results through a revenue lens, you can really see the difference in previous channel or campaign performance.
You may decide to shift your budget away from top-of-funnel ad campaigns that generate little pipeline and spend more on email nurture or SEO that brings in high-intent demo requests.
The data supports this switch: the average customer acquisition cost (CAC) for organic channels like SEO and email is 50% lower than for paid channels, according to First Page Sage.
7. Look Beyond Top-of-Funnel Numbers
When you’re reviewing 2025’s performance to inform your new marketing plan, it’s wise to investigate your cost per opportunity and cost per dollar of revenue for each channel, not just top-of-funnel numbers.
Often, a few top programs generate most of the revenue, so you may want to focus on them next year.
After all, business leaders don’t expect marketing to work miracles, but they do want to see a clear link between spending and results. You can do this by building your framework on solid analytics, using multi-touch attribution, or incrementality testing to show how marketing drives revenue.
8. Report Success in Financial Terms
When you talk about marketing performance with your C-suite colleagues – and the wider business – it can be really impactful if you talk in terms of conversion rates and ROI.
For example, instead of saying “we got 2,000 leads”, say “our Q1 campaigns generated £3.5M in pipeline and £1.2M in closed revenue at a 3:1 return.”
When you do this, use language and metrics like CAC or cost per £1 of revenue, as these make sense to CFOs and other revenue-driven leaders. And when CFOs see marketing can drive and measure revenue like sales, they’ll see it as a growth engine, not a cost center.
Bonus:Â Reveal Which Leads Are Ready
If you’re building a revenue-first marketing plan, you need to know which accounts are already showing buying intent. Website visitor identification tools like Lead Forensics help you find which businesses are visiting your website and spot where interest is heating up. This helps you pass genuinely actionable leads to your sales team, supporting stronger alignment, better handoffs, and more pipeline, faster.
