Marketing With Purpose Kit: Marketing ROI with a Long-Term Lens

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to The Bliss Business Podcast series, Marketing With Purpose. This is where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your marketing. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with my co-host Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski. Hey, guys.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:34)
Hey, Stephen. Good to see you.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:36)
All right. Good to be back. Today, we're diving into a question every marketer faces. It's, how do you measure ROI when you lead with purpose and emotional connection?
The truth is, short-term metrics, they don't tell the whole story, but we're so often just fixated with them. We need to get over that. Traditional marketing ROI, it's often about clicks, conversions, cost per lead, but here's the trap. Those are snapshots. They're not relationships. They don't reflect lifetime value. They don't reflect loyalty or advocacy. That's the problem with some of our traditional metrics.

**Mike Liwski** (1:22)
You know what? When you're just chasing quarterly numbers, you're likely optimizing just for short-term win, and that could come at the cost of eroding long-term trust. You might get a sale, but you might miss a chance to build a customer who sticks with you for years and brings their friends. I always felt like you could do quarterly objectives, just do it one year out. So your long-term, that next quarter is long-term. Do all the work you need to do for that quarter you're at, not the one right now.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:55)
So then, yeah, a natural question arises, right? What is the value of this emotional connection? And so here's where the research is really clear, right? Emotionally connected customers are worth more than one that is unemotionally connected, right? A Harvard Business Review study found that emotionally connected customers, they deliver upwards of 306% higher lifetime value than just a mere satisfied customer.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:26)
Yeah, and Mike, I was even looking earlier today. Financial services, that number that Mike just mentioned, it spikes up to 800% higher lifetime value with emotional connection. That is huge. You know, people are more likely to remember you and recommend you, right? Forgive your mistakes and try new products when you have that emotional connection. So it's not just brand love and building that. It's a business strategy. So when you can invest in connection, you're investing in retention, you're investing in advocacy and resilience.

**Mike Liwski** (3:02)
And here's the moment of truth. When there's a downturn, people will cut back on brands they like, but they hold on to the ones they believe in. And that's the key thing. That's the ROI of purpose. It keeps you relevant even when the markets shift.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:23)
Yeah, so hopefully it's clear then, right, what is the value of this? So next, what's the business case? Like, how can that be made in order to be able to drive this way? So how do you sell this, of course, internally in your company? Frame emotional connection this way, right? It is the growth multiplier, right? It's not just a nice-to-have. Show your leadership that purpose-driven strategies, number one, reduce churn, two, they increase share of wallet, three, they will create organic word of mouth that you just can't get anywhere else to pay for.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:05)
Yeah, and you can also point to companies who play the long game, right? So look at REI. This is an example. They said no to Black Friday revenue with their opt-out side campaign. In the short term, what happened? They gave up some sales, but they built cultural capital. They built trust and long-term loyally. This is because they're deeply aligned with that purpose. And you don't make that kind of decision if you aren't aligned with the purpose. You're just like, hey, let's not do our best sales day of the year, probably, right? No. So if you're deeply aligned with your higher purpose, then your emotional connection and your emotional connection, it's going to be for playing the long game when you think about it. Like Tullio mentioned, you don't want to be going quarter to quarter. You want to be thinking longer than that.

**Mike Liwski** (4:54)
I mean, REI is a great example of that. They're all about living outdoors, enjoying the outdoors. So on the day where everybody's indoor, they told their employees, go outdoors, have fun on Black Friday. They're living it, and it's paid off big dividends for them. Another example to think about is Apple. Their positioning around creativity and empowerment is emotional at its core. So you think back to the days of the Mac. It wasn't even a superior product to the PC at the time, but if you were one of the quote unquote crazies or the creative types, you use the Mac. So they created a community of people. That connection lets them command even today, premium pricing year after year because they build that strong bond with their community. While their competitors are competing on features and functionalities, they're actually focused on that community and nurturing that community. So that's ROI with the long-term lens. That's what it looks like.