Why SMEs often waste money on marketing – and how you can finally gain clarity about your ROI

The problem: investments without impact monitoring

You launch campaigns, hire agencies, test new tools—but in the end, one key question often remains unanswered:

What does all this really do for my business?

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular often lack a structured system for measuring marketing success. Activities are decided on gut feeling, budgets are reallocated annually – without any reliable insights into their actual impact. The result:

• Marketing becomes a cost factor instead of a growth driver
• Decision-makers lose confidence in their investments
• Strategies are optimized reactively instead of based on data

The real core of the problem: There is a lack of visibility into impact chains – in other words, how measures, target groups, and business success are really connected.

The typical mistakes made by SMEs

Many SMEs fall into the same ROI traps. Here is an overview of the most common causes:

• Data silos instead of the big picture: CRM, ad managers, newsletter tools, Google Analytics – but no one connects the information to form an overall picture.
• Unclear goals: The aim is to generate “more leads” or “visibility,” but what that means for the business in concrete terms remains unclear.
• Unvalidated target groups: Personas are based on assumptions rather than data – this leads to irrelevant messages and wasted coverage.
• Arbitrary use of KPIs: There are many metrics, but no clear assessment of what is “good” or “critical.”
• Reporting instead of strategy: Time is spent sifting through Excel spreadsheets – not on targeted decisions.

What SMEs need instead: ROI focus with impact chain

The solution lies not in more tools or more data, but in a different strategic setup. A system that can consistently answer three questions:

1. Which activities directly contribute to my business goals?
2. Which touchpoints and key events perform well – and which ones just burn resources?
3. What does my impact chain look like from initial contact to closing and beyond?

What is needed for this is a systematic, visually guided ROI approach: Every activity is linked to a goal, every target group is accompanied along its journey – and the effectiveness of individual activities becomes measurable.

This creates a strategic overview that secures decisions and concentrates budgets where they have the greatest impact.

The game changer: complete clarity with cosmos™

This is where cosmos™ comes in – the Target-Centered Strategy Platform that gives you complete control over your business-critical impact chains.

In cosmos™, you can visually display all relevant KPIs, touchpoints, and key events – including their performance and contribution to the business goal for your respective target group.

Among other things, the following functions are available to you:

• Map impact chains – from initial contact to closing the sale and beyond
• Identify dead ends and blind spots that burn through your budget
• Evaluate performance based on data – even for offline activities such as sales calls and trade show appearances
• Define and evaluate meaningful KPIs, with time periods, target values, and limit ranges
• Retrieve KPIs from a variety of tools – automatically according to individual schedules
• Measure and communicate successes – without report chaos

Particularly valuable for SMEs: Even with incomplete data, you can model conceptual impact chains and improve them step by step.

Comprehensive strategic insight with cosmos™

cosmos™ not only helps you visualize and increase the ROI of your marketing activities, but also takes your entire marketing strategy to a new level:

• Create & validate personas: In guided workflows, you create buyer personas at agency level – including validation logic. This ensures that your strategy, communication, and channel selection are precisely tailored to the actual needs of your target group.
• Sharpen your positioning: Define brand DNA, value propositions, market niches, and more in one central location – laying the foundation for an effective brand strategy that is precisely tailored to your target group.
• Synchronize teams and agencies: With cosmos™, all strategically relevant information is centrally available and can be shared as dynamic and always up-to-date LiveLinks – for more efficient alignment without PDF and email chaos.

cosmos™ thus offers you unprecedented strategic foresight and control over your entire ecosystem of brand, marketing, and sales.

Conclusion: Marketing pays off – if you ask the right questions

SMEs in particular do not have unlimited budgets. This makes it all the more important that every activity plays a clear role in the overall strategic picture. Those who recognize impact chains can manage budgets in a targeted manner, strengthen confidence in marketing, and grow faster. cosmos™ makes exactly that possible.

Switch your company from gut feeling to business impact now.

Create your free cosmos™ account now.