Insight

What a partner should ask before signing off any marketing spend in 2026

Six questions, the answer that should come back for each, and the two figures that tell you whether the last twelve months actually worked.

Robin Brown · 2026-09-03 · 9 min · Managing partners, Marketing and BD

What you will learn

  1. What share of enquiries the firm can actually attribute, and why that answer is usually uncomfortable.
  2. Which two figures tell you whether the last twelve months worked.
  3. How to press for answers that survive a partner meeting, not a slide deck.

What should a partner ask first?

Ask what share of enquiries the firm can actually attribute, and expect an uncomfortable answer. Client-side analytics cannot see an AI assistant, because assistants do not execute the scripts that analytics runs on, so most firms are reporting confidently on a shrinking slice of their own demand. Around 68 per cent of UK searches now end without a click at all. The first question is therefore not what the marketing produced. It is what the measurement can still see, and whether anyone has checked that in the last two years.

More common questions

What is the first question a partner should ask?

Ask what share of enquiries the firm can actually attribute, and expect an uncomfortable answer. Client-side analytics cannot see an AI assistant, so most firms are reporting confidently on a shrinking slice of demand.

Does rising traffic prove the spend worked?

No. Sessions without attributable enquiries are noise. The useful pair is qualified enquiries and the cost of acquiring them, judged against what the firm can still see.

Should partners wait for perfect measurement?

No. They should refuse budgets that pretend the blind spot does not exist, and require a plan for logs, referral paths and named conversion events before scaling spend.

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