Most agency scorecards view marketing KPIs (i.e. impressions, leads, cost per lead) as the end game. Here at Converge, we find those numbers useful, but they’re often incomplete. And in a world where most CFOs don’t see the full value of marketing, the CMO’s job is no longer just running campaigns; it’s explaining marketing’s contribution to the CFO and CEO in their language... using their KPIs.

To arm CMOs with the full read on performance, we examine the numbers beyond impressions, clicks, and leads. Instead, we look at qualified pipelines, closed revenue, acquisition cost against lifetime value, payback period, and contribution margin. These aren’t your traditional media plan metrics, but they are the ones that drive business momentum.

The shared language between CMOs and CFOs is accountability. And it’s a word your agency should be 100% bought in on as well. It’s a word that defines Converge, so much so that we’ve built a business model around it: Performance Pricing. At the start of each engagement, we determine which KPIs will drive business momentum and build our contracts, plans, and measurement systems around hitting them.

Why do we do it this way? We got tired of seeing the same story play out across marketing: CMOs struggling to defend media budgets to CFOs demanding results now, while agencies kept promising, “Just wait. It’s coming.” Quarter after quarter, those agencies offered reassurance without results.

That’s performative. We’re about performance.

Our Performance Pricing model ties how we get paid to whether we meet the outcomes we agree to. That starts with measurement. Any performance claim is only as credible as the framework behind it, so building that infrastructure is part of the engagement. It protects our clients from paying for phantom performance and gives us a clearly defined standard to deliver against. Performance Pricing also adapts to campaign maturity, available data, and sales cycle. It might be a fee tied to cost per acquisition or cost per qualified lead, or a reduced base fee with a bonus for reaching an agreed goal. Some engagements use outcome pricing from day one. Others begin with a testing period.

The mechanics vary, but the principle stays the same: we align our compensation with the outcomes that matter to your business, in a structure that fits your economics and reporting cycle.

Why most agencies won’t do this: Performance Pricing means the agency absorbs risk instead of handing it to the client. It means our margin depends on media performing, creative converting, and strategy landing, not just on the hours we put in. It also means a CMO’s time goes somewhere more valuable than budget debates about line items.

If we’re absorbing the risk, it would be easy to assume Performance Pricing means cautious, play-it-down-the-middle work. The opposite tends to be true. A mediocre idea can hide behind a flat retainer for months. It’s much harder to hide behind a shared outcome. Some of our boldest creative ideas have run under performance terms, because the pressure to convert makes weak ideas visible fast.

We’re not arguing every engagement should be priced this way, and we know brand-building work compounds over quarters, not weeks. But what we won’t ever do is let effort stand in for outcome: if it can be measured, we’ll measure it.

Multiple ways to work with us: Performance Pricing is what we lead with, and the model we’d pick if the roles were reversed, but it isn’t the only door in. We run blended arrangements, where a lean base carries the work and the upside is earned against an agreed business metric. And we run traditional agency-of-record agreements: full-service strategy, media, and creative on a flat retainer. Whichever door you come through, the measurement framework gets built and the commercial terms flex to your economics.

How to start the conversation: Bring us the business number you’re accountable for most this year, and we’ll tell you which model fits and build a proposal around it.

If your current agency relationship runs on trust, hope, and a retainer that holds steady no matter what the results say, we’d like to show you different math. Let’s talk about Return on Everything.