If you’re on a creative team in B2B, you’ve probably heard some version of this question: “What’s the ROI on that?” It’s a fair ask. Marketing leaders need to justify budgets, prove impact, and show they’re driving business outcomes. But here’s the thing: As a creative, you’re not the one sitting in front of dashboards tracking MQLs or closed-won deals.
So how do you prove value when you don’t directly own the metrics everyone cares about?
We recently sat down with Dan Schwer, Senior Brand Designer at Rippling, to unpack this exact challenge. Over his three and a half years at the company, Dan has watched Rippling scale from 1,000 to 6,000 employees while keeping his creative team lean at just 15 people. Through that growth, he’s had to get smart about demonstrating impact in ways that actually resonate with stakeholders.
The good news? There are practical ways to prove your team’s value that go way beyond vanity metrics. Let’s dig into Dan’s approach.
The Real Problem: Creatives Don’t Own Performance Data (But Everyone Expects Them To)
“Being on a creative team, you’re not directly responsible for collecting data around performance,” Dan says. That’s just the reality. You’re not logging into HubSpot every morning to check conversion rates. You’re not in weekly pipeline reviews. You’re busy making things that support the people who do own those metrics.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t demonstrate ROI. You just need to think about it differently and build the right relationships to access the insights that matter.
1. Reframe ROI as Scale, Speed, and Quality
One of the smartest things Dan shared is how his team thinks about ROI. Instead of getting caught up in metrics they don’t control, they focus on three things: scale, speed, and quality.
- Scale means asking: Are we doing bigger launches? Achieving more deliverables? Enabling marketers to self-service more? If your team’s helping the org ship more without adding headcount, that’s tangible value.
- Speed is about efficiency: Are we moving faster? Building better processes? Getting smarter about how we ship work? When you can show you’re delivering quality work in half the time, stakeholders take notice.
- Quality is admittedly the softest of the three. It’s subjective. But it still matters. Dan asks: Is the craft improving? How do we look next to our competitors? How do we look within the culture at large?
These three metrics give you a framework to talk about impact in ways that matter to the business—even if you’re not the one closing deals.
Tip: Document your team’s output quarterly. Track the number of campaigns shipped, time from brief to delivery, and gather competitive benchmarking examples. This gives you concrete evidence when budget conversations come around.
2. Embed With Marketing Teams to Access Their Tools
Luckily, the data you need to prove ROI already exists. “There’s all these great tools for us as creatives to pull from and validate the work,” Dan says.
You just need to know where to look and build relationships with the people who have access to it. For example, Dan has looked at:
- Sales enablement platforms: You can see what’s being sent to clients, how often they’re viewed, how much time customers spend on them, and how many converted.
- A/B testing platforms: This is helpful for brand decisions. For example, when they refreshed Rippling’s brand identity, they tested different landing pages and performance ads with different CTA colors and background colors.
- Customer service platforms: Dan’s team gets clips of customer calls where people comment on the brand. For example, those conversations revealed that customers kept calling their color palette “brown and yellow” instead of the intended plum.
These types of insights are gold. If you can show that the sales deck you redesigned has a higher conversion rate than the old version, you’ve got a compelling story to tell.
The point is: You don’t need to become a data analyst, but you do need to get cozy with the people who are.
Tip: Set up regular meetings with growth marketers, sales enablement leads, and product marketing managers. Ask them to share performance data. Show interest in what’s working and what’s not. The more you understand their world, the better equipped you are to prove your impact.
3. Use Data to Prioritize and Prove Value
Once you have access to the right tools and data, you can start making smarter decisions about where to invest your time.
Dan gave a great example: “We have probably a thousand sales documents. Let’s reduce down to the 50 that are doing great.” Instead of treating every request as equally important, his team uses data to identify what’s actually driving results. Then they double down on those high-performers and let the rest fade into the background.
This approach does two things:
- First, it makes your team more efficient because you’re not wasting time on low-impact work.
- Second, it gives you a clear story to tell leadership: “We focused on these 50 documents because the data showed they were driving conversions. Here’s the impact.”
The same logic applies to campaign work. When Rippling tested their brand refresh, they used performance data from ads and landing pages to validate their decisions. That data became part of the narrative when they pitched the refresh internally and proved its value after launch.
Tip: Build a quarterly review process where you analyze what creative performed best. Look at engagement metrics, conversion data, and qualitative feedback. Use that analysis to guide your roadmap for the next quarter.
4. Experiment Until You Find What Works
Not every model is going to work for your team, and that’s okay. Dan’s been through multiple iterations of how his team supports performance ads, and he’s candid about what didn’t work. For example:
- First, they had a dedicated designer partnering with the growth team on weekly sprints. That person learned alongside growth marketers about what was performing, which was valuable. But it meant dedicating a full headcount to churning out growth ads, which was hard to stomach.
- Then they tried monthly sprints with more conceptual exploration. It was slower and more craft-focused, but it didn’t match the pace growth needed.
- Next, they handed it off to a production studio. Growth didn’t like that because the quality dipped without someone embedded who understood the brand and the business.
- Now? They’re back to the dedicated designer model because it’s what works best for them.
The lesson here isn’t that one model is right and the others are wrong. It’s that you need to be willing to experiment, learn from what doesn’t work, and adjust. And when you do that, you’re not just proving ROI—you’re showing leadership that you’re thoughtful, strategic, and focused on what drives results.
Tip: If your current workflow isn’t working, try a 90-day experiment with a different model. Document what you learn and use that to make a case for permanent changes.
How to Start Proving Creative ROI Today
At the end of the day, proving ROI as a creative team is never going to be as straightforward as pointing to a dashboard and saying, “We drove X pipeline this quarter.” But that doesn’t mean you can’t demonstrate value in ways that matter.
- Reframe how you think about impact—focus on scale, speed, and quality instead of metrics you don’t control.
- Build relationships with the people who own performance data and learn to speak their language.
- Use that data to prioritize your work and tell a compelling story about what your team delivers.
- Be willing to experiment with different models until you find what works for your team and stakeholders.
And remember: This stuff takes time. Dan’s been at Rippling for three and a half years, and he’s built up the trust and relationships that make this approach possible. You may not figure it all out overnight, and that’s okay. Just keep pushing, keep learning, and keep showing up with a mindset of curiosity and partnership.
If you want to hear more about how Dan’s team operates, including their approach to building a lean creative team, check out our full conversation on the Best Story Wins podcast.
And if you’re looking for more resources to help you work smarter and prove your value, dive into our resources library for tools, templates, and insights to win your market.
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