Both the United States and global economies are experiencing a period of intense uncertainty and instability that directly affects how marketers and communicators operate. Let’s say it out loud: this is not an easy time to be in our profession.
In times of instability, demonstrating provable value and connection to business outcomes becomes critical. The good news? Even in—especially in—times of uncertainty, the PESO Model© can help you make the arguments that might help protect your budgets and prove the value of your work.
The Only Certain Thing Is Uncertainty
We’ve entered a volatile business period. Apprehension about the effect of tariff policies and their impact on the economy has led to concerning developments:
- Oxford Economics predicts a shallow global industrial recession in 2025 due to tariff escalations
- Companies like Toyota, AMD, Mattel, Ford, Apple, and Amazon have issued warnings about tariff effects on earnings
- U.S. consumer confidence has dropped to COVID-19 pandemic levels, affecting spending
- The agricultural sector faces challenges from crop trading tariffs
- Wall Street has been volatile, with the Dow Jones fluctuating between 36,615 and over 42,000
As C-suite leaders react to this volatility, budgets tighten across all sectors, and professionals face deeper scrutiny to prove their value—and marketing and communications are often among the first to be called to the carpet to prove our worth.
While traditionally challenged to move beyond vanity metrics, our functions remain vital to business success. But in order to make the connection from our work to business success, we have to think more strategically and be smarter about where we spend our time and resources.
That’s where the PESO Model can be most valuable—to you and to your organization.
How the PESO Model Proves Value
Don’t get me wrong; the PESO Model is always valuable to a marketing or communications function. But in environments like this, when budgets are tighter and every dollar spent is scrutinized for value and return on investment, we are often asked to justify our activity. We need a framework that demonstrably and scientifically connects these efforts to desired strategic business outcomes.
The PESO Model is especially valuable in uncertainty because it provides what C-suite leaders seek: tangible connections between efforts and business outcomes. While likes and impressions may be difficult to translate, site visits, conversions, and purchases resulting from campaigns are immediately understood.
When implemented correctly—with truly integrated paid, earned, shared, and owned efforts creating a multiplier effect, rather than disconnected tactics—the PESO Model provides a structured system linking activities directly to business outcomes.
This allows for more effective investment optimization; instead of separate, disconnected campaigns, you can use data from how your owned media performs to create targeted paid campaigns promoting content that has received positive earned coverage. This will improve the efficiency and consistency of your content and potentially save you money in the process.
Proving Value When Every Dollar Counts
The PESO Model provides you with a robust framework for proving value during economic volatility by creating clear lines of sight between marketing activities and financial outcomes. If your budget is under scrutiny, this integrated measurement approach reveals how paid, earned, shared, and owned media work together to drive efficiency, showing how earned media coverage reduces paid acquisition costs, how owned content improves conversion rates, and how shared social engagement amplifies reach without additional spending.
This comprehensive view helps you argue against short-sighted near-term budget cuts by illustrating interdependencies between channels and quantifying the revenue impact of each component through metrics like blended customer acquisition cost, multi-touch attribution, and overall marketing ROI.
The PESO Model transforms marketing from a perceived cost center into a demonstrable revenue contributor by establishing clear connections between activities and financial outcomes. It shows precisely how integrated marketing efforts deliver measurable returns even as other departments face cuts.
The PESO Model’s emphasis on efficiency metrics like cost-per-acquisition, return on ad spend, and lifetime value calculations provides executive teams with the hard numbers they need to see marketing as an investment rather than an expense during challenging economic periods.
The PESO Model Insulates Against Volatility
The PESO Model also helps you adapt quickly to volatile conditions by identifying which channels deliver the highest return during specific market circumstances. The framework’s granular tracking reveals which tactics remain effective during downturns—whether shifting budget from awareness to retention strategies, leveraging more cost-efficient earned and owned channels when paid budgets are constrained, or reallocating resources to higher-converting customer segments.
By distributing efforts across paid, earned, shared, and owned channels, the PESO Model also creates natural resilience against economic volatility. When advertising budgets face cuts, strengthened earned media relationships and owned content assets can maintain market presence. If consumer engagement patterns shift due to economic anxiety, the integrated measurement approach reveals which channels remain effective, allowing for quick resource reallocation.
This diversification provides stability during uncertainty, ensuring that marketing effectiveness doesn’t collapse if any single channel underperforms.
Establishing baseline performance metrics across all four media quadrants allows you to demonstrate relative performance even when absolute numbers decline during market contractions.
This adaptability combines with the model’s focus on connecting marketing activities directly to revenue outcomes rather than intermediate metrics. The PESO Model gives you the data-backed narrative you need to protect strategic investments during fiscal scrutiny, while voluntarily optimizing or eliminating truly underperforming elements. Ultimately, it positions marketing and communications as fiscally responsible business drivers, rather than a discretionary expense during uncertain economic times.
If you’d like to discuss licensing the PESO Model, having your people trained in it, or having Spin Sucks work with your teams to implement it, drop me a line at cbarger@armentdietrich.com or find me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.
