Every business says it’s unique. But what happens when you really are?
This is the question I’ve been asking myself recently at EnergySys. On the surface, we’re “just another software company.” But the reality is very different, and it makes the job of assessing marketing performance far more complex than most playbooks allow.
A Unique Business Model
Most software companies market directly to their end users. We don’t. Or at least, not only.
Our model is deliberately different:
- We market to partners (configurators) who use our platform as a toolkit to build tailored solutions.
- We also market to end users, the organisations who rely on those solutions in their daily operations.
- And within those audiences, our target personas range from domain experts like Hydrocarbon Accountants and Data Analysts, to Consultants, Operations, IT and even C-suite. Each with very different priorities and pain points.
That alone creates complexity. But add in the realities of scaling a product, addressing technical debt, improving support processes, and clarifying commercial relationships between partners and end users, and the “unique” label starts to look very real.
Why Standard Metrics Don’t Work
In a more conventional business, the marketing scorecard is fairly standard: leads generated, MQL-to-SQL conversion rates, pipeline influenced, brand awareness uplift.
But here’s the challenge:
- Partners generate their own leads. Much of their business comes through trusted networks, not digital demand generation.
- Partners use our branding in their marketing. That can create misalignment, and sometimes confusion, about where EnergySys ends and the partner begins.
- We don’t control the entire pipeline. We need a predictable forecast to meet our growth targets. To do that, we need to support the whole ecosystem, even where project resourcing or sales cycles are in the partner’s hands.
- Resource balancing matters. Even if demand spikes, if a partner’s consultancy team is at capacity, no new projects can start.
So, how do you measure success in this environment? Counting leads feels reductive. Attributing deals is messy. And benchmarking against “standard” SaaS metrics misses the point.
The Metrics That Matter (for Us)
What we’ve been working on is building a hybrid scorecard that acknowledges the unpredictability and lack of control but still keeps us accountable.
It focuses on three dimensions:
Ecosystem Influence
- Are we building trust and awareness across both partners and end users?
- Are we equipping partners with content, messaging, and tools that help them win?
Adoption & Engagement
- Are more configurators building with our platform?
- Are end users seeing value through case studies, stories, and peer proof?
Strategic Growth Levers
- Are we supporting partners in opening new markets or solving new problems?
- Are we aligning our brand and theirs in ways that strengthen the whole ecosystem?
This isn’t about ignoring classic funnel metrics. We still track campaign performance, lead quality, conversion rates. But we layer them with measures of ecosystem health and influence, because in a partner-led model, those are equally important indicators of future growth.
The Bigger Lesson
The realisation for me is this: in spaces you don’t fully control, marketing performance is less about chasing neat attribution and more about creating influence, clarity, and confidence across the ecosystem.
It’s about recognising that sometimes the best marketing win isn’t “we generated X leads” but “we enabled a partner to articulate our joint value better,” or “we created clarity in a messy buyer journey.”
And that means rethinking what good looks like.
But here’s my question to you: How do you baseline “unique”?
If you’ve worked in a business where standard metrics didn’t apply, whether because of partners, unusual buyer journeys, or complex ecosystems, how did you measure marketing performance?
I’d love to hear what’s worked for you.
