Farzad Karimi

Berlin · Performance marketing & profitability analytics

Marketing reports what it spent. I work on what the business actually earned.

Twelve years across B2B market research, performance marketing and marketing analytics. I have run research programmes for Novo Nordisk, Bayer, Nissan and Henkel, taught measurement to more than 450 professionals, and I now build tools that connect marketing activity to commercial results.

Farzad Karimi
In the field 12 yrs
Programme participants 450+
Research interviews led 150+
Teaching hours 700+

The problem I work on

Every business can see what marketing spent. Far fewer can see what it earned.

Advertising platforms report on what happens inside the platform. The result looks like a verdict on the business, but it answers a narrower question than the one an owner is actually asking.

The distance between those two questions is where budgets quietly go wrong, and it is wider in some categories than most teams expect. Closing it is the work I do for clients, and the subject of a product I am currently building.

The gap, in one picture

Conceptual. Two views of the same campaign.

WHAT THE PLATFORM REPORTS WHAT THE BUSINESS KEEPS the gap Same campaign, two answers.

Illustrative. Proportions shown are for explanation only and vary considerably by business and category.

How I work

Three kinds of engagement.

Different problems, one method. Start from the numbers the business already has, make the economics legible, and leave behind something the team can keep using without me.

Profitability diagnostics

Marketing performance read against what the business actually earns from it. The output is a clear answer on whether the spend is working, and the small number of levers that decide it.

Measurement and analytics

Tracking that survives an audit, and reporting people act on. GA4 and Tag Manager implementation, attribution that admits its own limits, SQL and BigQuery models behind the dashboards, and analysis in Python when the question is bigger than a dashboard can answer.

Programme and curriculum design

Turning working practice into something teachable. Certificate programmes, executive sessions and applied labs built around live tools and real briefs rather than slides, designed and revised across multiple cohorts.

A working principle

Vanity metrics are not lies. They are honest answers to a smaller question than the one you asked.

Selected work

A product in progress, and the practice behind it.

Twelve years of client work, four years of research practice, a certificate programme delivered to hundreds of professionals, and a set of instruments built along the way.

A profitability product, in private beta

A tool for retailers who need a straight answer about whether their marketing is earning its place. Currently in closed development with selected partners. Details under NDA.

Applied learning instruments

A series of decision and simulation tools built so that professionals could practise commercial judgement rather than memorise definitions. Used as live lab activities inside the certificate programme.

Digital Marketing Pro Suite

A professional certificate programme designed, delivered and revised across three generations. 450+ participants, 13 cohorts, five modules from analytics to programmatic.

B2B research practice

Four years running end to end research programmes for Novo Nordisk, Bayer, Nissan and Henkel, trained in Kantar methodology, across FMCG, automotive, telecoms and healthcare.

Capability

What I work with.

Grouped by the job it does, because a tool list says less than the order you use them in. Most engagements touch three or four of these. None of them touch all six.

Query and model

SQL · BigQuery · dbt

Analyse

Python · pandas · scikit-learn · Jupyter · Google Colab

Visualise and report

Looker Studio · Power BI · Tableau · Plotly

Measure

GA4 · Google Tag Manager · attribution · experiment design

Acquire

Google Ads · Meta Ads · SEMrush · programmatic and real-time bidding · SEO and SEM

Automate

n8n · Zapier · HubSpot · Python pipelines

Next

If the numbers aren’t adding up, that is a good place to start.

I am open to consulting engagements, pilot work with retailers, analytics roles, and teaching or speaking on marketing measurement and AI personalisation.