Take Back the Narrative: Unleash Marketing’s Superpowers to Drive Strategy and Sustainable Growth

As we close out the year, marketers everywhere are feeling the heat. Businesses are looking to us to drive revenue, demanding immediate results in sales cycles that can last 12 to 18 months. It’s October, and deals aren’t closing as fast as expected, yet the pressure is mounting. The reality? This pressure, the short-term demands being placed on us, aren’t realistic. More than that, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the true role of marketing.

The Race to the Bottom: Vanity Metrics Over Real Value

In many companies, especially mid-sized ones, there’s a race to outpace competitors—not with strategy or substance, but with vanity metrics. It’s a scramble to churn out as much content as possible, host the biggest events, and post the most impressive numbers on a dashboard. But more content isn’t the answer if it isn’t grounded in meaningful value and real connection.

While AI-generated content has been a powerful tool for increasing output and sparking creativity, it has also amplified this race. With AI creating content faster than any team ever could, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that speed and quantity will drive results. But more content isn’t necessarily better content. ?

If we don’t take the time to understand our audience, if we don’t align on the narrative that actually resonates, then all we’re doing is adding noise.

Marketers Are the Glue Holding It Together

Marketing is about more than just driving leads—it’s about connecting every aspect of the business. We bridge the gap between sales, operations, customer service, employees and leadership to ensure that the brand’s message is clear, consistent, and delivered in a way that drives value. We create the narrative that helps the company deliver value, even when it’s hard to measure. The issue arises when the pieces aren’t aligned. When expectations on marketing to deliver revenue grow, but the strategy across the business remains disjointed, marketers are set up to fail.

In a recent Linkedin post, Wil Reynolds , founder of SEER Interactive, makes a compelling point about the need for long-term thinking in marketing. He draws on the Hemingway quote about bankruptcy—“you go bankrupt two ways: gradually, then suddenly.” His point? These trends creep up on businesses. Chasing short-term goals might feel like the right move in the moment, but it’s those small, gradual investments that set a company up for sustainable success. The key is that it’s not just marketing that has to be invested in this long game—sales, operations, customer service, even employees must be equally invested in the company's story, ensuring that what marketing promises can be delivered.

Businesses Need to Understand Their Value

The problem isn’t just that marketing is struggling to meet demands. The deeper issue is that many companies haven’t taken the time to define their real value. “There is no time!” ??

Instead of understanding what their audience truly needs, they’re racing to keep up with the competition—throwing more ads, more content, more events at the wall to see what sticks.

But marketing can’t tell a compelling story when the business hasn’t figured out what it stands for.

Too many businesses focus on keeping up appearances, hoping that more exposure will solve their problems. “It’s just basic math!” ??

But if the story doesn’t align internally, marketing can’t deliver externally. Marketing’s role isn’t to magically fix disjointed strategies—it’s to amplify a story that the company itself must live by.

Marketing Needs to Lead, Not Follow

It’s time for marketing to take the reins. Rand Fishkin , co-founder of SparkToro, has highlighted how businesses get stuck measuring success through easily quantifiable channels—like Google or Facebook ads—while overlooking the brand-building work that drives long-term value. He's also talked about the misleading nature of performance advertising, where platforms take credit for conversions that would have happened organically.

The same goes for short-term attribution models. These metrics make it easy to see what’s working on the surface but miss the larger picture of what’s really moving the business forward. Marketing can’t just be a tool to support immediate sales goals. It needs to lead the strategic vision of the company. It’s about shaping the narrative, understanding the market, and aligning the business with a customer-first vision that delivers over time.

The Employee Experience is Marketing Too

Something business leaders often miss: Marketing doesn’t stop at the customer-facing level.

It’s not just about what we say to the market—it’s also about how we engage internally. The employee experience is as much a part of the brand as anything else, and it has a direct impact on the way your company is perceived externally.

HaloEffect Management speaks directly to this idea, framing the employee experience through a marketing lens. When organizations treat their internal culture as part of the brand, the benefits ripple outward. Happy, engaged employees become brand ambassadors, reinforcing the company’s values and mission in their daily interactions with customers.

Marketing and HR need to collaborate and connect to the entire organization. By aligning the internal culture with the company’s external messaging, businesses can build a brand that’s authentic and consistent from the inside out.

A Call to Business Leaders: Let Marketing Lead

Here’s the truth: Marketing can’t be treated as an afterthought or an accessory. It’s not about making the biggest splash or churning out the most content. It’s about delivering real, long-term value that is felt across every touchpoint of your brand—externally and internally.

If your business isn’t getting the results you want, stop holding your marketing back. It’s time to let marketing lead the conversation. Businesses need to align every part of the organization—sales, operations, customer service, HR—with the vision marketing sets forth.

Unrealistic short-term expectations are the kryptonite that hold marketing back from connecting people with stories that matter and leading the change your business needs.

Conclusion: Take Back Control of the Narrative

Marketers, it’s time to step up. We aren’t just here to be order takers churning out content. We’re here to drive business strategy. And business leaders, it’s time to recognize that marketing is your greatest asset – unleash their superpowers. The true measure of success isn’t in the number of blog posts or ad impressions—it’s in the lasting connections you create with the people in your ecosystem, and the trust you build along the way.

While AI is an incredible tool—helping to prompt creativity, generate ideas, and even assist in writing articles and creating visuals (??like this article which took me 2 hours instead of the usual 2 weeks...or months)—it’s not a replacement for strategic, long-term thinking. AI can support creativity, but it’s the strategic direction set by marketing teams that drives sustainable growth.

Stop chasing vanity metrics. Start investing in long-term growth. And let marketing be the strategic driver your business needs to not only survive—but thrive.

When marketing leads the way, businesses can achieve sustainable growth, and that’s something AI-generated content or short-term campaigns—no matter how useful—will never be able to replace.

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