Marketing Isn't My Job. Solving Business Problems Is.
For a long time, I described myself as a marketer.
It made sense. My career has been built around marketing roles, leading campaigns, launching products, developing brands and driving growth.
But over the last few years I've realised that marketing isn't actually the thing that motivates me.
Solving business problems is.
Marketing has simply become the toolkit I've developed to do it.
Looking back across every role I've held, the pattern is surprisingly consistent. The challenge has rarely been "How do we get more leads?"
Instead, it's been questions like:
- Why isn't the business growing?
- Why aren't customers engaging?
- Why are sales struggling to convert?
- Why doesn't the website explain what the business actually does?
- Why are different teams pulling in different directions?
Those aren't marketing questions.
They're business questions.
And more often than not, the answer isn't another campaign.
The problem behind the problem
One of the biggest lessons I've learnt is that the obvious problem usually isn't the real one.
A business thinks it needs more traffic.
Often it needs a clearer proposition.
Another thinks it needs more leads.
Often it needs a better customer journey.
Sometimes marketing gets blamed for poor sales.
The reality is that customers are confused long before they speak to sales.
I've seen this across membership organisations, technology businesses, ecommerce brands and professional services.
Different industries - remarkably similar problems.
Marketing is one part of the system
The older I get, the less I see marketing as a standalone function within a business.
Growth happens when marketing, operations, customer experience, sales and product all work together.
If one of those areas is weak, marketing can only do so much.
That's why some of the projects I've enjoyed most have involved redesigning processes, improving onboarding, refining propositions or simplifying customer journeys.
None of those activities sit neatly inside "marketing."
But they all influence growth.
My approach
Whenever I join a business, I ask the same questions.
- What is stopping customers from succeeding?
- Where is unnecessary complexity?
- What assumptions are we making?
- What evidence do we actually have?
- Only then do I think about channels, campaigns or content.
Because clarity scales.
Complexity doesn't.
Closing
Today, I still work in marketing.
I just think about it differently.
For me, marketing isn't the objective.
Helping businesses remove the barriers stopping them growing is.
Marketing is simply one of the ways I do that.