You’ve armed your team with the latest tools, technologies, data, and insights, throwing budget and talent at numerous campaigns that consistently fall short of expected outcomes. You’re at a loss as to why your growth doesn’t live up to that promised in the jargon-filled playbooks. Because performance hasn’t been sabotaged by slacking staff members or idle efforts, you’re left pointing a finger at an unidentified gap – or should that be gaps?
The truth is, most marketing fails, not because teams aren’t working hard enough, but because they’re not working together. You need to address the disconnects between marketing, sales, organisational planning, and customer service departments to start seeing impressive results.
The silent killer —
We’ve all sat in meetings that appear to be going nowhere. Marketing swears they’re “crushing MQL goals” as sales staff roll their eyes, rubbishing leads while shifting the focus to average deal size. Everyone has something to say and someone to blame, but the message just falls on deaf ears. The lack of joined-up communication here says it all. This isn’t a talent issue or a matter of dedication. Rather, it’s systemic.
Most companies operate in silos. Marketing runs brand- and awareness-focused campaigns centred on content designed to attract new prospects, as sales pushes short-term, quota-driven outreach that often targets a different set of priorities. Everyone is doing their part. Yet, they’re essentially operating as disparate parts of a machine, where no one is pushing towards shared goals for the organisation – focusing more on individual performance metrics than real-world measures of success like business growth and revenue. Leads therefore slip through the cracks, prospects get ghosted or leave because they feel misled, and your brand loses customer confidence as duplicate outreach makes you look like you’re arguing with yourself. And while everyone’s shouting, criticising, and passing the accountability hot potato, your competitors are quietly stealing your market.
A measurement problem —
To fix this, leaders must address marketing’s measurement problem. If your teams are still tracking success in terms of the number of leads they generate, rather than the amount of revenue they influence, you’ll stay stalled. Passing a pile of MQLs to sales and calling it a day is never going to work when sales operates in sales qualified leads (SQLs). Their contempt instantly breaks the handoff. It’s time to stop optimising for individual team targets and start prioritising meaningful shared targets. At the end of the day, if we’re being honest, it’s all about revenue anyway. Companies must simply introduce the same transparency when briefing teams – encouraging collaboration through shared goals, wins, and language – in order to achieve success.
After the close —
Of course, success rarely ends at “closed-won”, either. Real revenue begins after the sale, with retention, expansion, and advocacy – the three parts of the customer journey too often left to chance. If companies don’t make a concerted effort to control these narratives, alongside marketing messaging and sales land-to expand strategies, they’ll soon miss out on the most profitable stage of their customer relationships. Buyers don’t stop being buyers once they’ve signed on the dotted line, so it’s important to ensure your strategy doesn’t stop serving them, either.
The unifier: RevOps —
Revenue Operations (or RevOps) is the operational glue that holds all your teams and processes together, allowing you to approach the complete customer journey as a team effort, rather than the self-sabotaging competition it once was. RevOps replaces guesswork with a single source of truth for all teams and departments to work from, ending the seemingly endless debate over what makes a good lead and creating room for a unified focus on metrics that actually move needles instead.
Marketing at the heart of operations —
The moment marketing stops being perceived as a fringe function, thanks to RevOps – shedding its reputation as the department with soft metrics and colourful decks – and becomes central to the business, you’ll start seeing results. Because, done the right way – connecting with growth teams and those in charge of company direction – marketing is about so much more than driving awareness, proving a critical force to driving sustainable growth. It shapes strategy, drives lasting connection, and becomes the voice of the customer– not just the voice of the brand – guiding company direction moving forward.
Suddenly, campaign performance is measured in real-world business impact rather than clicks and form fills, as your business begins proving outcomes rather than simply reporting. This is what makes marketing truly unstoppable.
Out with old rule books —
If your strategy has stagnated, don’t blame your people – blame your silos. Start by connecting your data, aligning all teams under united goals and culture, and set out what truly matters. By bringing marketing into the heart of your business, you’re no longer telling the same old, tired story. Rather, you’ll be rewriting your story altogether, claiming success that would otherwise remain out of reach due to disconnected dashboards, systems, and efforts.
Julia Payne is the founder of Fractional CMO Services and an accomplished marketing strategist. With over 25 years of experience, Julia has a proven track record of increasing sales, reducing costs, and improving client retention.
