Fix Your Marketing Strategy in 7 Steps

When the marketing plan doesn't deliver results, most CEOs double down on planning. They bring in consultants and advisors (I'm an advisor, so excuse the irony!) and rebuild the strategy deck. They assume the issue is the plan itself—that if they make the strategy more sophisticated or the outputs in 50+ slides, the feeling that we know what we're doing will give everyone confidence.

But that's not the problem.

Marketing plans don't fail because they're bad (some are, but lots are not). They fail because they aren't executed, and AI has made that even more obvious.

Back when I was a CMO, building a marketing plan took months. We'd run team workshops, collect input, define messaging pillars, debate positioning, plan channels, campaigns, etc., and then I'd pull it all together into a 50+ page deck that looked like what I thought was a thing of beauty that made me feel super bright. At the time, it felt like real progress—like we'd built something solid. But looking back, the whole thing was too complicated. I was trying to be clever instead of clear. Worst of all, the CEO didn't get it either, and that's never a good idea.

The strategy made sense in the room, but it wasn't useful outside of it. The team didn't know what to do next. It didn't help them prioritize, decide what to launch this week, or live in their day-to-day workflow. It lived in Notion, PowerPoint, or a folder no one opened again.

Now, I can generate a decent-looking plan using AI in five minutes. The difference is that I'm not under the illusion that the plan is the hard part. The real challenge is execution—and it always has been. That being said, in the future of vibe marketing (more on that next week), humans will drive strategy and creativity, with AI executing and operating. The importance is the connection between strategy and execution—most of the time, we fail to do that. People over-index on spending all their time on strategy, which doesn't support fast execution.

A Case Study: From Strategy Deck to Execution Machine

Here's a real example from a company I advised last year.

They weren't short on strategy. They had three versions of it—one on a Miro board, one in a Notion workspace, and one in a deck they'd presented to investors.

But none of it translated into day-to-day execution. The team wasn't clear on what to prioritize, so campaigns were ineffective, alignment was poor, and progress was uneven.

We stripped the whole thing back and built a seven-step marketing machine: one page, clear owners, and no fluff.

Here's what it looked like.

Step 1: Define your Market of 1.

👉 Get painfully specific about who you're selling to.

• Not "HR leaders."

• Not "SMBs in the UK."

• Try: "Sarah, a People Ops lead at a 50-person B2B SaaS company in London. She hates admin, runs onboarding manually, and is drowning in spreadsheets."

This is your Market of 1. All your marketing starts here.

What's their job title / JTBD?

What are they doing today?

What do they care about?

What's in their way?

What workflow are they using that you will replace or improve?

What are their pains and gains?

Step 2: List the hubs that give you access to lots of those people.

👉 Hubs are where you show up. Spokes are your Market of 1s inside those hubs.

Examples:

• Newsletter (hub) → 5,000 subscribers, 500 of whom match your Market of 1

• Events → three niche SaaS HR meetups in London this quarter

• Outbound → 1,000-person cold list from Apollo matching your ICP

• Subreddits → r/humanresources, r/startups

• Meta ads → Targeting job titles like "People Ops Lead" at B2B companies

Write them all down. If you're early, aim for as few as possible.

What matters is picking channels that give you repeated access to your Market of 1.

Step 3: Do your marketing math.

Most plans fall apart here: vague goals, no funnel logic.

Revenue → Closed Won → Qualified Lead → Qualified Traffic.

Start at the end:

• How much revenue do you want this quarter?

• What's your average deal size?

• What's your close rate?

• What’s your lead-to-opportunity conversion?

• How much-qualified traffic do you need to get there?

Now, work backward. Know your numbers. Otherwise, you're just guessing.

This gives you a real sense of what you need.

Not "we should try LinkedIn."

More like: "To hit $100K this quarter, we need 400 qualified leads. That means 8,000 visits."

Suddenly, that LinkedIn post better do more than get a few likes.

Step 4: Prioritize your hubs and predict lead contribution.

You'll be tempted to run everything. Don't.

Pick 2–3 channels you believe will have the highest return—based on effort, cost, and speed of signal.

👉 Use a simple 2x2 matrix:

Effort vs Impact.

Examples:

• SEO blog posts = high effort, slow return

• Outbound = low effort (with tools), fast signal

• In-person events = high effort, high impact if ICP attends

• Partner webinars = medium effort, unknown impact

Pick 2–3 to focus on. Test them for 90 days.

You don't need perfect data—just enough conviction to run a test for 90 days.

Step 5: Assign ownership.

This is where a lot of plans stall. No one owns anything.

Every hub needs one person responsible for:

• Strategy

• Execution

• Tracking performance

• Reporting what's working (or not)

• Suggesting what to do next

In my case, I'll often delegate the tracking and coordination to a GrowthPair assistant, especially for messy stuff like influencer outreach or affiliate comms.

Ownership doesn't mean doing everything. It just means being accountable for progress.

Step 6: Decide how long you're testing before reviewing.

Early-stage? I recommend quarterly reviews.

Later-stage or higher-volume channels? Monthly is better.

You need enough time to get a signal, but not so much that you waste cycles on channels that aren't performing.

Step 7: Review performance.

This is where the feedback loop kicks in.

• Are we on track to hit our goals?

• What's working?

• What's NOT working?

How do we know what's working?

• What needs to change?

If you don't run this review regularly, you'll keep piling on more channels instead of improving the ones that matter.

🎯 Tangible Prompt: Run the Marketing Machine Diagnostic

If you're a CEO or investor, I recommend running this test today. It takes 15 minutes, gives you a clear snapshot of where execution is breaking down, and tells you exactly where to focus next.

Use this diagnostic with your team—or ask your portfolio company to fill it in.

📌 Marketing Machine Diagnostic

1. Do you have a defined market of 1?

☐ Yes – written down and shared

☐ Sort of – we have personas

☐ No – it's vague

2. Have you selected 3–5 hubs (channels) to focus on?

☐ Yes – clear, prioritized, in-flight

☐ We have channels, but not focused

☐ No – still deciding where to show up

3. Have you done your marketing math for this quarter?

☐ Yes – revenue targets broken into traffic + lead targets

☐ Not really – we have high-level goals

☐ No – we're guessing

4. Have you prioritized channels based on cost, effort, and signal speed?

☐ Yes – top 2–3 are resourced

☐ We're doing too many things at once

☐ No – everything's treated equally

5. Does every active channel have a clear owner?

☐ Yes – names + responsibilities are defined

☐ Sort of – some areas are unclear

☐ No – it's a shared blur

6. Are you running a 30/90-day test cycle for these channels?

☐ Yes – timelines are set and reviewed

☐ We review things ad hoc

☐ No – we haven't set test windows

7. Do you hold a regular review to assess channel performance?

☐ Yes – we ask what worked, what didn't, and adjust

☐ Sort of – happens sporadically

☐ No – we don't review consistently

Scoring:

• 6–7 Yes: You are working towards building a marketing machine—now keep optimizing.

• 3–5 Yes: You've started building, but there are gaps.

• 0–2 Yes: You're still stuck in strategy. It's time to shift to execution.

You don't need more slides. You don't need a complicated deck. You need a simple execution system your team can run every week. You need to know what exactly you are going to do.

The marketing machine isn't a strategy exercise—it's an operating system. The companies that win aren't guessing. They're shipping, reviewing, adjusting, and repeating.

Execution always beats cleverness.

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