Strategy Note 3: Strategy Problems Wearing Marketing Costumes
There is a pattern I see repeatedly in businesses that are struggling to gain traction despite doing everything "right."
They are posting consistently. They have a presence on the platforms where their audience supposedly spends time. They have invested in professional visuals and decent copy. They are showing up, doing the work, following the advice.
And yet.
Their audience cannot explain what they do in one sentence. Their competitors' work looks interchangeable with theirs. They compete primarily on price because they cannot articulate what else they offer. Their team describes the business differently depending on who is speaking. Their website embarrasses them slightly, though they cannot pinpoint why.
These businesses believe they have a marketing problem. They think they need more visibility, better tactics, a bigger budget, a content calendar that finally works.
They do not have a marketing problem. They have a strategy problem wearing a marketing problem costume.
The difference matters because the solutions are entirely different.
Marketing problems respond to marketing solutions. More content. Better distribution. Improved headlines. Optimized funnels. If your core message is clear and your position is differentiated and your offer is compelling, marketing amplifies all of that.
But if your core message is muddled, more visibility just amplifies the confusion. If your position is undifferentiated, better distribution just makes you louder without making you more memorable. If your offer is unclear, optimized funnels just move more people toward a destination they do not understand.
The symptoms of a strategy problem masquerading as a marketing problem:
You keep changing your message because nothing seems to land. The issue is not the words. The issue is what sits beneath the words—the lack of clarity about who you are, who you serve, and why you exist.
You get inquiries from people who are completely wrong for your business. Your message is vague enough that the wrong people think it is for them. More visibility will bring more of the same.
Your team explains your business differently every time. This is not a training problem. This is a clarity problem. They cannot articulate a unified message because no unified message exists.
You feel like you are starting over with every new campaign, every new platform, every new approach. Nothing compounds because there is no consistent foundation for it to compound upon.
The uncomfortable truth is that strategy work is harder than marketing work. Marketing work is tactical and measurable and can be outsourced and optimized. Strategy work is existential and ambiguous and requires you to sit with questions that do not have easy answers:
Who are we really? What do we actually believe? Why should anyone care? What makes us genuinely different?
The answers to these questions cannot be templated. They cannot be rushed. They can’t be spun up in seconds via ChatGPT. They require excavation rather than invention.
But the businesses that do this work find that everything else becomes easier. You stop fighting your own confusion. You stop faking clarity you don’t have.
If more visibility has not produced more traction, consider that visibility might not be your problem. Consider that you might be amplifying incoherence.
The solution is not to do more. It’s taking the time to stop and think.
Stay Curious,
