Marketing Isn't Your Campaign Department. Give It a Seat at the Damn Table.
I was talking to marketer in the channel today and it sparks some THOUGHTS to say the least.
Here is the bottom line: Marketing should influence business strategy, not just execute campaigns. We aren’t order takers. We are business strategists.
Somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that marketing's job was to take a business strategy someone else created and turn it into campaigns.
Leadership sets the revenue targets. Sales identifies the accounts. Product decides what to build. Finance determines the budget. And then marketing gets invited into the conversation.
Usually with a question that sounds something like, "So, what can marketing do to support this?"
I have a better question.
Why wasn't marketing part of the conversation in the first place?
Because if your marketing team only gets involved once the strategy has been decided, you're leaving some of your most valuable business intelligence sitting outside the room.
And then wondering why your campaigns aren't delivering.
We've Confused Marketing Execution With Marketing Leadership
Don't get me wrong. I love a good campaign. I love watching an idea turn into something tangible, seeing engagement grow, and connecting marketing investments to actual revenue.
But executing campaigns and leading marketing are two very different things.
Execution is building the campaign to support a product launch. Leadership is helping determine whether the product solves a problem the market actually cares about.
Execution is generating leads for the sales team. Leadership is understanding why opportunities aren't converting and helping the business address the underlying problem.
Execution is promoting a partner program. Leadership is questioning whether the partner strategy is creating mutual value and identifying where the ecosystem could drive meaningful growth.
We spend an enormous amount of time discussing marketing's ability to execute. We talk about campaign performance, attribution, content production, lead generation, and pipeline contribution.
Those things matter. But they're only part of the equation.
Marketing's greatest value isn't simply its ability to generate demand. It's its ability to help the business understand demand.
And those are two entirely different conversations.
Your Marketing Team Knows More Than You Think
Think about the information marketing encounters every single day.
We see which messages resonate and which ones fall flat. We hear the questions buyers ask before they're willing to talk to sales. We watch competitors change their positioning, identify emerging market conversations, and see where prospects lose interest.
We understand how communities form, how trust develops, and how buying behavior evolves.
Or at least we should.
That information shouldn't live exclusively in campaign reports and marketing dashboards. It should inform product development, revenue planning, customer experience, competitive positioning, and broader business strategy.
Imagine what would happen if marketing regularly brought those insights into executive conversations.
Instead of reporting that a campaign generated 300 leads, we could explain what those leads revealed about changing buyer priorities.
Instead of celebrating webinar attendance, we could identify the questions that suggest an emerging market opportunity.
Instead of reporting declining conversion rates, we could investigate whether the business is targeting the wrong audience, communicating the wrong value, or solving a problem that buyers no longer prioritize.
That's where marketing starts influencing the direction of the business.
And frankly, that's a much more interesting job.
Stop Asking Marketing to Fix a Business Problem
Here's where things get uncomfortable.
Sometimes the problem isn't marketing.
Sometimes the product isn't differentiated enough. Sometimes the sales process creates unnecessary friction. Sometimes the pricing strategy doesn't align with buyer expectations. Sometimes the company is pursuing a market without fully understanding what that market needs.
And sometimes leadership decides it needs more pipeline when what it actually needs is a better conversion strategy.
But when revenue falls short, what's the first request?
More campaigns. More leads. More events. More content.
Throw some AI into the mix, and suddenly we're expected to accomplish all of that with fewer resources. Hello, welcome to the era of the team of one! I keep hearing this in the channel and as a solo marketer/also executive, that gets messy. Thankfully I have an amazing agency partner to help me execute the crazy things I come up with but —
Does this sound familiar?
Marketing can amplify a strong business strategy. It can identify opportunities, create demand, establish credibility, and accelerate growth.
But it cannot consistently compensate for fundamental problems elsewhere in the business.
And we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
If marketing is expected to influence revenue, marketing needs the opportunity to influence the decisions that determine whether revenue is achievable.
You cannot hold marketing accountable for business outcomes while excluding it from business decisions.
That needs to change.
Revenue Is a Business Strategy, Not a Departmental Competition
One of my biggest frustrations with traditional B2B organizations is how easily we turn revenue generation into a competition between departments.
Marketing wants credit for sourced pipeline. Sales wants credit for closing deals. Partnerships wants credit for introductions. Customer success wants credit for expansion.
Meanwhile, the buyer couldn't care less which department gets attribution.
They care about solving their problem.
I've spent a significant part of my career in the Microsoft partner ecosystem, where relationships, partnerships, and community play an enormous role in how business gets done.
A buyer might discover your company through a community conversation, hear about your solution from a trusted partner, attend an event, read an article, and finally engage with your sales team months later. (They might even hear an AMBUSH keynote about AI and it sparks interest in where I work, what I market, and if it can help them like my keynote helped them.)
Who gets credit? WHO CARES! There. I said it.
More importantly, why are we so obsessed with assigning credit instead of understanding how those interactions work together?
When marketing participates in business strategy, the conversation changes.
We stop asking how many leads marketing needs to generate and start asking how the organization creates demand, builds trust, converts opportunities, and develops long-term customer relationships.
Sales, marketing, partnerships, product, and customer success should all contribute to that conversation.
Because revenue doesn't belong to one department.
Neither should the strategy behind it.
Community Belongs in the Business Conversation
If you've heard me speak recently, you probably know where I'm going with this.
Community is the new revenue funnel. And no, I don't mean creating another LinkedIn group, launching a community newsletter, or adding networking events to your marketing calendar. I'm talking about recognizing that relationships influence business outcomes long before someone becomes an identifiable opportunity. Communities reveal what people care about. They expose problems companies haven't recognized. They create opportunities for collaboration, partnerships, innovation, and growth.
They're also where trust is built.
When marketing understands those conversations, it can bring insights into the business that traditional reporting may never capture. Why do you think Partner Marketing is so critical in the channel?
That knowledge can influence which markets you enter, which partnerships you prioritize, which products you develop, and how you position your organization.
But only if leadership recognizes community as more than another marketing activity.
The relationships you're building today might influence business decisions you haven't even considered yet.
That's why community deserves a place in business strategy.
AI Isn't Going to Make This Decision for Us
We can't have this conversation without addressing AI.
Marketing teams are under enormous pressure to produce more. More content, more personalization, more campaigns, more reporting, and more pipeline.
AI has made certain aspects of execution faster and more accessible.
Great.
But if all we're doing is using AI to produce more of the same marketing activities, we've missed a much bigger opportunity.
What if we used that additional capacity to understand our customers more deeply? To analyze market opportunities? To identify friction in the buying journey? To connect information across departments and challenge assumptions about where growth will come from?
What if marketing spent less time proving how busy it is and more time demonstrating how its insights influence business decisions?
AI can accelerate execution. It can support research and analysis. It can help us identify patterns we might otherwise miss.
But it cannot replace the curiosity, judgment, relationships, and business understanding required to turn information into strategy.
The opportunity isn't simply to become a more efficient marketing department.
It's to become a more influential one.
CMOs, We Have Some Work to Do, Too
I could spend this entire article telling CEOs and executive teams why marketing deserves greater influence. But there's another side to this conversation. Marketing leaders have to earn that influence by demonstrating that we understand the business beyond our own department. We need to understand financial performance, revenue models, customer acquisition costs, profitability, sales operations, and the commercial implications of the strategies we're recommending.
We need to understand what happens after someone becomes a lead.
And we need to be willing to challenge our own assumptions.
It's difficult to demand a seat at the strategy table if every conversation we bring to that table revolves around campaign performance and marketing metrics.
I'm a CMO, and I'm increasingly interested in the decisions that happen outside the traditional boundaries of marketing.
Not because campaigns are suddenly unimportant, but because understanding the entire business makes me a better marketing leader.
I want to know why we're entering a particular market. What our customers need. Where our revenue opportunities exist. How our partners influence growth. What our financial priorities mean for our go-to-market investments. Where my marketing funds are invested. Where my time is invested.
And I want marketing to help answer those questions rather than simply execute against the answers someone else provides.
That requires curiosity. It requires financial literacy. It requires uncomfortable conversations and a willingness to take accountability for outcomes beyond marketing's traditional responsibilities.
If we want to be viewed as business leaders, we need to think and operate like business leaders.
The B2B Rebellion Starts in the Boardroom
I'm not suggesting every marketing decision belongs in the boardroom or that CMOs should suddenly take responsibility for every function in the organization. I'm suggesting we rethink where marketing's responsibilities begin. Bring marketing into conversations about market expansion before the expansion strategy is finalized. Include marketing in product discussions before the launch date is announced. Involve marketing in revenue planning before pipeline targets are assigned. And give marketing leaders the responsibility to bring meaningful market intelligence into those conversations.
But CMOs, don't wait around for someone to extend an invitation.
Start asking different questions. Build stronger relationships with finance, sales, product, and executive leadership. Understand the commercial decisions shaping your organization and bring perspectives that help improve them. (That is what I am working on at Dooap Studio.)
Show up with more than a campaign calendar.
Because the future of marketing leadership isn't about who can produce the most content, generate the most leads, or launch the most campaigns.
It's about who can connect what the market needs with where the business needs to go.
Stop asking marketing what campaigns it can execute. Start asking what business decisions it can influence.
And marketing leaders? Make damn sure you have something worth bringing to the conversation.
