Real MARKETing Starts With the Market (Who Knew?)
- Richard McClurg
- May 29
- 5 min read
Updated: May 30
The Marketing Plan Looked Great. In Theory.
Slide 1: “Marketing Strategy.”
Slides 2-38: 37 colour-coded marketing activities.
Slide 39: A photo of someone in a horse mask, paddleboarding. (Unclear why. Didn’t we retire the Harlem Shake vibe in 2013?)
It’s a scene I’ve seen more times than I can count. (Well, maybe not the horse mask bit… in a while.)
A B2B team, under pressure to grow fast, drops into a marketing sprint: campaigns, content, social, tools, a new website, maybe even a personalized sales campaign targeting a few dream accounts for good measure. The plan looks busy. The leadership team nods. The LinkedIn feed is alive.
Three months in, the cracks start to show.
Leads are patchy. The messaging morphs weekly. Nobody’s sure what version they’re on.
The problem isn’t effort. It’s order.
They started with execution, without nailing clarity or strategy first. No solid positioning. Poorly defined ideal customers. No focused roadmap.
Just a full calendar and the bro-club, fist-pumping battle cry of “Let’s go!”
This is what I call small‑m marketing: all motion, no engine. (Which sounds efficient, like the mythical perpetual motion machine… until you reach the first hill.)
Why Execution Comes First (and Why That’s the Problem)
Most lean B2B teams don’t suffer from a lack of effort. They suffer from mis-sequenced effort.
Execution happens first—because it’s visible, tangible, and easy to put in a slide deck. Founders want momentum. Investors want updates. So the team gets busy. Websites launch. Campaigns run. Content churns.
But without upstream clarity or strategy, execution turns into a very expensive way to guess.
You see it in the symptoms:
A value prop that shapeshifts weekly.
Content no one reads (except your Head of Marketing’s mum).
“Personas” built from hope and a hunch. (The fact that ‘Buyer Sally’ likes crème brûlée lattes with extra foam doesn’t f*cking matter when you’re selling enterprise software).
A Go-to-Market plan that’s really just a to-do list with aspirations.
This is what I call random acts of marketing. Looks like activity. Feels like progress. But under the hood? No engine. No GPS. Just vibes and velocity.
And here’s the kicker: the faster you move in the wrong direction, the further off-course you get.
Execution isn’t the starting line. It’s Chapter 3. First comes Clarity. Then Strategy. Only then, Execution.
Real MARKETing: Clarity → Strategy → Execution
You probably don’t have a marketing problem.
You have a ‘we never had clarity or nailed our strategy and hoped no one would notice’ problem. (Yes, I said this in a LinkedIn post for those paying attention. I’m saying it again. That’s how important it is.)
Real MARKETing is how I think about fixing that. It’s not magic. It’s not a hack. Or a silver bullet. It’s about putting in the hard work upfront and doing things in the right order:
1. Clarity before Strategy
Before you plan, you need to understand:
What makes you meaningfully different?
Who actually cares about that difference, and why?
The market context—competitors, customers, and how people buy.
This is the thinking most teams skip—not because they don’t care, but because it’s challenging, messy, and doesn’t look impressive in a Monday morning metrics meeting.
But without it? Strategy is just hope in a PowerPoint (or Notion if you’re with the cool kids).
2. Strategy before Tactics
Once you know who you’re for and why it matters, then you build a plan:
A clear focus on where to play and how to win (and just as important, what you’ll NOT do).
Messaging that supports your strategy, guided by your positioning.
A roadmap that sets direction, not just velocity.
This is where alignment happens. This is where momentum starts to mean something.
3. Execution that reflects Strategy, rooted in Clarity
Now—and only now—do tactics make sense (take that em-dash haters).
Because now they’re not just “things we should try,” they’re the visible output of upstream decisions:
Content reflects a clear position.
Campaigns connect to business goals.
Channels are chosen with intent (not just because the CEO’s niece says “everyone’s on TikTok now”).
Execution is the last mile, not the first panic move.
The Marketing Discipline: Big-M vs. small-m
Most B2B teams are doing marketing. But they’re not practicing Marketing. (Wait, what?)
What they’re actually doing is small‑m marketing—the visible bits: content, campaigns, events, promotional-type stuff. It’s all valid. But on its own, it’s ineffective and inefficient.
The real engine? That’s Big‑M Marketing:
Market insight (there’s a reason why “market” is right there in the name).
Segmentation
Positioning and value proposition
Ideal customers
Business-level stuff. The kind of work that makes the rest of it make sense.
Big-M is the foundation. Small-m is the output.
Confuse the two, and you’ll be busy. And lost.
The Cost of Getting It Backwards
Skipping clarity and strategy doesn’t just slow you down.
It actively gets in your way.
Budget gets burned on tactics that never had a chance.
Teams work hard but struggle to show impact.
Leadership starts thinking that marketing is just fluff and/or the “colouring-in” department.
I’ve seen it firsthand.
Teams pumping out content. Campaigns galore. But leads are weak, messaging’s mushy, and no one’s quite sure what’s actually working.
Then someone calls time. They revisit positioning and messaging. Refocus on the right customers. Rebuild a go-to-market plan with actual priorities.
Suddenly, the focused tactics start working.
Not because the team got smarter overnight, but because now, the execution is guided by strategy, and that strategy is grounded in clarity. The chaos stops.
Skipping the hard stuff feels faster.
But it’s the long way round—with scenic views of wasted budget and team burnout.
What Real MARKETing Looks Like in Practice
When you get it right—when you build the engine before you hit the accelerator—everything changes:
Everyone knows who you’re for and what you stand for.
Messaging stops wobbling and starts converting.
The go-to-market plan isn’t a spreadsheet of guesses.
Marketing earns its seat at the table—not just a pat on the head for “brand vibes.”
It’s focused. It’s consistent. It works. Not because it’s flashy. But because it’s coherent.
The tactics make sense. The team has direction. And the business stops mistaking motion for momentum.
Execution’s the cherry on top—not the whole cake.
The Discipline Is the Shortcut
The fastest way to grow isn’t to try more things. It’s to do fewer things better, and in the right order.
Clarity → Strategy → Execution.
That’s Real MARKETing. Not just “doing marketing,” but practicing it. Not just spinning wheels, but actually steering the car.
So if things feel scattered, chaotic, or like you’re trying too hard for too little return...
Pause. Back it up. Get clear. Build a plan.
Then press go.
