Before You Add Another Tactic, Diagnose the Story Your Business Is Actually Using

If your marketing feels inconsistent right now, you’re not alone.

Messages shift quarter to quarter. Campaigns don’t seem to build on each other. Sales tells one story while marketing tells another. Everyone is working hard, but confidence is low—and results feel harder to predict.

Most leaders identify this as a tactical problem first. Something feels off.

But in my experience, inconsistency is rarely the real issue. It’s the first symptom of something deeper.

The First Thing That Breaks Is Consistency—But the Root Cause Is Structural

When organizations lose consistency, it’s usually because the thread connecting business decisions, marketing choices and go-to-market motions is missing.

That thread is your north star.

Without it, teams change direction too often. Initiatives overlap or compete. New ideas get layered on before the last ones were ever given time to work. People default to “trying more things” because there’s no shared reference point for what matters most.

Over time, this takes a toll. Even if teams can’t name the problem, they can feel it. Confidence drops. Focus erodes. Momentum slows.

Iteration and testing are healthy. Spinning without a clear reference point is not.

Why This Shows Up in Small and Mid-sized Organizations

This pattern shows up often when companies move beyond scrappy execution but before fully maturing their operating model.

There’s usually a vision—but it lives in a few people’s heads. There may be a brand articulation—but commitment to it wavers. Plans exist—but they’re revised before they’re ever fully tested.

The missing ingredient isn’t effort. It’s commitment.

• Commitment to a clear vision.
• Commitment to a defined audience.
• Commitment to a strategic and operational plan long enough to learn from it.

Without that commitment, there is no single plan in front of you. And without a plan, you can’t diagnose what’s actually going wrong.

What’s Happening Usually Isn’t a Messaging Problem

When leaders say, “We have a messaging problem,” I usually hear something else.

What they often mean is:

• We’re trying to be too many things to too many people
• Our goals aren’t clearly driving our choices
• Our teams don’t have a shared definition of who we are and what we do

That’s not a messaging issue. That’s a clarity issue.

What clear messaging actually requires is truly understanding who you are, what you do and who you do it for. When you align that understanding to real business goals, messaging is the easier part. From there, you test, iterate and improve—this is where how you grow matters.

When clarity is missing, no amount of copywriting or campaign planning will fix it.

What Leaders Do Instead—and Why It Rarely Works

Faced with uncertainty, leaders often try to solve a smaller, more visible problem first.

They swap tactics. They replace people. They reorganize teams. They blame sales, delivery or execution. 

I’ve spent my career working inside complex services organizations and this is a common pattern across services firms, consultancies and agencies, where offerings, people and perceived value are tightly intertwined. 

But when the underlying issue is systemic, these moves don’t create clarity. They create churn.

The harder work is stepping back and asking whether the business is actually operating against a shared, committed narrative at all.

How to Diagnose Marketing Drift Quickly

There are two fast ways I’ve found to surface whether drift is present.

First: Ask a few senior leaders to describe the company succinctly.

If the answers point to different audiences, different value propositions or different priorities, alignment is already breaking down.

Second: Look at the full ecosystem—not just the website.

Sales materials, social presence, internal language, onboarding, campaigns. If what you see doesn’t match the vision leadership believes they’re pursuing, something is off.

This is where a strategic audit becomes valuable.

What a Strategic Marketing Audit Is Actually For

A Strategic Marketing Audit is not about critiquing tactics in isolation. It’s a diagnostic tool designed to:

• Evaluate how your business is actually showing up across its ecosystem
• Assess whether messaging, execution, and priorities align to stated goals and vision
• Identify where reality and intent have diverged

For senior leaders, it provides a clear snapshot of whether the organization is operating the way it thinks it is. If the audit confirms alignment, you double down. If it reveals gaps, it usually signals something more systemic needs attention. Either way, you’re no longer guessing.

Clarity Is a Leadership Advantage

Growth requires focus. Focus requires commitment. Commitment requires clarity.

Before you add another tactic, another channel or another initiative, it’s worth diagnosing the story your business is actually running on today.

If you want a clear, neutral view of where your marketing and narrative are aligned—or drifting—I’m currently offering a Strategic Marketing Audit designed to do exactly that.

If you want to learn more about the Strategic Marketing Audit, I’m currently offering a focused diagnostic designed to clarify what’s working, what’s misaligned and where to focus next.