Marketing STILL doesn't work (for you). Here's (MORE possible reasons) why.

Some common marketing mistakes I see in B2B businesses of all shapes and sizes.

When I wrote my first post on why marketing “doesn’t work”, a lot of the responses followed the same pattern:

• “This feels uncomfortably familiar.”

• “We’ve definitely done this.”

• “I wish I’d read this two years ago.”

That’s usually a good sign.

But once you get past the obvious execution mistakes, like chopping and changing agencies, demanding instant results, and shouting “sell” at every opportunity, there’s a deeper layer of issues that quietly undermine marketing before it ever has a chance.

These are the strategic problems. The less visible ones. The ones that crop up again and again, whether I’m working with a business-to-business (B2B) startup software company, a B2B scale-up service provider, or a multi-country B2B SaaS business.

Here are seven common marketing mistakes that mean marketing might (still) not be working for you.

Your proposition isn’t clear

If I ask three people in your business what you do, and I get three different answers, your marketing is already fighting an uphill battle.

This happens all the time. A business evolves, adds products, tweaks its positioning, targets new sectors, but never properly sharpens the core proposition. So, marketing ends up trying to explain everything, badly.

I’ve seen this in B2B SaaS companies selling genuinely good products, but the messaging jumps between features, use cases and vague promises of “efficiency”. Internally, everyone knows what the business does. Externally, no one has a clue!

If a prospect can’t quickly understand:

• what you do

• who it’s for

• and why they should care

they won’t dig deeper. They’ll move on to someone clearer.

You want to sell everything, to everyone

This is one of the hardest habits to break, especially in new or growing businesses. I even fell into this trap when setting out on my own.

A sales team lands a deal in a new sector. Suddenly marketing is asked to support that sector as well as, or even instead of, your core markets. Then another use case appears. Then another. Before long, the message is so broad it barely says anything at all, and your marketing team is stretched beyond capacity.

I’ve seen businesses with excellent traction stall because they refused to choose. Instead of going deep with a defined audience, they tried to keep everyone happy. The result? Marketing that feels generic, unfocused and easily ignored.

Strong marketing is about trade-offs. About deliberately choosing who you’re for and, just as importantly, who you’re not for.

Trying to appeal to everyone feels safe. In reality, it’s the riskiest option of all.

You still see marketing as a cost, not an investment

This mindset crops up everywhere, from early-stage startups to established businesses.

Marketing gets treated like a tap. Turn it on when leads are needed. Turn it off when budgets tighten. Then act surprised when nothing’s flowing.

I’ve worked in organisations where marketing activity was constantly judged on short-term pipeline contribution, even when the product, price point and buying process clearly required months, often years, of consideration.

Marketing isn’t just about generating demand now. In fact I, and many others, would argue its main focus is about building familiarity, trust and preference long before someone is ready to buy. That’s how you avoid starting from zero every time sales needs help.

You don’t plant seeds and complain when nothing grows the next day!

One message for multiple buying personas doesn’t cut it

Complex B2B buying decisions rarely sit with one person. You’ve got IT worrying about risk, finance worrying about cost, procurement worrying about suppliers, and sales worrying about speed and performance.

Yet many businesses still push out one generic message and hope it somehow resonates with everyone. It won’t.

I’ve seen marketing programmes transform simply by acknowledging this reality. Same product. Same value. Different language, emphasis and proof points depending on who’s reading.

Not only does this help marketing, it helps your sales team too. If they can give their buying champion the ammunition to help persuade the rest of the buying committee, you’ll be steps ahead of your competitors under consideration.

Relevance isn’t about saying more. It’s about saying the right thing to the right person.

You don’t see the value in existing customers

New business gets all the attention. Existing customers quietly tick along in the background. Which is strange, because they’re often the most valuable asset you have.

A side note: I joined one company that only communicated with customers by sending an invoice 3 months from renewal, then 2 months, then 1. Then they’d get a phone call! No other interaction at all, unless the customer had a problem and called in. So, they only engaged with customers when the customer was frustrated or owed them money. Madness! No wonder I was able to boost retention rates by 15% simply by engaging throughout the customer lifecycle and using product usage stats to trigger communications.

Your customers know why they bought, what nearly stopped them buying (this is like gold dust, because you can’t ask the people who didn’t buy…), what they value most now, and where you genuinely outperform competitors. I’ve seen entire messaging frameworks, content strategies and sales enablement assets shaped by simply listening to existing clients properly.

They’re also your strongest proof points, and far more credible than any claim you can make about yourself.

Ignoring them isn’t just a missed opportunity. It’s self-sabotage.

You never bother with clear marketing KPIs (or they keep moving)

This is where marketing often gets unfairly judged.

Brand activity gets evaluated on lead volume. Lead gen gets judged too early. And every quarter the question changes from “is this working?” to “why isn’t this working yet?”

Without clear, stable KPIs, marketing becomes reactive. Strategy gives way to noise. And confidence in the function slowly erodes.

Brand is brand. It’s not about leads tomorrow.

Set the right measures. Stick with them. Let marketing do the job it’s meant to do.

You panic every quarter, despite having a long sales cycle

This one might sound familiar.

Targets wobble. Forecasts tighten. Suddenly the strategy you committed to six months ago is abandoned in favour of “just doing something”. Usually an email blast. Sometimes a rushed campaign. Occasionally both. Either way, they’re more likely to turn-off future prospects than deliver leads overnight.

Even when that panic activity does generate leads, they rarely convert quickly. In businesses with 12–18 month sales cycles, those leads might not turn into revenue until the next year! Or the year after.

I’ve seen this cycle repeat endlessly. Panic kills consistency. And consistency is what actually delivers predictable, long-term, sustainable growth.

Quarterly pressure is real. But short-term panic almost always makes long-term performance worse.

In summary

Marketing doesn’t fail because people aren’t working hard enough. It fails because expectations are unrealistic, strategy gets blurred, and patience runs out too soon.

If any of this feels familiar, that’s not a criticism. It’s an opportunity.

If you want an honest, practical view of which of these issues might be holding your marketing back, let’s talk. No panic. No gimmicks. Just clarity.