Your Campaigns Aren’t Underrated — They’re Malnourished
You think your paid ad campaign is Victor Wembanyama, a 21-year-old 7’3″ alien-athlete chosen by the basketball gods to be the greatest big man to ever grace the hardwood.
Yeah, it’s actually a junior varsity player pounding Cheetos and Kit Kats for breakfast.
Too many B2B growth marketing teams expect elite performance from campaigns that were never even given the structure to succeed. We see major companies churn through the people with their hands on the demand gen controls when the results fall short of leadership’s lofty pipeline expectations. And then they get mad (at the agency, the in-house team, or worse, themselves) because no matter how much banana jam they throw at the wall, nothing seems to stick.
We’re not here to dunk on your creative ideas. Your campaign ideas probably aren’t the problem. They’re actually decent. Maybe even great. But they’re being fed garbage, launched too soon, and tossed into an arena full of screaming fans that are starting to boo the living hell out of your team.
Your campaigns don’t need more creative or audience refinement, bud. Your campaigns need Jesus.
You’re Feeding Your Campaigns Garbage and Expecting Growth
I’m an NBA fan and, boy, do I love the Miami Heat, South Florida’s beloved professional basketball team. Suppose you’re a fan of the game. In that case, you’ve probably heard all about “Heat Culture” – whether it’s being self-proclaimed as the grittiest, nastiest, most competitive team or spearheaded by the (ancient) godfather himself, Sir Pat Riley, who always has a penchant for landing superstars, winning championships, and fielding an annual contender.
Or at least, that’s how things used to be.
Nowadays, being a Heat fan feels a lot more like Stockholm Syndrome. We’ve become a fanbase held captive by an organization wasting their best players’ peak years, fielding a team of guys who just a week ago were polishing up their LinkedIn profiles, and being led by a front office that can’t commit to a direction.
That’s what’s so maddening. It’s obvious to anyone with at least one stigma-free eye that what the organization champions as a competitive roster is set up to live in basketball purgatory for the next 3 to 4 years through no fault but their own. They’ve deceived themselves into thinking they’re good when the ingredients don’t mesh well together, there’s no structural support to field a better offensive output, and haven’t adapted their brand to a more modern system from the top down.
Sound familiar?
Swap out a few words and you could be talking about your marketing system.
You, too, are suffering from a unique case of structural blindness that’s killing your campaigns before they ever go live:
- No positioning
- No clear ICP
- No mapped buyer journey
- No Sales alignment
CTA buttons aren’t magic. If your offer is unclear, the value is indistinguishable, and the audience is wrong, conversion numbers stay small.
How small, Kevin?
You’re Ignoring the Development Stage
Great campaigns, like great NBA players, don’t just POOF into existence (unless, you know, you’re LeBron). They are built. Carefully. Deliberately. Backed by structure, internal buy-in, and a sequence of steps that compound over time:
But SaaS marketers often skip the hard stuff, treating campaigns like a single sprint instead of part of a GTM relay team.
And, I mean, I get it.
Giving feedback to the brand team about legacy messaging is probably more political and touchy than it needs to be. Warming up an audience with some killer brand awareness plays costs money no one was planning for. Building in time for sequencing? Not exactly what gets leadership excited in the QBR.
So instead, campaigns get rushed.
No timing strategy.
No sequencing.
No clarity on what role the campaign actually plays in the bigger pipeline engine.
You’re not broken. Your system is.
Address the System, Not the Symptoms
The campaigns were never the issue. I’m here to tell you you’re not crazy, Miami Heat fan growth marketer. You’re great at your job. The issue was always deeper — the rushed launch, the unclear offer, the missing alignment.
But here’s the good news:
There’s a 6’10” phenom that rains 3’s like Steph Curry and is absolutely jacked like Shaq. It’s called ‘Pipeline predictability’ and it is possible. And you don’t need to reorg your entire team to get there. You just need to start where the system is fraying and work your way up. You need a smart strategy to wade through the company politics.
Start with the following strategy and ideate your own thoughts around it:
- A strong, unified brand narrative that everyone can repeat in their sleep
- A clear ICP with intent signals that actually mean something
- An irresistible offer that maps to where your audience is in their journey
- Sequenced campaigns that warm, educate, and convert — not just interrupt
- Clean routing and feedback loops that keep Sales and Marketing in lockstep
It doesn’t take a miracle. It takes a methodical approach, and a leader willing to be brave enough to say “I know why we keep having this issue, and I have a solution to this.” And that’s exactly what leadership at your company has been waiting to hear.
