5 Ways Your Marketing Manager Isn’t Helping You Scale

5 Ways Your Marketing Manager Isn’t Helping You Scale

In World War II, the Allies learned a critical lesson: only the top 20% of fighter pilots achieved 80% of all kills. This prompted rigorous screening to separate effective pilots from the rest, with one trait emerging as a key indicator of success—the ability to self-critique and continuously improve.

The same principle applies to marketing: only the top 20% of marketing managers truly deliver results. The remaining 80% may actually be holding your business back. Here are five common reasons your marketing manager might be missing the mark when it comes to scaling your business—and how strategic guidance could close these gaps.

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1. They’re Not Leveraging Data-Driven Campaigns to Drive ROI

In scaling a business, a marketing manager must design campaigns that use hard data to refine targeting, optimise budgets, and improve ROI. However, many managers rely on “set it and forget it” tactics, failing to monitor or adjust campaigns based on performance metrics. A successful B2B strategy requires more than just clicks or impressions—it demands strategic refinement to increase conversion rates and maximise ad spend.

In my experience, a high-performing campaign requires constant testing: adjusting audiences, creatives, and placements to reach peak performance. If your campaigns are generating clicks but not conversions, there’s likely a disconnect stemming from insufficient data analysis.

In my experience, it’s this ability to self-critique campaigns that sets apart marketing strategy. Internal marketing teams often find themselves leaning into what is comfortable. Self-critique opens up the possibility of tough conversations, which are often inhibited by the internal lens of prioritising comfort. We often find that while boldness is an organisational value, in reality, it’s rarely front and centre on a marketing team’s radar without significant incentivisation.

Even when teams are willing to pursue self-critique to the extent needed to optimise savings, they often lack the technical skill and know-how on where to begin. At its heart, self-critique in the advertising industry usually arises from a combination of data analysis skills and experience. An internal marketing expert may have worked with a dozen clients across a few decades, while an external fractional expert like those we offer at D & H Marketing may have handled several hundred client accounts over a decade. This provides greater technical expertise, particularly in the area of campaign refinement.

Key differences include continuous improvement through A/B testing, targeting refinements, and deep data analysis, all essential to scale a brand effectively.

2. They Lack Experience with High-Stakes B2B Advertising Channels

Many marketing managers are proficient in consumer-focused platforms but may struggle when it comes to sophisticated B2B channels like LinkedIn Ads, Google Display Network, and programmatic ad platforms. Effective B2B campaigns require a nuanced understanding of targeting key decision-makers, from executives to procurement teams, across multiple touchpoints. Without this expertise, it’s easy to waste budget targeting the wrong audiences or miss out on valuable leads.

B2B advertising demands experience with lead-nurturing funnels, industry-specific keywords, and precise targeting strategies. In my experience, most marketers, even experienced individuals, tend to have B2C experience only. B2B tends to be very different to market to than B2C. Bridging the technical skill gap required to successfully convert high-ticket clients is a challenge, and patience often wears thin before relevant upskilling has occurred.

I’ve run successful B2B campaigns that prioritised qualified leads over vanity metrics, focusing on building long-term relationships with prospects. In my experience, focusing on a holistic combination of metrics using KPIs with ABM (Account-Based Marketing) wish lists is critical to long-term success. The challenge is setting an effective acquisition pipeline strategy and then implementing it with the technical skills necessary to deliver effective messaging. With my support, you can achieve a marketing strategy that reaches and resonates with the stakeholders most likely to convert.

3. They’re Failing to Build a Scalable Lead Generation System

A key component of scaling any business is an effective lead generation system, and B2B companies often face unique challenges in attracting and converting high-value leads. Unfortunately, many marketing managers either overlook this entirely or rely solely on one or two channels, often missing out on opportunities for scalable growth.

Lead generation isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. It involves understanding how to attract prospects at different stages of the funnel—from awareness and consideration to decision-making. It also requires an understanding of what proper engagement looks like and how to ‘hold’ and ‘build’ future leads by leveraging multi-channel campaigns. The reality is that most leads are not ready to convert immediately, but over a 24-month period, the majority can be converted. This makes strategic touchpoints an absolute must, along with implementing critical KPIs to measure effectiveness. I find that this largely falls by the wayside, and touchpoints become a poorly controlled afterthought.

4. They Don’t Prioritise Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

If you’re in B2B, chances are some of your highest-value clients are specific companies or industries rather than individual consumers. A traditional marketing approach may not be enough to engage these key accounts effectively. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) allows you to create hyper-targeted campaigns that address the unique needs of high-priority accounts, leading to increased conversions and revenue growth.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a highly focused business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy that tailors marketing efforts toward specific, high-value target accounts rather than casting a wide net to attract a general audience. Unlike traditional marketing, which aims to generate as many leads as possible, ABM treats individual target accounts—specific companies or even particular decision-makers within those companies—as individual "markets" in themselves.

Many marketing managers aren’t trained in ABM or lack the technical skills to execute it at scale. This can lead to generic campaigns that fail to resonate with your most valuable prospects. If you’re failing to see results here, it’s likely due to a messaging or strategic planning failure.

5. They’re Not Optimising Campaigns for the Entire Customer Journey

In today’s market, a prospect’s journey from awareness to conversion can be complex and multi-faceted. Focusing solely on top-of-funnel activities, such as driving awareness, won’t be enough to convert high-value leads. A skilled marketing strategist knows how to engage prospects at each stage of the funnel, from nurturing leads through middle-of-funnel content to crafting retargeting ads that drive conversions.

Many marketing managers lack the experience or strategic insight to manage campaigns throughout this entire customer journey. As a result, they often miss opportunities to nurture prospects who aren’t ready to buy immediately. We’ve explored this earlier on, but it’s worth taking a deeper dive into.

Recently, I worked with a client who sought B2B meetings early on from connecting with prospective customers. Yet it was clear that prospective customers in this niche wanted to work only with the most authoritative voice in the industry. Critical to success was a strategy investing in meaningful touchpoints that offered genuine authoritative value through a strategic partnership campaign to develop a voice in the industry.

In many respects, this final point builds upon the four previous principles. It requires experience and technical skill to leverage ROI data-driven campaigns. This experience is rarely built in the B2C environment most marketers come from. Even campaigns that achieve early success are rarely scalable, and even when they are, it’s often not for an extended period due to the skill gaps associated with proper ABM (Account-Based Marketing) work.

We find that without external technical knowledge, there are simply too many points in the customer acquisition pipeline where things can break down, and in-house teams are usually overwhelmed and unable to resolve these issues due to lack of experience.

The good news is that this can all be mitigated. The solution tends to be considering fractional marketing consultancy to fill technical gaps. Interestingly, the cost of an outside consultant often reduces overall spend through efficiency savings rather than increasing costs. In our experience, teams operating through this model achieve 20-25% better efficiency than those operating under traditional and outdated models.

 

Want to learn more? Send us an email at business@davidhannahmarketing.com, and let’s chat about the strategic goals your organisation needs to implement to achieve success in this area. Or contact us here.