Marketing Is the Engine Room of Business Transformation. It’s Time We Treated It That Way.
“Transformation requires more than just tools- it demands courage”
Most companies say they’re transforming. But look closely, and you’ll see the same siloed structures, legacy thinking, and misalignment between what a business says and how it shows up, both internally and externally. At the heart of this misalignment? Marketing. Not because it’s broken, but because where it needs to be in this day and age is entirely misunderstood.
Marketing should be the voice of the business, telling the story of who we are, where we’re going, and why it matters. It’s the only function built to connect customer, culture, commercial ambition, and long-term value. And it’s uniquely placed to galvanise people around change and be a force in leading it.
Today’s workforce, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, don’t just work for a payslip. They’re seeking alignment with values. The employer brand is your brand. It affects who joins you, who stays, and who becomes your advocate. Marketing is essential to shaping and communicating this, not just externally, but across your internal culture.
Too many marketing teams are still operating like it’s 2010, mostly on external promotional activity, tactical, volume-based, and short-term outputs. Dare I say it, much of the work is often difficult to justify in terms of impact, because the model teams are working from is broken.
We’re still using a concrete boom pump to pour leads into the top of a supposed funnel and calling it pipeline. It’s lead generation at all costs, with little thought for relevance, timing, or actual intent. It’s a numbers game to drive MQLs, not a value game.
We’ve created a culture where quantity is mistaken for effectiveness.
Meanwhile, buying behaviours in B2B have shifted. People buy in groups, with different priorities and goals. It’s a multi-stage buying process. Trust is hard fought for. Decision-making is complex. We need sales and marketing structured to navigate this.
But there’s a disconnect between sales and marketing, a post-pandemic leadership gap in teams, and a lack of upskilling, and ‘performance marketing’ is king, so it’s no surprise that marketers are exhausted and their impact is diluted. But more than that, they’re confused.
They’re working flat out, under pressure to deliver outcomes, and yet nothing’s landing. The model they are working from is broken, but nobody’s acknowledging it, and they don’t have permission to change it. And businesses? Many are too nervous to really look under the car bonnet, because to do so would mean confronting some uncomfortable truths and doing the work to fix them.
And yet, marketing has a seat at more tables than it realises, or at least it should, if it were allowed to. Corporate strategy, ESG, sustainability and purpose, talent management, commercial performance, even risk management, these are all areas where marketing can and should contribute. And yet, they’re often missing from the conversation. It’s time marketing leaders stepped into these spaces. Businesses must evolve to stay relevant, and marketing can be the compass.
If businesses want to be fit for the future, marketing needs to stop being an afterthought, or a department doing random acts of marketing, with disparate efforts not tied to business strategy. Because all these areas of marketing are connected to build a modern-day function.
This isn’t just about “doing stuff” for the sake of visibility. Marketing is in crisis, stuck between what it used to be, what the business thinks it is, and what it needs to become.
Reinvent marketing. Let it into the core of the business. And you’ll unlock true transformation.
Let’s Talk.
If you’re navigating change — a merger, transformation, or a moment where brand and marketing need to lead, I’d love to help.
👉 Email me directly: andrews_samantha@hotmail.com
👉 Or message me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-andrews/