Most marketing strategies fail before the first campaign kicks off.

When a campaign underperforms, the post-mortem usually starts with the execution.

Creative wasn’t strong enough. The media wasn’t optimised. Timing was off. These may all be true. But in many cases, the failure happened much earlier. Before the first visual was designed. Before the first line of copy was written. Before the first budget was approved. Most marketing strategies fail at the moment they are defined.

The illusion of having a strategy

Many organisations believe they have a marketing strategy because they have:

• A deck

• A roadmap

• A list of initiatives

• A calendar

None of these automatically equal strategy. A real strategy answers uncomfortable questions:

Where are we going? Why are we going there? What are we not going to do?

If those answers are missing, you do not have a strategy. You have activity planning.

Vague objectives create weak campaigns

“Build awareness.” “Strengthen the brand.” “Generate demand.”

These are not objectives. They are directions.

Without specificity, teams cannot make good decisions.

A good strategy defines:

• A clear business outcome

• A priority audience

• A measurable success indicator

When objectives are vague, execution becomes guesswork. Guesswork does not scale.

No positioning, no leverage

Positioning is the foundation most strategies quietly skip. If you cannot articulate:

Why are they different? Why that difference matters. Who it matters to. Then every campaign starts at a disadvantage.

You are competing with noise. Execution can amplify positioning. It cannot replace it.

Strategy without focus is pure theatre

Some strategies try to do everything. Multiple audiences. Multiple messages. Multiple priorities.

This looks ambitious. It is actually a lack of courage. Focus requires choosing. Choosing creates tension.

But without focus, budgets scatter, messages blur, and results dilute. A focused strategy feels smaller on paper. But it performs better in reality.

The missing link: commercial reality

Many marketing strategies live in a marketing bubble. They talk about channels, content, and campaigns.

They barely mention:

Revenue model. > Sales cycle. > Deal size. > Margins.

If the marketing strategy is not connected to how the business actually makes money, it is cosmetic. Pretty. Irrelevant.

The cost of skipping the hard thinking

It is tempting to rush into execution. Execution feels productive. Strategy feels slow. But skipping the strategy does not save time. It only delays failure. You either invest time upfront to think clearly. Or you spend much more time later fixing mistakes.

 What strong strategies have in common

They are:

Clear. Focused. Opinionated. Measurable.
Connected to business reality. They also say no. Often.

A final thought

When a campaign fails, resist the urge to blame the creative, media, or platforms. Look upstream. Chances are, the strategy failed first. And if you fix that, execution suddenly gets much easier.

About the Author

Steve Gardiner (exec MBA) is a senior marketing and commercial leader at Lighthouse PR, bringing global experience from Accenture, Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, Telekom, and Etisalat. Latterly, as VP Business at Etisalat, he was responsible for $1.8B in revenue.

Today, Steve applies his strategic, marketing, and growth expertise to support Lighthouse PR clients as part of the agency’s service offering.