Marketing teams are some of the busiest teams in the business. Content calendars are packed. Campaigns are firing. Budgets are being spent. But for many B2B organisations, all that activity still isn’t translating into consistent pipeline or strong returns. It’s not for lack of effort. The problem is often something more subtle: a misalignment of effort.
The real issue isn’t volume, it’s focus
When results stall, the instinctive response is often to do more. Launch more campaigns. Publish more content. Spend more budget. But we’ve seen this play out across dozens of B2B growth-stage businesses and “more” rarely fixes the root issue.
The truth? Most teams don’t have a volume problem. They have a distribution of effort problem. Marketing activity is spread unevenly across the customer journey. Some areas are over-resourced, others overlooked. And while it all feels busy, the outcome is misaligned, underperforming GTM execution.
That’s where a simple, strategic model can help bring clarity. We use a straightforward lens to audit and realign marketing strategies: Brand. Demand. Activate.
Brand
Are you building awareness and trust with the right audience?
This is what gets you in the conversation, builds familiarity, and primes your audience for future conversion.
Demand
Are you effectively capturing interest and converting it to pipeline?
From lead generation to nurture to sales enablement, this is where most teams invest the bulk of their time and budget.
Activate
Are you turning existing customers into a source of sustained growth? This often-overlooked area includes retention, upsell, and referral and it has a profound impact on CAC, LTV, and efficiency.
Here’s what we typically find when teams map their GTM plan across this model:
- Brand work is often fragmented across silos.
- Demand is stretched thin – expected to deliver ever more with ever less.
- Activate is under-resourced, or worse, absent.
And that’s a big miss. Because Activate is where revenue resilience lives.
Why ‘Activate’ matters more than you think
In a world of tighter budgets, shifting buyer expectations, and longer sales cycles, growth doesn’t just come from net-new business. It comes from retaining, growing, and learning from your existing customers.
Activate isn’t just about post-sale comms. It’s about creating a systematic engine for:
- Retention – Helping customers realise value quickly and stay longer
- Upsell – Identifying natural expansion points based on behaviour and success
- Referral – Turning happy customers into advocates and influencers
These levers don’t just improve efficiency — they help multiply your overall marketing ROI. And yet, most GTM teams still default to the front end of the funnel. Because that’s where it feels easier to show activity, if not impact.
Breaking the ‘busy work’ cycle
So why do so many marketing teams stay trapped in reactive mode? Because they’re stuck in what we call the ‘busy work’ loop:
- Capacity gets maxed out chasing quarterly targets
- Priorities shift weekly (or daily)
- Budget gets spread too thin
- Teams operate in silos
- Strategy takes a back seat to delivery
And it all adds up to a huge disconnect between effort and impact. That’s where agile marketing becomes a real unlock, not just as a delivery methodology, but as a mindset.
It helps teams:
- Prioritise what actually moves the needle
- Collaborate across functions
- Adapt quickly to data and feedback
- Focus on value, not volume
In other words: aim before you fire.
Time to take a closer look?
If your team is doing all the things but still falling short on results, this might be the moment to step back. Try mapping your current marketing plan against the Brand–Demand–Activate model. Where are you over-investing? Where are the blind spots? And what might happen if you shifted just 10–15% of your time and budget into the areas that drive lasting growth?
Want to explore how this could work in your team?
We’ve helped B2B marketing leaders rebalance their strategy and unlock performance using this simple model. Let’s talk.