Dear Reader: What comes next may be unhinged ramblings from a brand and marketing strategist who's seen enough, but in the end just wants us all to do better.
Let's talk about the identity crisis happening in marketing departments everywhere (well, at least in the United States and probably Canada).
For at least the last decade, marketing has been desperately trying to prove its worth by masquerading as a quasi-sales department. We’ve become obsessed with metrics that make us look good in leadership meetings - MQLs, conversion rates, cost per conversion, and pipeline contribution. But in doing so, we’ve forgotten what marketing actually is.
Marketing is not sales.
“Well, duh, I know that.” Do you? Because we’ve been spending an awful lot of time on lead generation and not nearly enough on brand equity, what should arguably be the biggest portion of the marketing pyramid.
Lead generation? Ask me out to dinner first.
Marketing gets people interested (broad, 1:many). Sales closes the deal (narrow, 1:1). This is a rudimentary division, but it certainly captures the heart of marketing vs. sales in a simple way.
As one digital marketing expert puts it, “Marketing and sales are like siblings with the same goal: helping a company succeed. But just like siblings, they have their own distinct personalities and roles to play. Marketing focuses on getting people interested in a product or service, while sales focuses on closing the deal and making sure the customer leaves happy.”
Let’s talk about MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads), the vanity metric that’s been tormenting marketers for years.
What is an MQL actually? Every company’s MQL definition will be slightly different – after all, you *should* be measuring KPIs unique to you and your situation. But to keep this simple, an MQL is someone who downloaded your whitepaper, attended your webinar, and/or spent more than 30 seconds on your pricing page. It’s someone who is consistently interested in something you’re offering for free, and should be ripe for the picking (hence the “qualified” part).
But here’s the thing: most of these people aren’t ready to buy yet (or even anytime soon). They’re just... interested, and that’s ok! That’s what marketing is supposed to do - create interest and remain top-of-mind.
The problem comes when we treat these curious researchers like they're ready to have a sales conversation. They’re not. And forcing them into sales calls just annoys them, possibly sours them entirely, and wastes everyone’s time.
(Reader: The author would like to point out that, of course, you can’t only entertain and interest people if you’re also supposed to be driving toward bottom-line results. But this is not that blog.)
The modern B2B buying journey looks nothing like what we pretend it does. Consider these stats:
In other words, if you wait until the buyer signals intent, you're already too late (B2B Institute). The decision of which vendor they’ll pick was already determined months or years ago.
This means that by the time someone becomes an MQL, the game is largely over. They’ve already decided whether you’re on their shortlist AND they’ve likely already made up their mind about who they’ll ultimately choose.
So, what should marketing be doing? To answer that, let’s go back to the basics:
Brand creates demand.
Marketing captures demand.
Sales fulfills demand.
Marketing’s job isn’t meant to solely focus on lead generation. It's to:
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Notice how that definition doesn’t explicitly mention “generating leads for sales”?
This is also a good time to point out that when marketing ties itself too closely to sales, guess who starts making the calls about what marketing should and shouldn’t be doing, if they’re doing it well, and how they should be spending their money? That’s right – sales. If marketing is to stand on its own two feet and gain the respect it deserves, then we have to own what we’re good at and the role that is unique to us.
I’m not saying it’s an easy path to proving that marketing isn’t “just a cost center”, but it’s one worth traveling.
Now, here’s where things get challenging. Good marketing takes time. It’s about building relationships, not transactions. It’s about being there consistently until the moment when someone IS ready to buy. It’s about making it easier for our sales teammates to close the deal (and if you’re thinking that sounds awfully similar to what an MQL is supposed to do, you’re right – it’s just not supposed to be siloed specifically to that one metric).
Most buyers are not in-market. But every buyer will *eventually* be in-market. Marketing’s job is to be the first brand they think of when that happens.
This requires patience and a long-term perspective that many companies lack. It means investing in your brand today for sales that might not happen for months or years. That takes a titanic’s worth of discipline! It also requires leadership to understand the importance of this endeavor. With pressure from leadership who don’t get it, it’s no wonder marketing started riding sales’ coattails. It’s been pure survival.
If we accept that marketing’s primary job isn’t immediate lead generation, we need different metrics:
These are harder to measure than MQLs and conversions, and they often don’t have a neat connection to revenue in this quarter’s (or year’s) spreadsheet. But they’re what actually drive long-term business success.
Some of these metrics will be easier to track in-house, while others often require the help of a vendor. When budgets are tight and a vendor can’t be afforded, remember the golden rule of primary research: something is better than nothing. The resources linked above are a starting point for you.
Marketing teams: please stop trying to glom onto sales for a piece of their operational pie. We are not sales. Instead, we need to reclaim our rightful place as the architects of awareness, the builders of brands, and the creators of curiosity.
So the next time someone asks you how many leads your latest campaign generated, maybe it’s time to have a different conversation about what marketing is really for. “Here’s our conversion rate, Joe, but what most people miss is this mighty little metric that forecasts future success.”
When marketing does its job right, sales becomes easier. Not because marketing handed over a list of people who downloaded a PDF, but because marketing created a world where buyers already know, like, and trust your brand before sales ever enters the picture.
That’s not just good marketing. That’s good business.
Meg sees patterns others miss and pulls the threads that matter. With 10+ years of experience and multiple awards, she's a master at uncovering the hidden truth and charting a course to better. Methodical in her approach but never predictable in her solutions, everything she touches packs a punch.