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- Why Marketers Shouldn’t Defend Their Value
Sent my last newsletter on a holiday.
This one on a Sunday.
And in a few hours, I’m headed to take communion.
At this point, my email strategy is less “best practices” and more “confession booth” — all I’m praying for is a decent open rate.
But maybe that’s the point.
Marketing doesn’t always land on a schedule.
Sometimes the message sticks precisely because it shows up at an unexpected time.
Which brings me to the larger truth:
Marketing is farming.
Sales is hunting.
Marketing prepares the soil.
Sales picks the fruit.
Yet somewhere along the way, the lines blurred. We started expecting marketing to sell. We started demanding that personal brand marketing behave like performance marketing. We started tying corporate marketing directly to enterprise contracts—as if the fruit should fall instantly from the vine.
But here’s the thing: the real value of marketing often happens off the calendar, outside the funnel, and far beyond the quarterly dashboard.
That podcast your CEO hosted that led to a deal two years later.
That dinner that produced a referral six months after the fact.
That sponsored event that brought in a game-changing hire.
That single LinkedIn post that earned a speaking invite for your CRO.
This is the long game. The slow nurture. The soil work.
And without it, there’s nothing for sales to harvest.
The Tension
Here’s the rub: sellers are the ones “making hay.” They’re the ones ringing the bell, bringing in revenue. Meanwhile, corporate marketing creates awareness but often struggles to show direct impact beyond that.
Why?
Because marketing has had no way to measure the influence of its own work on what sellers actually do.
Until now.
After 40+ interviews across four industries, one thing is crystal clear:
Large corporate marketing budgets are shifting from company logos to the individual brands of their people.
And yet—there’s no system to do this at scale.
No infrastructure to align, measure, and optimize the personal brands of sales professionals.
The result? Wasted spend, inefficiency, and missed opportunities.
The Shift
The solution is infrastructure.
Infrastructure that enables marketers to scale the brand equity of their sales professionals.
Infrastructure that ties activities, resources, and dollars to measurable outcomes under one centralized umbrella across all their sales professionals online activities.
When that happens:
Marketing can nurture the corporate brand and empower its people.
Sales professionals become visible, trusted heroes—not just hunters, but magnets.
Companies win on retention, revenue, and reputation through aligned, measurable influence.
The New Game
The rules are being rewritten.
Marketers no longer need to defend their value — they’ll be able to prove it.
Because when the soil is healthy, the harvest is inevitable.
And the next era of growth won’t just be corporate.
It will be personal.
Webinar with Case Kenny & Reading Rhymths
20+ Registered for our Webinar on September 23 featuring Case Kenny. He’s built a platform with millions of followers across email and social and sold hundreds of thousands of books.
We’ll be exploring topics around self worth, identity, settling, relationships, and how he’s built a winning thought leadership brand. This one will be a treat.
Join Us!