Marketing Is Not the Problem. Alignment Is.
Most companies don’t have a marketing problem. They have an alignment problem—and it shows up in finger-pointing, unclear KPIs, and growth plans that sound good but never stick.
I’ve seen it in scaleups, in family businesses, in VC-backed startups: the CEO gets frustrated with the marketing team. The numbers aren’t where they should be. Campaigns don’t convert. Sales blames marketing. Marketing blames sales. Everyone agrees it’s “not working.”
But 9 times out of 10, the real issue isn’t marketing execution. It’s that no one’s really agreed on what marketing is supposed to do in the first place.
Defining Alignment
When I talk about alignment, I’m referring to the shared clarity between leadership, marketing, sales, and product teams on what the business is trying to achieve—and how each function contributes to it. Alignment isn’t about getting along in meetings. It’s about making decisions based on the same understanding of success.
True alignment in marketing requires a clearly defined company strategy, well-understood customer segments, product readiness, continuous sales feedback, responsible budgeting, and—perhaps most importantly—executive support. If even two of these components are missing, marketing becomes a guessing game.
How Misalignment Shows Up
Misalignment is rarely obvious at first. It hides behind surface-level frustrations and inconsistent expectations. Leaders say they care about brand building, but push the marketing team for immediate lead volume. Sales wants to go after enterprise clients, while marketing has been optimizing campaigns for small business leads. The product team keeps iterating, but the messaging has already been finalized and scheduled.
I’ve worked with teams where the marketing department was being measured on engagement metrics, while the CFO only cared about customer acquisition cost. In those environments, no amount of smart execution can make up for strategic contradiction.
The Executive’s Role
If you’re leading a company or business unit and you’re frustrated with growth, the answer probably isn’t to “fix marketing.” Instead, ask yourself: do we all share the same picture of what success looks like? When did we last review our growth goals together—not in functional silos, but across leadership?
From there, the most useful thing you can do is rebuild the connection between marketing, sales, and product. These aren’t separate departments. They’re three parts of the same engine. If one of them is out of sync, the rest suffer.
Why Alignment Is the Force Multiplier
Misalignment burns resources—time, budget, and morale. But when alignment is in place, even modest marketing strategies perform better. And when the team is truly in sync, great marketing compounds. Campaigns convert faster, sales cycles shrink, and the brand becomes a magnet for the right kind of growth.
Marketing isn’t the problem. But how you structure, support, and integrate it into the business? That’s often where the real challenge begins.
What You Can Do Today
If you're a founder, CEO, or executive trying to get more clarity from your marketing and sales teams, here are five high-leverage questions to start with:
- What specific business outcomes are we aiming for this quarter, and how do marketing and sales contribute to each?
- Do we agree on who our ideal customer is today—not just in theory, but based on data?
- Where are the handovers between marketing, sales, and product creating friction or confusion?
- Are the KPIs we're tracking aligned across teams, or are we rewarding contradictory behaviors?
- What blockers—internal or external—are slowing down campaign execution or sales velocity?
And here’s how you can enable your teams more effectively:
- Bring them into strategic conversations earlier.
- Clarify trade-offs. Don’t ask for long-term brand work and short-term pipeline at the same time.
- Fund them properly. Under-resourced marketing can’t perform magic.
- Listen. The best insights about your business often come from the people closest to your customers.
Alignment doesn’t mean everyone agrees on everything. It means the direction is clear, and the teams trust each other to move in it.
I write about building growth systems that actually work—from marketing and sales to product and org design. If this hits home, follow along here or on X @rlivain_builds or LinkedIn.
