You’re Not Bad at Marketing. You’re Running a Broken Function.

For many CEOs, marketing probably feels harder than it should.

Not because they don’t believe in it, haven’t invested, or have ignored it altogether. But because, despite the time, money, and energy they’ve put in, it still feels frustratingly inconsistent. Busy, but underwhelming. Active, but unreliable. Full of effort, yet short on impact.

If that sounds familiar, let me be clear from the outset.

You are not bad at marketing. What you’re dealing with is a marketing function that has not yet reached the level of maturity your business now requires.

That distinction matters, because most of the fixes people try assume the opposite.

The accidental CMO problem

In most SMEs, marketing doesn’t fail loudly. It fails quietly.

Many CEOs feel it, few can explain it, and most try to fix it in ways that never quite work. Over the past decade, working with over twenty marketing functions inside owner-led businesses, I’ve seen this same pattern repeat again and again.

It usually starts with good intentions. You hire someone junior to “get things moving”. You bring in an agency to add expertise. You sign off campaigns, websites, content and ads. On the surface, progress appears to be happening.

But underneath, something more subtle takes place.

Because there’s no in-house marketing leader, the CEO or business owner ends up in the CMO seat by default. Not officially or by choice, but by necessity.

You’re the one approving budgets, deciding priorities, selecting partners and signing off content. You’re the one asking the difficult questions when results don’t appear.

And yet marketing isn’t your job. It probably isn’t your background. You already run sales, operations, finance, people and strategy. Marketing becomes another responsibility layered onto an already full leadership role.

This is the accidental CMO problem. And it’s far more common than most CEOs realise.

Why smart CEOs still struggle with marketing

Most of the CEOs I work with are highly capable leaders.

They’ve built businesses from scratch. They understand commercial trade-offs. They know how to create momentum and scale teams.

So why does marketing feel different?

Because marketing is usually the least mature function in the business.

Sales has targets, pipelines and processes. Operations has systems, cadence and accountability. Finance has controls, reporting and governance.

Marketing, by contrast, often evolves reactively. One hire here. One agency there. One initiative layered on top of another. Over time, it becomes a patchwork of effort and activity rather than a coherent function.

And when a function lacks structure, performance becomes unpredictable. This issue isn't lack of effort. The function itself isn’t operationally sound enough to deliver consistent, repeatable results.

The realisation that matters.

Here’s the real issue most businesses miss. 

Most businesses don’t have a marketing problem. They have a marketing function problem.

The problem was never talent or ideas. It was maturity.

Marketing feels hard not because you’re doing it badly, but because the function itself lacks the structure, clarity and maturity required to perform at the level needed to compete in your market. 

The function hasn’t yet been deliberately designed to operate in a way that produces reliable results. 

Once you see that, everything else starts to make sense. 

Why hiring “better” people didn’t fix things. Why switching agencies didn’t change much. Why rebrands created energy but not momentum. Why marketing always seemed to lag behind sales, operations, and finance in confidence and credibility.

You stop asking, “Why isn’t marketing working?” and start asking, “What is this function missing to work properly?”

If marketing has felt harder than it should for years, that question is the real starting point.

If you find these articles and way of thinking useful, you can read more about my background and the type of work I do here or sign up to receive updates below.