The problem isn’t bad advice — it’s missing context
Most marketing advice sounds reasonable.
That’s the problem.
“Know your audience.”
“Test and iterate.”
“Focus on value.”
“Be consistent.”
None of this is wrong.
But in real marketing environments — with limited budgets, imperfect data, internal politics, and pressure to perform — this advice often collapses.
Not because teams are incompetent.
But because the advice doesn’t survive reality.
This piece isn’t about calling out bad actors or dunking on beginners.
It’s about understanding why well-intentioned advice repeatedly fails once it meets real constraints — and what actually holds up instead.
Reason 1: Most marketing advice assumes ideal conditions
Marketing advice is usually written as if:
You have time
You have budget
You have alignment
You have clean data
You have authority to decide
In practice, you rarely have all five.
Advice that requires ideal conditions doesn’t scale down.
It only works when everything else is already working.
What happens in the real world
Teams try to follow the advice partially.
Execution degrades.
Results disappoint.
The advice gets blamed — but the real issue is that it was never designed for constraint.
What actually holds up
Advice that acknowledges:
Scarcity
Tradeoffs
Imperfect execution
Human behavior inside teams
Real-world marketing starts by asking:
“What still works when conditions aren’t ideal?”
Reason 2: Advice focuses on tactics instead of decisions
Most marketing advice tells you what to do.
Very little tells you what to decide.
But tactics don’t fail in isolation.
They fail because the decision behind them was wrong.
Examples:
Running ads before clarifying positioning
Publishing content without knowing who it’s for
Scaling channels without understanding why they worked
What happens in the real world
Teams stack tactics hoping one sticks.
Complexity increases.
Clarity disappears.
What actually holds up
Decision-first thinking:
Who are we for?
Why should they care?
What are we willing to exclude?
Where does this fit in the buying journey?
Tactics should answer those questions — not replace them.
Reason 3: Most advice ignores tradeoffs
Good marketing is full of tradeoffs:
Speed vs quality
Reach vs relevance
Scale vs focus
Automation vs judgment
Most advice pretends you can have everything.
You can’t.
What happens in the real world
Teams try to:
Be everywhere
Appeal to everyone
Move fast without breaking things
They end up breaking clarity instead.
What actually holds up
Advice that makes tradeoffs explicit.
Not:
“You should do X.”
But:
“If you do X, here’s what you give up — and why that trade might be worth it.”
That’s how real decisions get made.
Reason 4: Advice rarely accounts for organizational reality
Marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
It happens inside organizations with:
Incentives
Politics
Hierarchies
Misaligned goals
Most advice assumes:
“Once you know the right thing, you can do it.”
That’s rarely true.
What happens in the real world
Good ideas die in meetings.
Decisions get diluted.
Execution becomes compromise.
What actually holds up
Advice that considers:
Who owns decisions
How buy-in actually happens
Where resistance will appear
Marketing strategy that ignores organizational dynamics is fragile by default.
Reason 5: Advice optimizes for explanation, not application
Marketing advice is often written to sound smart.
Frameworks.
Acronyms.
Diagrams.
But clarity of explanation is not the same as usability.
What happens in the real world
Teams understand the idea — but don’t know what to do next.
Advice becomes inspiration, not instruction.
What actually holds up
Advice that answers:
“What would I stop doing?”
“What would I do differently next week?”
“What decision does this help me make?”
If advice can’t change behavior, it doesn’t matter how elegant it is.
Reason 6: Advice underestimates how messy buyers actually are
Most advice assumes buyers are:
Rational
Attentive
Informed
Ready to decide
They aren’t.
Real buyers are distracted, risk-averse, political, and overloaded.
What happens in the real world
Perfect funnels underperform.
Clear messaging still gets misunderstood.
Objections appear late.
What actually holds up
Advice that accounts for:
Inertia
Fear of being wrong
Internal justification
Status quo bias
Marketing that works doesn’t just persuade.
It reassures.
Reason 7: Advice rarely survives repetition
Even good advice degrades when repeated mechanically.
What worked once:
In a different market
At a different scale
Under different conditions
Gets copied without context.
What happens in the real world
Teams chase best practices instead of building understanding.
Performance becomes fragile.
What actually holds up
Principles over prescriptions.
Understanding why something worked allows adaptation.
Copying what worked does not.
The pattern beneath all failed advice
Across all of this, one theme repeats:
Most marketing advice fails because it removes the hardest part — judgment.
Judgment can’t be templated.
It can’t be automated.
It can’t be outsourced.
Advice that tries to avoid judgment feels helpful — but breaks under pressure.
What actually works in the real world
Marketing advice that holds up tends to share a few traits:
It acknowledges constraints
It makes tradeoffs explicit
It focuses on decisions, not tactics
It accounts for organizational reality
It changes behavior, not just thinking
This kind of advice isn’t always exciting.
But it compounds.
The goal of marketing advice shouldn’t be to inspire action.
It should be to improve decision quality.
Because in the real world, marketing doesn’t fail from lack of effort.
It fails when teams repeatedly make reasonable decisions — in the wrong context.
That’s what this publication exists to correct.
