--- title: What is wrong with (digital) marketing today description: Here's our opinion on what is wrong with marketing today, from a lack of trust to AI-driven mediocrity, and how you can start fixing this. image: https://blog.upperscore.be/hubfs/Socials/Whats%20wrong%20with%20marketing%20today.jpg --- [![Logo Upperscore medium](https://blog.upperscore.be/hubfs/Logo%20Upperscore%20medium.png)](https://upperscore-3480348.hs-sites.com) - Solutions ## Solutions Get a good understanding of how exactly we help your business forward ### [HubSpot revenue sprint Turn your HubSpot from a digital graveyard into a Revenue Engine](https://upperscore-3480348.hs-sites.com/hubspot-21day-sprint) ### [Discovery workshop Get tangible results and build lasting relationships with your target audience](https://upperscore-3480348.hs-sites.com/discovery-workshop) ### [HubSpot onboarding We set up your portal, with clean data ,the integrations you need and templates to help you get started](https://upperscore-3480348.hs-sites.com/hubspot/onboarding) ### [HubSpot support Need extra hands, or someone to fix issues? 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But if you have read our ‘about us’ page, you know that we highly value integrity. Of the 4 values we mention, this one is mentioned as the first one, for a reason. And being honest, there is a lot wrong with marketing today. So this blog post will not be about HubSpot or CRM platforms. Not about the tactics you can apply to grow your business, or cases we handled. This time, we’ll cover what's wrong with marketing today. Before I dive into this topic, the idea here is not to point any fingers or to simply complain about things. Things are always going to be imperfect anyway. The goal here is to simply point out a couple of things that are wrong that we may be taking for granted. ## Lots of people distrust marketing agencies After numerous talks with potential clients in different industries, one thing painfully stands out: people distrust agencies. We heard so many stories from clients saying: “We don’t feel like our agency is invested in our long-term success.” There are different reasons why that happens. It all comes down to agencies often being too focused on deliverables, not on actual business outcomes. They are quick with presentations, but slow with real results. They get very tactical and, in the meantime, forget about the strategy. And they are too focused on billable time, not on adding business value to their clients. #### Why this matters Here’s the thing that matters: marketing only works when there is shared ownership of outcomes. Without ownership, there is no trust: - Companies start doing more in-house, often without the needed expertise, - Agencies focus on short-term survival instead of long-term excellence, - Results deteriorate, - And the cycle reinforces itself. The irony: agencies *should* be the ones helping companies think bigger and see further. But that requires a partnership, not a vendor relationship. ## Marketing is seen as a cost, not an investment Despite decades of evidence that brand building and marketing drives long-term business growth, many companies still tighten their marketing budgets the moment times get tough. And times are indeed quite tough right now. [In difficult times](https://blog.upperscore.be/smarter-marketing-in-tough-times), marketing is often the first line item to cut, even though it should be the last if you care about maintaining demand and your company’s competitive position. This kind of short-term thinking leads to: - underfunded campaigns that cannot succeed, - fragmented long-term brand strategy, - an obsession with performance metrics that look good on dashboards but have no correlation with actual business growth, - the constant pressure to justify every cent you spend. It’s like planting a tree and uprooting it every month to check the roots. It just won’t grow like expected. Eventually, the pipeline dries up and growth stalls. ## Agencies choosing breadth over depth Many agencies have drifted into the dangerous pattern of trying to do everything themselves. Even the things they shouldn’t, or maybe especially those things.  It happens often when they are already working for a client who then needs additional services. They ask their agency if they can do that work too, and the agency of course, eagerly says yes. I get it: it’s an easy cross-sell or upsell. And in the short term, the extra revenue looks good. But in the long run, we often see that the agency underperforms on the additional services.  So instead of focusing on their core expertise, they attempt to offer other services outside their expertise. As a client, you end up with a branding agency that suddenly needs to deliver performance marketing services, with nobody on their team with the right expertise. This leads to: - mediocre work across too many areas, - overworked teams, - lack of distinctive expertise, - and ultimately: **disappointed clients**. In the push to be “full service” or just for the sake of the extra revenue, agencies are sacrificing the quality and focus that originally made them valuable. And by doing so, they destroy the good relationship they had with their client, and the good name of marketing agencies in general. ### But here’s the biggest tragedy of all: **The agency’s real superpower (the outsider’s perspective) is being completely squandered.** A good agency has distance. Detachment. Objectivity. As the saying goes: **“You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.”** Companies that sit deep inside their own operations often lose sight of market realities, ever-shifting customer expectations, strategic blind spots, and outdated assumptions. A strong agency sees across industries, across clients, across failures and successes. They bring cross-pollinated insight that in-house teams *cannot* replicate. But when an agency is too busy firefighting (jumping between random tasks, filling every gap, imitating a delivery factory), they lose the space to offer that perspective. And that’s a loss for everyone involved, most of all the customer who is paying the bill. [Read our blog post about the real cost of hiring an agency](https://blog.upperscore.be/the-real-cost-of-hiring-a-digital-agency) ## The rise of copy-paste marketing fueled by blind AI adoption AI should elevate marketing. But instead, for many companies, it has made marketing lazier. And probably some other teams as well. Teams are often just copying whatever AI spits out, and publishing generic, soulless content that doesn’t convert. They adopt this kind of “fast-food creativity”, entirely skipping strategic thinking. The result: content that looks the same, sounds the same, and has the emotional depth of a cardboard box. AI is a phenomenal tool, don’t get me wrong. But only when guided by strategy, brand voice, and human judgment. Without that, AI just becomes a shortcut to mediocrity. ## The obsession with short-term ROI and vanity metrics Another major failure in modern marketing is the worship of metrics that only tell half the story. Performance dashboards seem to have replaced strategy. Attribution models have replaced judgment. Short-term ROI has replaced long-term brand value and is now the standard. This leads to: - campaigns optimized for clicks, but not for customers, - success metrics that look great but mean nothing, - ignoring brand equity and customer lifetime value, - reactive marketing instead of intentional marketing. Great brands aren’t built on dashboards. They’re built on consistent storytelling, mental availability, and long-term presence in the customer’s mind. It takes a strategy based on the right data and an approach aligned with your brand voice.  But those metrics rarely fit neatly in a spreadsheet. ## The deeper causes Beneath all these symptoms, we see some structural issues: **Management is under pressure: **executives push for quarterly numbers, not multi-year brand-building. **Agencies are under financial strain: **competition is fierce, and AI tools push prices down. **Everyone is overwhelmed: **new platforms, new tools, new best practices every day. Marketing moves too fast for many teams to keep up. **Creativity feels risky:** risk is something very few companies are willing to take when budgets are already tight, so most people start playing it safe. ## A path forward We don’t have to accept the current state of marketing. In fact, the solutions are within reach for those who are willing to solve them. ### 1. Treat marketing as the investment it should be Tie budgets to [growth metrics](https://blog.upperscore.be/how-cmos-can-lead-their-team-to-data-and-analytics-success), brand equity measurements, and customer lifetime value, and not just quarterly performance. Marketing was never meant to be a fancy hobby you get paid for: it’s an essential part of doing business, and it should be treated as such. You see your building, IT infrastructure and desks as an investment, so why not do the same with marketing? ### 2. Restore the power of the external perspective Let agencies challenge you. Invite them to point out blind spots in your current approach. Make space for uncomfortable truths. As uncomfortable as this may get, it is still the best way to learn things you absolutely need to know to be successful. The value of a partner is not so much in the tasks they execute, it’s more in the vision they help shape. ### 3. Let agencies focus on their expertise Depth beats breadth. Specialists outperform generalists. Collaboration beats “we can do it all.” So look for specialists in their domain. And as an agency, fight the temptation to take on work you are actually not a specialist in.  ### 4. Use AI as acceleration, not as substitution AI is fantastic, we’ll be the first ones to admit that. But that doesn’t mean you should just hand over the keys to your kingdom to your ChatGPT account. The principle in marketing should be: Human-led, AI-assisted. Never AI-in-charge. ### 5. Build a balanced measurement framework Don’t just focus on vanity metrics and short-term thinking. Instead, combine short-term performance metrics, long-term brand metrics, and experimental A/B learnings. Take into account your customer lifetime value, customer acquisition cost, and other key metrics. The result: a far clearer picture of real impact. ## Simple checklist to fix your marketing culture Use this as a quick and simple diagnostic: 1. Can your agency openly challenge your strategy without fear? 2. Do you invest in both brand building *and* performance? 3. Is AI used as a tool, and not as a replacement for thinking? 4. Do you know your long-term business KPIs, not just campaign KPIs? 5. Do your internal and external teams have clear, focused roles? 6. When was the last time you asked an outsider to review your strategy? If you answered “no” or “not sure” to three or more of these, your marketing might be running on autopilot. Marketing isn’t broken. But parts of the industry have drifted into bad habits. The fix is simple but requires discipline. Marketing is not hot air, and it’s not just a cost center. Nor is it an assembly line for content. **Marketing is an investment in future demand, in brand strength, and business resilience.** And when done the right way, it becomes one of the most powerful growth engines a company can have. That’s when strategy meets creativity, companies trust the experts they hire, and agencies focus on what they do best. That’s how we have been working from the first moment, and it is what we will keep on doing.     ### Book a free consultation Need some guidance on starting or optimizing your content marketing? We’re happy to help. Book your free consultation today! [Book your free consultation](https://get.upperscore.be/book-your-consultation)   [Strategy](https://blog.upperscore.be/tag/strategy) ## Similar posts inbound marketing ### [Boosting business with outstanding customer journeys](https://blog.upperscore.be/boosting-business-with-outstanding-customer-journeys) Tom Staelens dec 8, 2023 content marketing ### [How to write marketing emails that get read and convert](https://blog.upperscore.be/how-too-write-marketing-emails-that-get-read-and-convert) Tom Staelens feb 14, 2025 inbound marketing ### [What is Growth Driven Design?](https://blog.upperscore.be/growth-driven-design) Tom Staelens okt 31, 2023 ### Get notified on new marketing insights Be the first to know about new B2B Marketing insights to build or refine your marketing activities with the tools and knowledge of today’s industry. 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