Why we had to unfck the conversation first
Something weird happened after I started writing about "product-led" marketing for sales-led companies. My calendar exploded. Like, 2-3 calls every day for weeks kind of exploded.
And holy shit, was that eye-opening.
Every single conversation went the same way: "We want to be product-led!" "What do you sell?" "Enterprise software!" "To who?" "Fortune 500 companies!" "...through a self-serve checkout?"
Right.
So here's what became painfully clear: we're having the wrong conversation. Before we can talk about marketing strategy, we need to address some fundamental thinking first.
Because if you're selling 6-figure enterprise software and think you can "get rid of the sales team and just grow" - we need to have a different chat.
That's why we're now Unfck Marketing. Because sometimes you need to call bullshit what it is.
Why we're in this mess
Your product team lives in a perfect world. Ship code, see results in minutes. Fix bugs, deploy again. Break everything into neat user stories, measure exact impact, rinse and repeat. A beautiful machine of pure cause and effect.
Can't blame them - when you can deploy twenty times a day and measure the impact of every pixel change, you start thinking everything should work this way.
Then they look at marketing and think: "What's with all this fuzzy stuff? Why can't we measure everything? Let's fix this with sprints!"
But marketing operates in the messy world of human brains. It works through:
Years of showing up consistently
Slow-building trust
Market positions that need time to stick
Fighting for space in people's heads
Think about enterprise trust. Did you start trusting Salesforce because they shipped a brilliant feature one Tuesday? No. You trust them because they've been consistently delivering on their promise for decades. That trust compounds over time, like interest in a bank account. You can't sprint your way to it.
Why this f*cks up everything
When you try forcing marketing into product speed, three things break:
First, time gets weird. Your product team can ship features in weeks, fix bugs in hours, deploy daily. But brand building? That's measured in years. Market positioning? Decades. And trust? You can't sprint trust, period.
Second, measurement goes to shit. Your product team loves their precise metrics. This button increased clicks by 0.5% this sprint! Brilliant. Now tell me exactly how much your brand trust increased last week. See the problem?
Third, you kill consistency. Products should evolve fast - that's fine. But brand presence needs stability. Market positioning needs time to stick. Every time you "iterate" on these, you're starting from zero again.
How to actually fix this
The fix isn't complex, but it needs balls: build a two-speed operation.
Your fast lane runs at product speed:
Campaigns and adverts
Landing pages and emails
Performance metrics
Daily optimisations
Your slow lane needs protection:
Brand positioning
Market presence
Core promise
Category ownership
Think of your slow lane like your core architecture. You don't rewrite that every sprint just because someone had a brilliant idea in the shower.
Making it actually work
First, you need proper frameworks. Not just some rubbish Notion doc nobody reads.
For your fast stuff, build systems that let speed win:
Campaign playbooks
Testing protocols
Performance dashboards
Optimisation workflows
But your slow lane? That needs different rules. Your brand guidelines aren't suggestions. Your position statements aren't sprint backlog items. Build strong walls around this stuff. Protect it like you protect your production database. Because that's basically what it is - your market presence database.
Then comes the hard part: expectations.
Tell your product teams straight up:
Marketing isn't feature development
You can't fix brand perception with a hotfix
Some things need time to grow
Not everything needs a daily standup
And your leadership needs to hear it too:
Some metrics move fast, some move slow
Quick wins come from the fast lane
Market leadership comes from the slow lane
You need both to succeed
The real mindset shift
Stop trying to make everything run at product speed. You're not building one system - you're building two. Each with its own pace, its own metrics, its own rules.
Think of it like city planning. You need motorways for speed and parks for growth. Try running motorways through your parks and you'll fuss up both.
Your fast lane is your motorway:
Ship daily
Test everything
Move quick
Measure constantly
Your slow lane is your park:
Give it time
Let it grow
Protect it fiercely
Measure thoughtfully
Because here's the truth about B2B marketing: You can ship code every day, but you can't ship trust. You can iterate features weekly, but you can't iterate reputation. You can fix bugs instantly, but you can't fix a broken brand promise with a patch.
Now go explain this to your product team before they suggest pivoting your brand identity because "engagement metrics were down this sprint."
Yours Truly,
Anna
anna@unfck.marketing
This is so good. As a fanboy of The Long and The Short of It, I nodded along as I read this. Important reminder and a good idea to "protect" the slow lane.