Cedar Collaborative
Cedar Collaborative

Tag: marketing leadership

  • From Panic to Purpose: Integrating Systems at Northwest Harvest

    From Panic to Purpose: Integrating Systems at Northwest Harvest

    Role: Marketing Communications Manager
    Duration: August 2014–December 2016

    When I joined Northwest Harvest as Marketing Communications Manager, Washington’s largest food bank ran its outward-facing work the way a lot of large nonprofits do: fundraising, communications, volunteer engagement, and advocacy each moving on its own track, each staffed by real people doing real work, almost none of it connected to the others. Donor acquisition costs were climbing, repeat donor growth was flat, and a statewide footprint wasn’t being used for much beyond delivering food. This was full-time employment, a decade before I founded Cedar Collaborative, not a Cedar Collaborative engagement.

    Finding where the work overlapped

    Nobody hired me to unify those teams. That’s not really how it worked, and it’s not how it could have worked, people who’ve run a program for years don’t hand over turf because an org chart says to. What actually happened took longer: getting to know each team on its own terms, understanding what they were already trying to do, and looking for the places where helping one team’s work also helped another’s. Advocacy took the longest to bring in, understandably, since it had always operated at more of a distance from fundraising and communications than the other functions had from each other. The rest came together faster than expected, mostly because nobody had really tried before.

    New channels, without leaving donors behind

    Channel modernization ran alongside that relationship-building, not ahead of it. We expanded into Instagram and stronger SEO while keeping the print and traditional media relationships that longtime donors still responded to, since abandoning one generation of supporters to chase another wasn’t the point. Partnerships with the Seattle Seahawks, local grocers, Washington banks, and regional media extended reach without adding real spend. The organization’s 50th anniversary became the moment it all came together: a statewide campaign built around celebration rather than the usual crisis appeal, on the theory that supporters can be moved by progress as well as by need. That turned out to be true. Even the brand refresh followed the same logic, extending to places nobody had thought to put it before, including a fleet of distribution vehicles that had been crossing the state for years without saying anything about who they belonged to.

    What it added up to

    None of this was dramatic on its own. Together, it added up to donor acquisition costs dropping by roughly 35%, repeat donor growth climbing more than 10% year over year, and a level of statewide visibility the organization hadn’t had before, especially among younger donors who’d never encountered Northwest Harvest through the channels that had worked for decades.

    The lesson that stuck with me wasn’t really about marketing tactics. It was that integration is slower and more personal than an org chart implies. Adding headcount would have been the easy move, and probably the wrong one. What actually worked was spending enough time inside each team’s version of the mission to find where their goals already overlapped, then building the connective tissue by hand. It’s the same instinct behind every fractional engagement I take on now, though nobody at Northwest Harvest would have described it that way at the time. They just needed someone willing to become useful to five different teams instead of useful to one.

  • What AI Is Actually Doing to Marketing Right Now

    What AI Is Actually Doing to Marketing Right Now

    I’ve been working with large language models since 2021, and in various forms of AI tooling for most of my career before that (including graph databases, for anyone who remembers when those were the interesting frontier). So when I wrote a piece early last year about AI tools in marketing, it wasn’t my first time thinking about the question. It was, in retrospect, still too optimistic about some specific bets.

    I highlighted RB2B as a tool worth watching; it identifies individual visitors to your website, surfaces them in Slack, lets your sales team follow up while the signal is warm. My enthusiasm was genuine. What I underestimated was fit. Visitor identification tools turn out to work best for the organizations that need them least: teams with high traffic, tight sales processes, and reps who act fast. For everyone else, you get a notification and an awkward non-conversation. I’ve moved from recommending it broadly to recommending it selectively. That’s not a criticism of the product. It’s the kind of calibration that only happens after you’ve watched something in practice.

    That recalibration is a small example of something larger. The question in early 2025 was still mostly evaluative: which tools are worth trying, what are the risks, how do you avoid getting burned. It made sense then. The landscape was genuinely new and very uncertain. That frame is less useful now, because most organizations have tried things, formed opinions, and started to see where the returns are real and where they aren’t. The more interesting question is where AI has actually changed the work, as opposed to where it’s been inserted into the work without meaningfully changing it. There’s quite a bit of the latter.

    Some of the most durable changes are happening at the operational edges, in places that don’t generate much coverage. AI tools that connect to calendars, email, and file systems have gotten quietly good at surface-level relationship management: flagging follow-ups that have gone cold, surfacing context before a call, noting when a client hasn’t heard from you in a while. I use Copilot for this daily. Working across multiple client relationships, the question “did this person ever get back to you on that thing you asked three weeks ago?” is a real problem, and AI solves it in a way that a well-configured CRM never quite did (and I am, for the record, a genuine advocate for CRMs). It doesn’t require disciplined prompting or careful setup. It just works.

    More interesting to me is AI’s usefulness as a thinking partner at the senior level: not for producing outputs, but for stress-testing ideas when the right person isn’t available. If you want to know how a skeptical CFO might receive a pricing proposal, or what a competitor would likely say about your positioning, or whether a strategy has obvious holes you’ve stopped seeing from too close, a well-framed conversation with a capable model is a surprisingly useful substitute. This isn’t a replacement for real colleagues or real judgment. It’s a workaround for the moments when the right conversation isn’t accessible, and in practice it’s more useful than people who haven’t tried it would expect.

    The content production side is where I’d urge the most precision about what you’re actually trying to accomplish. AI can generate SEO-oriented copy at scale, and for some organizations that’s a legitimate choice. If the goal is volume and broad keyword coverage, and you’re willing to accept mixed quality in exchange for low cost per piece, AI handles that reasonably well. Most SEO agencies produce similarly inconsistent results at significantly higher cost. If that’s genuinely your strategy, AI is probably the better procurement decision. But it’s not a strategy I’ve ever advocated for, because it describes a race to produce content readers didn’t ask for in order to rank in searches that AI intermediaries are increasingly answering before anyone clicks. Search behavior has changed materially, and more queries are being resolved inside AI interfaces entirely, which means the volume playbook is producing fewer returns even when executed competently. The organizations that appear to be navigating this more successfully are investing in content that demonstrates genuine expertise and earns cited presence in AI-generated answers, rather than content optimized to rank. That’s harder to produce, and AI is a less reliable tool for it, because it requires organizational knowledge and a distinct point of view.

    That raises a different set of questions, and a pattern I’ve been watching with growing interest.

    Across a number of organizations right now, AI is being deployed as an IT initiative. Agents are getting rolled out through the infrastructure function, often without meaningful input from marketing, sometimes without input from sales or customer support. The parallel that keeps coming to mind is the early internet, when IT was given ownership of the company website. Those websites worked, technically. What they frequently didn’t reflect was any coherent sense of organizational purpose, customer communication, or marketing intent. They were websites in the sense that they existed and loaded. The same dynamic is playing out now, but faster and with more organizational surface area.

    Social media went through a version of this too. Companies would hire someone to “do the social media,” and the goal would be expressed in the metrics the platform made visible: followers, likes, reach. Rarely was there a clear connection to business goals. The work was real; the direction was often missing. AI deployment without a coherent owner and clear intent tends to produce the same category of problem.

    Sales has been among the most active self-directed adopters of AI tools. Clay, Instantly, and similar platforms are genuinely powerful: they can enrich prospect data at scale, automate personalized outreach, identify buying signals, and run sequences that would have required a team of SDRs a few years ago. There’s a legitimate case for all of it. There’s also a real failure mode, which is that sales teams running these tools independently tend to be operating without the organizational context that would make the campaigns actually work. Who is the ICP? How does the product solve their specific problem? What’s the right language for the moment the prospect is in? Are existing customers getting accidentally included in future-focused outreach that doesn’t reflect their current relationship with the company? These are questions sales often doesn’t know to ask, because they’re marketing questions. And when you add AI scale to outreach that’s imprecise at the targeting level, you get volume applied in the wrong direction: very much its own kind of problem, separate from annoying people (though it does that too).

    The enterprise picture is different, and worth watching even for those of us who don’t primarily work there. Large organizations are rolling out AI initiatives, often because a CEO heard about it at a conference or a board member asked about it. What’s striking is that the definition of “AI” in many of these conversations is remarkably uneven. Many haven’t fully leveraged what they already have — Copilot is embedded in tools that hundreds of millions of employees use daily, and yet active adoption remains shallow. When employees have access to both Copilot and ChatGPT, only 18% choose Copilot voluntarily — when Copilot is the only available tool, that figure rises to 68%. Stackmatix That gap says something about the difference between distribution and genuine utility.

    Meanwhile, the conversations happening inside those organizations about AI often land somewhere unexpected. When I ask people in enterprise settings what they’re actually getting value from in their AI tools, the two things I hear most often are: help writing emails, and help navigating internal politics. In highly matrixed organizations, heavy on bureaucracy, permission structures, acronyms, and stakeholder management, knowing how to word something to subtly achieve a purpose, or understanding the landscape before a difficult conversation, can be genuinely valuable. No judgment there. (Well, a little.) But it’s a narrow slice of what modern AI tools are capable of, and if most people in a large organization are converging on the same use case, the marginal value of that use case compresses over time.

    What all of these patterns share is a common structural problem: AI deployed without a coherent owner, in service of goals that were never made clear before the tools were turned on. The IT team rolling out agents, the sales team running outbound at scale, the enterprise initiative that can explain the vendor but not the objective: these aren’t technology failures. They’re organizational failures that technology is making more visible.

    The piece I wrote in early 2025 reflected an honest read on a fast-moving and genuinely uncertain landscape. What I’d add now, a year and change later, is that the pace of the tools has continued to outrun most organizations’ ability to integrate them with any coherence. The limiting factor was never access to AI. It was always clarity about what you were trying to accomplish before you turned it on, and that’s not a new problem. Too many organizations have asked too much of marketing for too long, with insufficient resources and loosely defined goals. AI doesn’t resolve that condition. In some cases, it just makes the ambiguity faster.

  • Why Expanding Between “Similar” Markets Is Harder Than It Looks

    Why Expanding Between “Similar” Markets Is Harder Than It Looks

    Most companies know that markets differ.

    No one serious assumes that the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand behave identically. The differences are well documented, widely discussed, and usually acknowledged early in any expansion plan.

    And yet, expansion between these markets still breaks down in predictable ways.

    The issue is not a lack of awareness. It is a lack of internalization.

    Because the language is shared, and the business norms appear broadly aligned, companies assume the underlying system will translate with minimal adjustment. The differences are treated as surface-level. Tone, terminology, maybe pricing.

    In practice, the differences sit much deeper.

    The familiarity trap

    These markets create a specific kind of false confidence.

    If you are expanding from the US into the UK or Australia, the early signals feel reassuring. Conversations are easy. Buyers understand the category. There is no language barrier to slow things down.

    The same is true in reverse. UK, Irish, and Australian companies entering North America often feel that they already “get” the market. The content is familiar. The companies are familiar. The business culture seems legible.

    That familiarity is real, but it is also misleading.

    It makes it harder to see where the system does not quite fit, because nothing fails immediately. The work moves forward, just with slightly more friction than expected.

    Where the differences actually show up

    The divergence is rarely in what companies say they value. It shows up in how decisions are made and how quickly they move.

    Sales pacing is one of the clearest examples.

    In the US, there is often an expectation of momentum. Even in longer enterprise cycles, there is a sense that a deal should keep progressing. In the UK and Ireland, that pacing can be more measured. In Australia, it can be different again. Enterprise environments often feel closer to US mid-market dynamics, but with a stronger emphasis on relationships and trust built over time.

    None of this is visible at the level of positioning. It shows up once deals are in motion.

    The same pattern appears in how buyers evaluate risk.

    In some markets, particularly in parts of Europe, buyers may place more weight on institutional credibility, procurement structure, and long-term stability. In others, there is more tolerance for iteration, provided the core value is clear.

    These are not abstract cultural differences. They shape how marketing is interpreted and how sales conversations unfold.

    Why positioning doesn’t travel cleanly

    Because the language is shared, positioning often carries over with minimal change.

    This is where many teams get caught.

    The words still make sense. The value proposition still sounds reasonable. But the emphasis is slightly off.

    What signals credibility in one market may feel overstated in another. What feels clear and direct in the US can come across as too forceful elsewhere. What feels appropriately measured in the UK or Ireland can feel underpowered in North America. I worked with an Australian company named after two extremely poisonous spiders. I don’t have to tell you how that went over outside Australia at first.

    These are small shifts, but they accumulate quickly.

    Marketing begins to attract the right kind of attention, but not with the same consistency. Sales adapts messaging in response. Over time, the internal understanding of what resonates starts to fragment.

    Hiring runs into the same problem

    The same dynamic shows up in hiring. Companies often assume that roles translate cleanly across these markets. A strong salesperson in one region should be able to perform in another. A marketing hire should be able to pick up the motion and run with it.

    In practice, roles are defined differently in subtle but important ways.

    Expectations around autonomy, pace, and how relationships are built can vary more than it appears. What counts as strong performance in one market may not map directly to another, even when the title is the same.

    This is one of the reasons expansion can feel slower than expected. It is not just that the market is different. It is that the system the company is using to operate in that market does not fully match how work actually gets done there.

    What this looks like once you’re operating

    Once teams are in-market, the patterns become easier to recognize.

    A New Zealand company expanding into North America may find that its relationship-driven approach continues to work, but needs to be supported by a clearer sense of pace and progression. What felt like strong engagement locally can start to look like stalled momentum if it is not translated properly.

    A US company entering the UK or Ireland may find that its directness, which worked well at home, needs to be recalibrated. The message is not wrong, but the way it is delivered can affect how it is received.

    In some cases, the signal comes from where traction actually appears. A company expanding into the US may find that its product resonates more clearly with Canadian buyers, particularly in sectors like government or regulated industries. That is not a failure of the original plan, but it does require a shift in how the market is understood.

    Even within Europe, differences can be more pronounced than expected. In markets such as Croatia, companies often encounter a stronger institutional presence, different procurement expectations, and longer timelines tied to how decisions are structured. The opportunity is real, but the path to it does not mirror larger, more commercial markets.

    None of these situations are unusual. They are the result of applying a system that worked in one context to another where the conditions are similar, but not the same.

    Why Expanding to Similar Markets Is Harder to Fix Than It Seems

    Because nothing breaks cleanly, it is easy to keep moving forward without addressing the underlying issue.

    Marketing continues to generate interest. Sales continues to have conversations. Teams adjust in place. From the outside, the expansion looks active.

    Inside, it becomes harder to explain why progress is uneven.

    The instinct is to push harder or to localize further. More content, more hires, more adaptation. That can help at the margins. It does not resolve the core problem, which is that the system itself has not been re-examined.

    What tends to hold up instead

    Companies that navigate these markets more effectively tend to take a step back early.

    They look closely at how their go-to-market actually works. Not the version described in positioning documents, but the version that shows up in real sales conversations, in how buyers make decisions, and in how deals move forward.

    From there, the work becomes one of translation.

    Which elements are essential to how the business creates value. Which elements are shaped by the original market. How those pieces need to adapt so that marketing, sales, and hiring continue to reinforce each other in a different context.

    This is not about rebuilding from scratch.

    It is about making the system legible in a new environment.

    Similar does not mean transferable

    Expansion between the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand is often treated as low-friction because the surface differences are small.

    That is precisely what makes it difficult.

    The similarities make it easy to assume that the underlying system will carry over. The differences are just enough to disrupt how that system actually works.

    Most companies do not fail because they misunderstand the market completely.

    They struggle because they underestimate how much of their success was tied to the context they started in.

  • Why International Expansion Breaks Your Marketing and Your Hiring at the Same Time

    Why International Expansion Breaks Your Marketing and Your Hiring at the Same Time

    Most companies approach international expansion as a commercial problem. There is a new market to enter, so the assumption is that the work is primarily about generating demand in that market. You take what is already working, apply it in a new region, and expect a version of the same outcome. A few trips, some early customers, and a local hire to build pipeline can feel like a reasonable starting point.

    That logic holds up long enough to get things moving. It is simple, familiar, and often reinforced by early signals that look promising. But once the work moves beyond those first conversations, the experience tends to become harder to interpret.

    Sales cycles stretch in ways that are difficult to explain. Prospects ask different questions or evaluate the problem from a slightly different angle. Messaging that felt clear in one market now needs more context. None of this shows up as a clear failure. It just creates a sense that something is not quite connecting.

    At that point, most teams increase effort. More outreach, more travel, more local presence. Activity goes up. The system does not necessarily improve.

    The assumption that carries over from the first market

    Expansion plans often start from a reasonable premise. If the business works in one market, the task is to replicate it elsewhere with some adjustment. That applies to both go-to-market and hiring.

    You take what already exists and extend it. A version of the messaging, a version of the sales process, a version of the team structure.

    What is less visible is how much of that original system was shaped by context.

    Hiring expectations, role definitions, and even how quickly someone is expected to produce results are all influenced by the market the company grew up in. The same is true of positioning, sales motion, and what buyers expect to see before they move forward.

    When those assumptions carry over without being examined, both marketing and hiring begin to drift at the same time.

    Where the breakdown usually begins

    The first signs are rarely dramatic.

    A new hire joins and spends more time than expected interpreting the role. They are capable, but the expectations do not map cleanly to what they are seeing in the market. Early marketing efforts generate interest, but the follow-through feels uneven.

    In parallel, companies start making decisions that reflect pressure rather than clarity. Roles are compressed or redefined. There is an increasing tendency to assume that certain functions can be replaced or reduced, particularly with the rise of AI, without fully thinking through who is responsible for operating, interpreting, and auditing that work.

    At the same time, broader market conditions begin to shape behavior. Some EU-based companies are actively shifting away from US-built tools and services. Buyers bring that context into conversations, whether explicitly or not. What used to be a straightforward commercial interaction now carries additional layers of consideration.

    None of this shows up as a single point of failure.

    It creates friction across the system.

    Why marketing and hiring drift together

    This becomes clearer when you compare notes across functions.

    I was recently talking with Geri Murphy, who works as a fractional Head of People across the US, UK, and Ireland, and we kept landing on the same pattern from different angles. Companies assume they can extend what worked in one market into another, both in how they sell and how they hire, without fully understanding what made it work in the first place.

    On the marketing side, that shows up as positioning that no longer lands cleanly, or demand that does not convert the way it used to.

    On the hiring side, it shows up in different ways. Roles are defined based on the original market, but do not quite map to how work actually happens in the new one. Expectations around output, autonomy, or even what “good” looks like begin to drift.

    In both cases, teams start adjusting in place. Marketing shifts messaging based on what seems to resonate. New hires interpret their role based on what they are seeing in front of them.

    Individually, those decisions make sense. Taken together, they pull the system out of alignment.

    What this looks like once you’re in-market

    These patterns show up in different ways depending on the markets involved.

    An Australian company expanding into the US may find that early hires are spending more time navigating expectations than building pipeline. The product resonates, but the surrounding conversation changes. What felt like a clear value proposition now sits within a different set of assumptions about risk and decision-making.

    A UK or Irish company entering North America may discover that hiring profiles do not translate cleanly. Someone who would be highly effective in one market may struggle in another, not because of capability, but because the role itself is defined differently in practice.

    In some cases, the shift is more structural. A company operating across the US and Canada may find that geopolitical conditions begin to influence both hiring and sales in ways that were not present before. Decisions take on additional context. Messaging needs to account for it. Hiring expectations shift alongside it.

    Even smaller or emerging markets introduce their own dynamics. In parts of Europe, including Croatia, companies often encounter a different mix of institutional buyers, procurement expectations, and timelines, particularly in and around public sector or adjacent ecosystems. The result is not simply a slower or faster process, but one that requires a different structure to support it.

    None of these situations are unusual.

    They are what expansion looks like once the system is under pressure.

    Why “just hire locally” rarely fixes it

    Bringing in someone from the market is often the right move. It is also frequently treated as the primary solution.

    In practice, it works best when it is part of a clearer system.

    When the underlying go-to-market is not well defined, local hires end up carrying more responsibility than it appears. They are not just executing. They are interpreting positioning, adapting messaging, and making decisions about how the business should operate in that market.

    This can produce early traction, especially if the individuals are strong. It is much harder to turn that into something consistent.

    Over time, the business accumulates multiple versions of its go-to-market and multiple interpretations of key roles. Each one makes sense in isolation. Together, they are difficult to align.

    What tends to hold up instead

    Companies that navigate expansion more effectively tend to take a different approach.

    They spend time understanding how their current system actually works before trying to extend it. Not just the formal version, but the one that shows up in real conversations, real decisions, and real outcomes.

    From there, the work becomes one of translation.

    Which parts of the system are essential. Which parts depend on context. How roles, expectations, and messaging need to adapt so that marketing, sales, and hiring continue to reinforce each other.

    This can feel slower at the beginning.

    It tends to prevent a longer period of drift later on.

    Expansion exposes what was already unclear

    International growth is often framed as an opportunity. It is also one of the fastest ways to reveal where a company’s system is not as clearly defined as it seemed.

    Marketing and hiring do not break independently. They reflect the same underlying structure. When that structure no longer fits the market, both start to show strain.

    What worked in one place can work in another. But only if the business understands its own system well enough to adapt it. Otherwise, expansion moves forward on effort alone.

    And effort is not what makes a system hold together.

    Related reading: Why International Expansion Breaks Your Go-To-Market (and Not for the Reasons You Think)

  • Why International Expansion Breaks Your Go-To-Market (and Not for the Reasons You Think)

    Why International Expansion Breaks Your Go-To-Market (and Not for the Reasons You Think)

    Most companies approach international expansion as a commercial problem. There is a new market to enter, so the assumption is that the work is primarily about generating demand in that market. You take what is already working, apply it in a new region, and expect a version of the same outcome. A few trips, some early customers, and a local hire to build pipeline can feel like a reasonable starting point.

    That logic holds up long enough to get things moving. It is simple, familiar, and often reinforced by early signals that look promising. But once the work moves beyond those first conversations, the experience tends to become harder to interpret.

    Sales cycles stretch in ways that are difficult to explain. Prospects ask different questions or evaluate the problem from a slightly different angle. Messaging that felt clear in one market now needs more context. None of this shows up as a clear failure. It just creates a sense that something is not quite connecting.

    At that point, most teams increase effort. More outreach, more travel, more local presence. Activity goes up. The system does not necessarily improve.

    The assumption that causes most of the trouble

    Underneath most expansion efforts is a simple idea that rarely gets examined closely. If something worked in one market, it should work in another with a bit of adjustment.

    There is some truth in that. The product has not changed, and the problem it solves is often still real. What is less clear is how much of the original go-to-market was shaped by the conditions of the first market.

    Most companies have a working sense of their positioning and their customer. Fewer have a clear understanding of how those ideas behave in practice. Which parts are essential, and which parts were supported by context that no longer exists.

    That difference tends to stay hidden until the company is operating in a new environment. At that point, what felt like a stable system starts to behave differently.

    Where things actually begin to drift

    The early changes are usually small enough to rationalize.

    A sales conversation requires more explanation than expected. A prospect understands the product, but does not feel the same urgency. Marketing generates interest, but the follow-through is less consistent. None of these moments feel significant on their own.

    Teams respond by adjusting in place. Messaging is tweaked. Emphasis shifts. Sales approaches are modified based on what seems to resonate. These are all reasonable decisions when taken individually.

    Over time, they start to pull the system in different directions.

    Marketing begins to attract a slightly different type of buyer. Sales adapts to what is happening in the room. The internal picture of the customer becomes less consistent, not because anyone intended it, but because each part of the system is responding to a slightly different signal.

    What emerges is not a failed expansion. It is a version of the go-to-market that no longer fully fits the market it is operating in.

    What this looks like once you’re in-market

    These shifts are easier to recognize once you’re operating in the new environment.

    An Australian company expanding into the US may find that the product resonates, but the conversation around it changes. What felt like a clear value proposition becomes entangled in different assumptions about risk, particularly around areas like AI. The work is no longer just about explaining the product. It becomes about navigating a different baseline of trust.

    A European manufacturing company entering the US market may encounter a different kind of constraint. Tariffs, export restrictions, and regulatory differences begin to shape not just pricing, but how the product is positioned. The challenge becomes explaining those realities to customers without introducing hesitation into the buying process.

    In other cases, the shift is less visible but just as real. An American company with a largely Canadian customer base may find that geopolitical conditions begin to influence how decisions are made. What used to be a straightforward sale now carries additional context that has to be acknowledged and worked through.

    Sometimes the signal comes from an unexpected direction. An Irish company expanding into the US may discover that its enterprise product resonates more clearly with Canadian government buyers than with its initial target. At that point, the question is no longer how to push harder in the original direction, but whether the system needs to adapt to where traction is actually emerging.

    None of these situations represent a failure.

    They are all examples of the same underlying dynamic. The go-to-market that worked in one context is now operating under different conditions, and those differences are just significant enough to matter.

    Why this shows up across marketing and hiring

    This is where expansion starts to look less like a marketing problem and more like a structural one.

    Companies often assume they can hire locally and let the team figure things out. That approach can work when the system is already well understood. When it is not, those hires are left to interpret the business as they go.

    The same pattern shows up in marketing. Without a clear translation of positioning, sales motion, and customer expectations, teams begin to make local adjustments that reflect what they are seeing day to day.

    Those adjustments are often sensible. They are also difficult to reconcile at a system level.

    This is why expansion challenges tend to surface across disciplines at the same time. Marketing, sales, and hiring all start to feel slightly out of sync, even when each part is functioning independently.

    What actually needs to translate in international go-to-market

    Successful expansion depends less on entering a new market and more on understanding how your existing system works under different conditions.

    That requires a level of clarity that many companies have not needed before. Not just what the product does, but how demand is created, how decisions get made, and what makes a customer move forward.

    Some of those elements will carry over. Others will not.

    The difficulty is that the parts that feel most stable are often the ones most shaped by the original market. Messaging, sales structure, and even the definition of the ideal customer can all shift once the context changes.

    Without that understanding, expansion becomes a process of trial and adjustment. With it, the work becomes more deliberate. The company can decide what to adapt, rather than discovering it through drift.

    Why local hires do not solve the problem on their own

    Bringing in someone from the market is often the right move. It is also frequently treated as the primary solution.

    In practice, it works best when it is part of a clearer system.

    When the underlying go-to-market is not well defined, local hires end up carrying more responsibility than it appears. They are not just selling. They are interpreting positioning, adapting messaging, and shaping how the product is understood in that market.

    That can produce early traction, especially if the individual is strong. It is much harder to turn that into something repeatable.

    Over time, the business ends up with multiple versions of its go-to-market. Each one makes sense in isolation. Together, they are difficult to scale.

    What tends to hold up

    Companies that navigate expansion more effectively tend to spend more time understanding how their existing motion actually works.

    Not the version described in decks or positioning documents, but the version that shows up in real sales conversations, in how customers make decisions, and in how deals move forward.

    From there, the work becomes one of translation rather than replication.

    Which parts of the system are essential. Which parts depend on context. How those elements need to change in order to produce the same outcome in a different environment.

    This can feel slower at the outset. It often avoids a longer period of drift later on.

    Expansion does not usually fail all at once

    International growth rarely breaks in a visible way.

    It becomes less efficient. Less predictable. Harder to explain.

    That is part of what makes it difficult to address. There is no clear point of failure, just a gradual loss of alignment between how the business operates and the market it is in.

    What worked in one place can work in another. But it requires a clearer understanding of the system than most companies have needed up to that point.

    Without that, expansion tends to move forward on effort alone.

    And effort, on its own, is not what makes a go-to-market hold together.

  • Why Many Marketing Problems Are Actually Systems Problems

    Why Many Marketing Problems Are Actually Systems Problems

    When companies talk about marketing challenges, the conversation usually begins with tactics.

    The website needs improvement. Lead generation has slowed. Sales needs more support. Advertising performance has become inconsistent.

    These observations are usually accurate. But they rarely explain the underlying issue.

    In many growing companies, marketing problems emerge not because the team lacks effort or talent, but because the organization has reached a stage where marketing becomes a systems problem.

    And systems require a different kind of thinking.

    The Moment When Marketing Becomes a System

    Early in a company’s life, marketing is often intuitive.

    The founder understands the product deeply and can explain it clearly. Customers arrive through relationships, reputation, or early market curiosity. Messaging evolves organically.

    At that stage, marketing does not yet require a formal system.

    But as the company grows, complexity increases. Sales expands. Product evolves. New marketing channels appear. Customer expectations shift. Data begins accumulating across different tools and teams.

    Gradually, the organization begins to experience a familiar set of symptoms.

    Sales hears objections that marketing messaging does not address.
    Product teams build features customers value but struggle to explain why they matter.
    Marketing campaigns generate activity but not always momentum.

    Individually, these problems seem tactical.

    Collectively, they signal a systems challenge.

    This is often the moment when companies begin exploring fractional marketing leadership, bringing in someone who can step back and help the organization see the system more clearly. (See What Is a Fractional CMO, and When Does a Company Actually Need One?)

    Marketing Sits at the Center of the Organization

    Marketing is often misunderstood as a communications function.

    In practice, it sits at the intersection of several critical parts of the business.

    It translates product capability into market understanding.
    It connects customer experience to future positioning.
    It aligns sales conversations with the broader narrative of the company.

    When those connections are strong, the company’s story becomes clear and consistent. Customers understand what the company offers and why it matters.

    When those connections weaken, each part of the organization begins interpreting the market slightly differently.

    Sales develops its own language. Product emphasizes different benefits. Marketing experiments with new messages.

    None of these decisions are necessarily wrong. But over time they can create fragmentation.

    Solving Marketing Systems Problems With Systems Thinking

    Solving this kind of problem rarely begins with a campaign.

    Instead, it begins with understanding the system the company operates within. (I describe what that process looks like in more detail in What a Fractional CMO (Actually) Does in the First 30 Days.)

    Which customers respond most strongly to the product?
    Where does the company win consistently?
    Where do sales conversations stall?
    What expectations do customers bring into the buying process?

    The answers to those questions often reveal an emerging pattern. A particular segment of the market responds more strongly than others. A specific problem resonates deeply with buyers. Certain types of organizations see immediate value.

    That pattern becomes the company’s market wedge.

    Once that wedge is clearly articulated, the rest of the marketing system begins to align more naturally.

    Messaging becomes sharper. Sales conversations become more focused. Marketing investments become easier to prioritize.

    The organization begins moving in the same direction again.

    Strategy and Execution Together

    There is sometimes a tendency to frame marketing strategy and marketing execution as separate activities.

    In practice, they are closely connected.

    Strategy clarifies where the company should focus its energy. Execution translates that clarity into real-world activity: campaigns, content, partnerships, and customer conversations.

    When the system is working well, these two elements reinforce each other.

    Strategy becomes more informed by what happens in the market. Execution becomes more effective because it reflects a clear understanding of the company’s position.

    This is where marketing leadership adds the most value.

    Not by producing more activity, but by ensuring the activity happening across the organization supports the same direction.

    The Role of Marketing Leadership

    As companies grow, someone needs to hold the system together. Sometimes that role is filled by a full-time CMO. In other situations, companies bring in fractional leadership while the organization is still evolving. (For a deeper comparison, see Fractional CMO vs Full-Time CMO.)

    The role is less about producing campaigns and more about maintaining coherence across the organization’s understanding of the market.

    It requires listening closely to sales conversations, understanding product decisions, examining customer behavior, and translating those insights into clear direction.

    When that work happens consistently, marketing stops feeling like a series of disconnected initiatives.

    Instead, it becomes what it was always meant to be.

    The system that helps the company understand its market and grow within it.

    (If you’re curious how that process typically unfolds in practice, you can read more about how I work with organizations here.)

  • What a Fractional CMO Actually Does in the First 30 Days

    What a Fractional CMO Actually Does in the First 30 Days

    When companies hire a fractional CMO, they often imagine a strategic planning exercise. Workshops. Frameworks. Long presentations.

    In reality, the first month tends to look very different.

    The goal is not simply to design a marketing strategy. It is to understand how the business actually operates, where customers come from, how sales conversations unfold, and where the organization’s understanding of the market has begun to drift.

    Strategy begins with observation.

    What a Fractional CMO Does First

    The first request I usually make is access to the CRM.

    If the company has a functioning CRM, it is one of the fastest ways to understand how the business sees its customers.

    A CRM reveals what the company considers important enough to measure. It shows what information sales teams capture, how pipeline stages are defined, how long deals typically take to close, and where prospects tend to stall.

    Patterns appear quickly.

    Sometimes churn appears earlier than leadership expects. Sometimes pipeline stages reveal that the sales process is longer or more fragile than assumed. Occasionally customer service cases or notes attached to deals reveal friction that marketing messaging has been masking.

    If a CRM does not exist, the next step is usually sales calls and analytics. Listening to how sales teams describe the product and how customers respond can be just as revealing.

    Listening Before Changing

    During the first weeks I spend a great deal of time listening.

    That means leadership conversations, but also conversations across the organization. Product teams. Sales representatives. Customer support. Occasionally people who are not formally involved in revenue generation but who still see patterns others miss.

    A front desk employee who fields complaints.
    A sales representative who hears the same objection repeatedly.
    A support manager who sees where expectations and reality diverge.

    These conversations rarely produce a single revelation. Instead they reveal a system.

    Marketing, sales, product, and customer experience each hold part of the picture. The role of marketing leadership is to synthesize those perspectives into a coherent understanding of the market.

    The Pattern That Appears Most Often

    Across many engagements, one issue appears more consistently than any other.

    The company has customers, sometimes many good ones, but the organization lacks a clear and shared understanding of its ideal market wedge.

    This is not always about industry. It may be about company maturity, technical sophistication, organizational structure, or the particular problem the product solves best.

    When that wedge becomes clear, many other things become easier.

    Messaging sharpens. Sales conversations become more focused. Marketing investments become easier to prioritize.

    Most importantly, leadership alignment improves.

    Aligning the Organization

    One of the earliest outputs in many engagements is a simple articulation of the company’s ideal customer profile and core messaging.

    Sometimes this takes the form of a structured document. Occasionally it takes the form of a short manifesto that captures the company’s purpose and direction in language that resonates internally.

    The goal is not simply to produce marketing material. It is to align the organization.

    When leadership and external-facing teams begin speaking about the market in the same language, the difference can be dramatic.

    Marketing reinforces sales. Product decisions reflect customer reality. Messaging becomes clearer across every touchpoint.

    Momentum returns quickly.

    Small Changes, Early Momentum

    While discovery is happening, there are often opportunities to make small improvements that help the business immediately.

    These are rarely dramatic initiatives. More often they are practical adjustments that remove friction.

    A website page that loads slowly.
    An analytics system that was never connected properly.
    A social channel that no one has updated in years but still creates confusion.

    Addressing these details early helps the organization move forward while the deeper strategic work continues.

    Good marketing leadership balances both perspectives: understanding the system while improving the parts that are clearly underperforming.

    Why the First Month Matters

    The first month of an engagement is less about delivering answers and more about building a shared understanding of the business.

    Leadership teams often know that something is misaligned. They feel the friction in sales cycles, marketing performance, or customer feedback.

    What they lack is a coherent view of how those signals connect.

    A fractional CMO’s role in those early weeks is to assemble that picture quickly and help the organization begin acting on it.

    Because when a company understands where it truly fits the market, the next set of decisions becomes far easier.

    And the path to growth becomes much clearer.

  • What Is a Fractional CMO, and When Does a Company Actually Need One?

    What Is a Fractional CMO, and When Does a Company Actually Need One?

    A fractional CMO is a senior marketing executive who works with a company on a part-time or contract basis, providing the strategic leadership of a full-time CMO without the cost or long-term commitment of a permanent hire.

    The phrase “fractional CMO” appears more often now than it did even a few years ago. Yet the meaning has become surprisingly fuzzy.

    For some companies it simply means part-time marketing help. For others it refers to an outsourced marketing department. Sometimes it describes a senior marketer who works across several clients.

    Those definitions capture the structure of the role, but they miss the purpose.

    A fractional CMO is not primarily a capacity solution. It is a leadership solution.

    Companies bring in a fractional CMO when marketing exists but is not operating as a coherent system, when strategy, execution, and revenue outcomes have drifted apart.

    This tends to happen during moments of growth or transition. The company has real traction. A product works. Customers exist. Sales activity is happening.

    But the path forward feels less clear than it once did.

    Growth slows. Messaging drifts. Sales begins improvising. Marketing activity increases, but momentum does not.

    At that point, the organization rarely needs more activity. It needs marketing leadership.

    What Is a Fractional CMO?

    The Situations Where Companies Usually Call

    In my work with growing organizations, three patterns appear repeatedly.

    First, the founder is still running marketing.

    This often works early on. Founders know their customers deeply and can communicate the product with conviction. But as the company grows, the marketing system becomes more complex. Sales expands. Channels multiply. Messaging fragments. The founder’s attention shifts elsewhere.

    Second, growth has stalled.

    The company is still selling, but the previous momentum has softened. The market response that once felt clear now feels uneven. Sales cycles lengthen. Messaging begins to drift across channels.

    Third, a sales team exists but lacks marketing infrastructure.

    The salesperson may be talented and hardworking, but they are operating without the systems that allow sales to scale: clear positioning, strong product marketing, and a coherent go-to-market strategy.

    In each of these situations, the problem is rarely effort. It is alignment.

    What Usually Appears During Discovery

    The first weeks of an engagement are focused on understanding how the organization actually works.

    That means more than leadership conversations. I listen to sales calls. I review CRM notes and pipeline patterns. I speak with people across the company, sometimes including individuals who are not formally part of marketing or sales but see patterns others miss.

    A front desk employee who fields customer frustration.
    A salesperson who notices competitors using nearly identical messaging.
    A support agent who hears the same confusion from new customers every day.

    Patterns emerge quickly.

    Almost always there is confusion around the ideal customer profile. The company has customers, often good ones, but the shared understanding of who the business is truly built for remains fuzzy.

    Product marketing gaps are common as well. Teams know what they have built, but the articulation of why it matters and how it fits the market has not been fully developed.

    Most importantly, different parts of the organization are often operating from different assumptions. Product, sales, marketing, and customer experience are each interpreting the market in slightly different ways.

    This is where leadership matters.

    What Changes First

    One of the earliest outputs in many engagements is a clear articulation of the company’s core ICP and messaging.

    Sometimes this takes the form of a structured document. Occasionally it takes the form of a short manifesto that captures the company’s purpose and direction in language the team can rally around.

    The goal is not simply a marketing artifact. The goal is alignment.

    When a leadership team sees its business reflected clearly, who the company serves, why customers buy, and where the market opportunity lies, the reaction is often immediate.

    “Yes. That’s it.”

    Once that clarity exists, execution becomes dramatically easier. Marketing efforts reinforce one another. Sales conversations become sharper. Product decisions become easier to prioritize.

    Momentum returns.

    When a Fractional CMO Is Not the Right Fit

    Not every company needs a fractional CMO.

    Some organizations simply need execution. They know what they want to do and require additional hands to produce campaigns, content, or marketing assets.

    Others face challenges that sit outside marketing. If financial systems are unclear, if product fundamentals remain unresolved, or if leadership is unwilling to engage in strategy, marketing leadership alone will not solve the problem.

    Very early-stage ventures can fall into this category as well. A visionary founder with an idea but no established product or customer base is often still discovering the business itself.

    In those cases, a fractional CMO is unlikely to be the right starting point.

    What Good Marketing Leadership Actually Does

    Marketing leadership is often misunderstood as planning.

    In practice, it is closer to navigation.

    A strong marketing leader understands the system the company operates within, the market, the product, the sales process, and the financial realities of the business. From that vantage point, they help the organization decide where to invest, what to prioritize, and what to stop doing.

    They think strategically in systems and act locally.

    Sometimes that means refining positioning. Sometimes it means aligning marketing more closely with sales or finance. Sometimes it means removing activity that no longer serves the company.

    Always, it means moving the organization forward with clarity and momentum.

    Because good marketing leadership exists for a simple purpose.

    To ensure the right work gets done, in the right sequence, so the business can grow with confidence rather than improvisation.

  • When No One Owns the Customer Experience in Service Businesses

    When No One Owns the Customer Experience in Service Businesses

    Why Customer Experience Ownership Gets Lost in Service Businesses

    Windows, Winter, and the Problem With “No One Owns This”

    We live in Seattle, in a modest house on a very small lot, tucked up against a greenway boulevard. There are big trees and good light, and, most days, a steady stream of bikes and dog walkers enjoying the Queen Anne views. During the school year, there’s also a predictable burst of car noise in the afternoons, when parents speed through the neighborhood to pick up their kids.

    It’s a lovely place to live. It’s also loud, and a few of the windows were starting to fail. You could feel it in the winter. You could see it in the condensation that lingered longer than it should have in pale Cascadian light.

    Last year, we decided to replace about a third of them. Not all at once. Just the most urgent ones. The windows that needed attention before winter 2025.

    We did what most people do: read reviews, looked at websites, and eventually settled on a local company that already worked with the same window manufacturer we had. They talked thoughtfully about sound and environmental considerations, which mattered to us given where the house sits. It felt like a reasonable, careful choice.

    The work itself turned out emphatically fine. The experience around it did not.

    It started quietly, in the way these things often do. I filled out the website form with rough measurements and some context about the house. Weeks passed. When someone finally replied, it was to say she’d been out of the office. Then there was another stretch of silence. When we did connect, there were more questions. Then the same questions again. A phone call I wasn’t ready for, followed by an email days later that picked up as if none of the earlier context existed.

    Nothing was outrageous on its own. Just friction. Small delays. A subtle sense that I was starting over each time.

    Eventually, we asked for a rough estimate. Winter was coming, and we needed to move fast. We said we were ready for the next step.

    A few weeks later, someone came out in person to take careful measurements. This part felt grounding. He took his time, looked closely at where the windows were failing, and asked good questions. We talked about sound, light, and the character of the house. Whether we wanted the cottage-style lines the old windows had, or something simpler. He made recommendations and said he’d update the order based on what we discussed.

    When the final estimate arrived the next day, we balked at the cost a bit, but approved it, put down a deposit, and were given a seven-day window when installation might happen.

    I called to ask what that meant in practice. Could the windows arrive any time during that week? Would they be stored on site? Our lot is small, and we don’t have space to stash large materials.

    The answer was vague. The tone shifted slightly. I had the sense I was asking the wrong kind of question.

    When the crew arrived, it became clear almost immediately that the windows they brought didn’t reflect the conversation we’d had during the in-person visit. The configuration was wrong. The details were off.

    I called the office to ask what had happened, and their response caught me off guard. They explained that the paperwork was what mattered. The estimate, not the conversations. The in-person visit, I was told, was for measurements only.

    It hadn’t occurred to me that a careful, on-site conversation about what we wanted did not count as part of the decision-making process. But that was my assumption, not theirs.

    By that point, trust was already wearing thin.

    A week after installation, one of the windows failed outright. Moisture and mold began building up between the panes. I reached out immediately.

    I was told that since they didn’t manufacture the windows, I’d need to contact the manufacturer myself. They offered to send me the order paperwork so I could do that.

    I pushed back harder than I usually do.

    From my perspective, I hadn’t bought a product. I’d hired a company to handle a problem. Noise. Cold. A failing window. I didn’t know how the window had been installed, or how to describe the issue to a manufacturer. Standing behind the work felt like part of the relationship.

    At that point, my main contact refused to continue working with me and handed me off to someone else internally. That person submitted the defect claim, coordinated with the manufacturer, and, eventually, the window was repaired.

    It worked out, technically. But we will emphatically not be using that window company again.

    The strangest part, in retrospect, was realizing who that first point of contact had been. The person I’d initially worked with was their only marketer. Junior. Just back from an industry conference.

    I’m sure she’s good at what she does, and I don’t blame her for any of this. I’ve seen this pattern too many times to mistake it for individual failure.

    Junior marketers join service businesses without senior marketing leadership, and the organization tells them what marketing is. Intake. Follow-up. Estimates. Conference takeaways. They become a cog in a system they didn’t design and don’t have the authority to change. From the outside, it looks like marketing. From the inside, it’s triage.

    What broke here wasn’t customer service, exactly. It was ownership.

    At every step, I was trying to answer a simple question: Who owns this? Who is responsible for the whole experience?

    Inside the company, a different question seemed to be guiding decisions: What process are we following?

    Those two questions rarely point to the same answer.

    I see versions of this across service businesses of all kinds. Law firms. Realtors. Banks. Even lawncare companies. Anywhere the work is relational, but the system underneath it is transactional. Conversations that feel like decisions to the customer. Documents that quietly override them. Accountability that points outward when something goes wrong.

    Marketing alone can’t fix that. Neither can customer service. The issue lives upstream, in how authority is defined and how responsibility is distributed.

    Most organizations don’t intend to design experiences like this. They just forget what it feels like to be on the other side of the system. What customers see first. What they assume counts. What they think they’re buying.

    By the time winter comes, it’s already too late to repair trust.