When I was a child, my oldest brother used to put us to work in the garden. He was already an adult, with a son older than me, and when we visited, he would send the younger ones outside with instructions to rake leaves or pull weeds. We would scatter across the lawn, tools in hand, and do just enough to look engaged.
The work itself never held our attention. We were unfocused, half hearted, and far more interested in being seen than in making progress. When he came out to check on us, we straightened up, tugged at a weed or two, made a show of movement. Then he would disappear back inside, apparently satisfied.
I doubt we ever transformed the garden in any meaningful way. The piles of leaves barely shrank. The weeds returned almost immediately. Yet this never seemed to bother him. It was as if the act of assigning chores was the outcome, rather than the state of the garden itself. Effort was visible. Compliance was demonstrated. Results were beside the point.
“As long you are doing something, you can get away with doing nothing.”
That dynamic is surprisingly common in marketing.
Many businesses engage agencies or internal marketers and receive a steady stream of activity in return. Campaigns run continuously. Content appears on schedule. Ads are switched on and optimised. Reports arrive each month, neatly packaged with charts and commentary. From the outside, everything looks as though it is working.
And yet, sales do not move.
It’s easy to do this with marketing because it creates things to look at, even when those things are not moving the business forward. There is always something to point to, something to show, something that proves work has taken place. Visibility becomes a proxy for value, particularly when the harder work of driving revenue is uncertain, complex, or slow to materialise.
Over time, motion replaces judgement. The machine keeps running because stopping it would require asking uncomfortable questions. Are we speaking to the right audience. Does the offer actually solve a problem worth paying for. Is the creative doing more than generating polite interest. Are the leads being followed up properly, or are they quietly dying in the sales process.
When leads are coming in but deals are not closing, it is tempting to treat sales as the problem and marketing as absolved. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes it is not. The point is, you need to interrogate the issue. Poor targeting, weak positioning, or vague messaging can flood a pipeline with people who were never going to buy.
Good marketing is not about looking busy. It is about taking responsibility for outcomes. If your marketing feels like those childhood garden chores, full of movement but light on impact, it may be time to stop watching the activity and start asking whether the garden is actually changing.