The Most Expensive Marketing Decision You'll Make Is Doing Nothing

I hear some version of this all the time. In fact, I just followed up with a few companies who reached out to me a few months ago and heard some of these again.

“I know I need to get back to you, but we’re dealing with a few other priorities now.”

“We’re going to get through this quarter first.”

“We want to wait until the new salesperson starts.”

“We’re thinking January might be a better time to get started.”

On the surface, these all sound reasonable. They’re not.

If you already know your current approach to marketing isn’t producing the results you need, waiting another 30, 60, or 90 days doesn’t solve anything. It simply guarantees another 30, 60, or 90 days of the same results.  

Tom Brady, LeBron James, and Wayne Gretzky didn't even think about whether the timing was right to start making themselves into the greatest player in their sport. They just did it! They knew the sooner they started, the sooner they'd get to the level they were trying to achieve.

And there’s an even bigger problem...

There Is Almost Never a Perfect Time to Start

Business owners and CEOs are constantly dealing with competing priorities. You’re hiring people. Losing people. Closing deals. Dealing with customers. Managing cash flow. Working on operations. Planning for next year. Putting out fires.

If you’re waiting for everything to settle down before addressing marketing, you could be waiting forever. There will always be something.

The better question isn’t:  "Is this the right time to start?”

The better question is:  “If we're NOT happy with our current marketing, why isn't this the right time to start?”

You either want to grow, you want to get better, you want to improve your results...or you don't.

Not everyone wants to grow their companies. If you don't want to grow, stop pretending you do and just sit back and enjoy the status quo. But if you want to grow, accept the fact that you have to do something different, you have to think differently, you have to act differently, you have to try things that you might not know how to do. 

Embrace the fact that you're going to be uncomfortable until you get to your new normal.

Every Month You Wait Has a Cost

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is assuming that delaying a marketing investment saves money. It might save money on the expense side of the P&L. But what does it cost you in lost revenue?

Imagine your company needs 20 qualified opportunities every month to hit its growth goals, but your current marketing is only producing 12. That’s an eight-opportunity gap every month.

Wait three months to address the problem, and you haven’t simply postponed your marketing investment. You may have missed 24 potential sales opportunities.

Depending on your average deal size and close rate, that could represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential revenue.

This is why I encourage CEOs to stop thinking about marketing exclusively as an expense.  Marketing is part of your company's revenue generation system. When that system isn't performing properly, waiting to fix it has a cost.

Marketing Has a Built-In Time Delay

There’s another reason waiting is particularly dangerous. Marketing rarely produces its full impact immediately. You might start seeing some early wins quickly, but building a predictable marketing engine takes time.

Your positioning needs to be developed. Messaging needs to be created. Your website might need to change. Content needs to be produced. Campaigns need to launch. Search visibility needs to improve. Email lists need to be nurtured. Prospects need to move through their buying journey. Data needs to be collected. Campaigns need to be optimized.

Your sales team needs to learn how to use the new messaging.

All of this takes time. If you start today, you begin that process today. If you wait three months, the clock doesn’t magically keep running. You simply start the clock three months later.  That means the results arrive three months later too.

No matter how much pressure you apply to your agency, you can't have a baby in less than nine months. Good marketing takes time. Marketing that produces leads takes time. Leads that turn into viable sales opportunities take time. Closing these opportunities takes time.

The sooner you start, the sooner you'll get to enjoy the results. 

Your Prospects Aren’t Waiting

While you’re waiting to get your marketing strategy together, your prospective customers are still buying.

They’re searching Google. They’re asking ChatGPT. They’re talking to colleagues. They’re reading articles. They’re visiting websites. They’re comparing companies. They’re meeting with salespeople. And eventually, they’re making decisions.

And you’re not part of those decisions.

Every day your marketing isn't effectively communicating who you help, what makes you different, and why someone should choose you, you create an opportunity for someone else to tell their story. It doesn't even have to be a great story; they're telling it, and you're not.

That competitor doesn't necessarily have to be better than you. They simply need to look like the better choice.

Waiting Also Delays Learning

This might be the most overlooked consequence of waiting. Great marketing isn’t built entirely in a conference room. You develop the strategy, put it into the market, and then learn.

Which messages resonate?  Which offers generate responses?  Which content attracts the right prospects?  Which channels produce qualified opportunities?  Which pages convert? Which emails generate engagement?  Which campaigns produce conversations?

You don’t get those answers until you start. The sooner you start, the sooner you begin collecting real-world information about what your prospects respond to. That data allows you to improve. And those improvements compound.

A company that starts today could have six months of market intelligence by the time another company finally decides to get started. That's a meaningful competitive advantage.

Strategy Doesn't Mean You Have to Do Everything at Once

Sometimes leaders delay because the marketing plan feels overwhelming.

New website. New messaging. Content. SEO. AI search. Email. Social. Paid media. Video. Lead nurturing. Sales enablement. Analytics.

That's a lot. But a good marketing strategy isn't about doing everything. It's about understanding what needs to happen first.

At Circle 34 Advisors, one of the biggest things I work on with companies is moving them away from "random acts of marketing." Instead of launching disconnected tactics, we build a system. That means understanding your prospects. Developing a compelling story. Creating meaningful differentiation. Identifying the right tactics. Prioritizing those tactics. Establishing metrics.

Executing. Measuring. Improving.

You don't need to launch everything tomorrow. But you do need to start building the system today!

“We’ll Start in January” Is Usually an Excuse

January has somehow become the magical month when companies believe they'll suddenly become more strategic.

New year. New budget. New plan. Fresh start.

But if you recognize in October that your marketing isn’t working, why would you intentionally accept three more months of poor performance? Use those three months to do the strategic work. Develop your personas. Fix your positioning. Create your Big Story.  Identify what makes your company remarkable. Build the campaigns. Develop the content.  Fix the website. Get the marketing automation and CRM ready.

Then January becomes the month you accelerate rather than the month you begin figuring out what to do. There is a huge difference.

You Don't Need More Time. You Need a Decision.

Most companies don't suffer from a shortage of marketing ideas. They suffer from a lack of commitment. Someone suggests improving the website. Someone else wants to run Google Ads.   Someone just came back from a conference talking about AI. So the company discusses everything and commits to nothing. Months pass.  Revenue stays flat. Then everyone wonders why marketing isn't working.

At some point, leadership has to make a decision.  This is how we're going to grow.  Then the company needs to align its people, budget, technology, and marketing around that strategy.

The Best Time to Start Was Probably Yesterday

If your marketing is working and you're consistently generating the opportunities you need to hit your revenue goals, great. 

But if your pipeline is inconsistent, your message sounds like everyone else's, your website isn't converting, your sales team isn't getting enough qualified opportunities, or you're relying too heavily on referrals and repeat business, waiting isn't a strategy.

It's a decision to accept the status quo.

Growth rarely happens because everything suddenly lines up perfectly.

It happens because someone decides the current results aren't good enough and starts doing something differently. You don't need every answer. You don't need every campaign built. You don't need a perfect website. You don't need to know exactly what marketing will look like 12 months from now. You need a strategy. You need priorities. You need a system.

And then you need to start. 

Because every day you wait to build the marketing engine your company needs is another day you're relying on the marketing engine you already know isn't getting you where you want to go.

The clock is already running.  The only question is whether you're using that time to build your next stage of growth or waiting for the “right time” to begin.

If you want to talk about how to get your marketing strategy transformed for 2027. Let's talk! Just click here to get on my calendar. I promise it will be the best meeting you'll have all week.