In support of marketing that leads nowhere

Not everything in marketing needs to lead somewhere.

But in a lot of businesses, every marketing action is expected to directly feed the end of a funnel:

Every message must generate a lead.

Every piece of content must capture a contact.

Every tactic must leave a data trail.

We ask:

“Who clicked?”

“Where did they come from?”

“Can sales follow this up?”

It sounds like rigour. But most of the time, it’s just habit — a way to make something feel valuable after it already worked.

Take my favourite subject I love to beat into the ground: gated content.

We all know (and have made) the move:

1. Gate the thing to “get leads”

2. Hope sales follows up

3. Watch form fills stall

4. Wonder why the asset didn’t land

You didn’t build a funnel.

You just hid the message.

Because the form wasn’t for the reader — it was for the report.

That kind of thinking forgets that marketing is compound.

It’s emergent. The outcomes appear when all the parts do their job together.

The article someone reads today makes them act next week.

The clarity you created now removes friction later.

The problem you solved in that one post prevents five objections later in the deal.

None of that shows up in a UTM.

But it does move people and build momentum.

The best advice I’ve been given?

There’s a difference between doing something useful and doing something trackable. If you treat them like the same thing, you stop solving problems — and start building spreadsheets.

And then there’s the deeper cost.

Yes, deeper than drowning in Excel formulas.

If marketing is only taken seriously when it’s trackable, marketers stop speaking in terms of value, and start speaking in terms of validation.

Clicks are safe. Clicks are tangible. Clicks get you through the meeting.

They don’t tell the whole story, they just buy you time to keep asking: “Please take this seriously.”

We’re training good marketers to flatten strategy into stats, to translate real impact into shallow metrics, just to keep the room.

And that’s how marketing loses confidence, not in the work, but in its right to explain the work in its own terms. We’re told:

Don’t lead with the clarity you created, lead with metrics.

Don’t say what viewpoint you changed, say who clicked.

Don’t talk about the momentum you created, talk about conversion rate.

Because it’s what gets listened to.

It's no wonder marketers don't feel like they're allowed to speak in any other language.

So if you're a marketer, yes, track what matters. But treat trackability as a lens, not a measure of value. Know when the work already worked, and get on with the next smart, useful thing.

And stakeholders? Stop asking everything to end in a lead. Some of the most effective marketing is the hardest to attribute, and the most important for your team to do.

But right now, you’ve got them all too busy trying to trace clicks to notice.

TL;DR:

Not every single thing in marketing is a lead gen event.

Some things are just the thing.