Effectiveness
Anton Buchner, Founder, Front Foot Marketing Last updated 8 August 2026
Is this actually a marketing problem?
The question behind the question
How do we fix the marketing?
What actually changed?
The straight answer
Sometimes the problem wearing a marketing hat isn't a marketing problem.
A decline in conversion might be the proposition. Poor retention might be the product. Weak demand might be pricing. Falling consideration might be the customer experience. An underperforming campaign might just be revealing a deeper commercial issue.
The deeper answer
Before changing the marketing, ask what actually changed.
Then separate the symptom from the cause.
If the problem isn't marketing, better marketing won't fix it.
This is one of the most expensive mistakes businesses make: solving the wrong problem very efficiently.
The uncomfortable bit
You may not have a marketing performance problem. You may have a proposition problem. And changing agencies won't fix it.
What we know
- What changed in the metric that triggered the concern, and roughly when
- What marketing activity was running at the time
What we don't
- Whether the cause sits in the proposition, the product, the price or the experience, rather than the campaign
- Whether the same campaign would have worked a year ago
What we need to decide anyway: Whether to change the marketing, or go looking somewhere else first.
What I'd challenge
I'd challenge the instinct to fix the marketing first. It's the fastest lever to pull, which is exactly why it's usually pulled before anyone's checked whether it's the right one.
When I'd say don't do this
Should we change agencies? Maybe. But if you can't explain what you need the new agency to do differently, changing agencies is probably just changing the supplier, not solving the problem.
The Anton Test
If we fixed the marketing perfectly and changed nothing else, would the real problem still be sitting there?
What I'd do next
I'd look at what changed just before the numbers moved, in the product, the price, the market or the experience, before I touched a single campaign.
The decision
This is ultimately a decision about where to actually intervene, marketing or somewhere else.
This connects to the broader decision on Independent advice, if you want the fuller picture.
Keep asking
Related answers
Decision
What decision are we actually trying to make?
This is often the question that should come first.
Effectiveness
What should a CEO expect from marketing?
Not more activity. Better commercial clarity.
Decision
What are we assuming that we haven't proved?
Every marketing strategy contains assumptions. The danger is forgetting they're assumptions.
Still working out what the real question is?
Sometimes the hardest part isn't finding the answer. It's knowing which question to ask.