The obsession with metrics, optimization, efficiency and automation in tech marketing is a forest-for-the-trees problem.

They’re missing the bigger picture.

Instead, they should focus on their brand.

Brand building isn’t about instant gratification.

It’s about long-term value creation.

But try telling that to a VC-backed startup racing against its burn rate.

The irony?

Many of these “innovative” marketers are reinventing wheels that have been spinning for decades.

Scope creep, anyone?

They’re creating new jargon for old concepts, simply because they never learned the basics.

But marketing isn’t about reinventing.

It’s about understanding human psychology, which has remained largely unchanged for the past 50 years or 500 years, for that matter.

The best marketers aren’t inventors; they take timeless principles and apply them to new contexts.

They understand that brand is:

1. The forest, not just a single tree.
2. What people say about you when you’re not in the room.
3. The emotional resonance that turns customers into evangelists.
4. An intangible asset that can’t be measured in daily reports

So why are we so obsessed with short-term metrics?

Because they’re easy.

They’re comforting.

They give us the illusion of control.

But great marketing, like great art, isn’t about control.

It’s about influence.

It’s about planting seeds that may not sprout for years.

Some things can’t be optimized in real-time.

They need time to marinate, to percolate, to resonate.

What if, instead of chasing daily active users, we focused on creating daily active advocates?

1000 true fans ring a bell?

What if, instead of optimizing for clicks, we optimized for conversations?

What if, instead of measuring engagement, we measured enchantment?

These aren’t metrics you can track on a dashboard, but they’re the ones that build empires.

Ask Jesus; he didn’t have a dashboard, either.

We need to stop treating marketing like it’s engineering.

It’s not about building features; it’s about building feelings.

It’s not about user experience; it’s about human experience.

So what if we:

1. Invested as much in brand as we do in product?
2. Valued storytelling as much as we value coding?
3. Recognized that the most valuable API is the one of human connection.

This isn’t just fluffy talk.

It’s strategic thinking.

In a world of infinite choice, a brand is the ultimate differentiator.

It’s what makes people choose you over a competitor with identical features and pricing.

It’s what turns a product into a movement.

So, to all the metric-obsessed marketers out there, I say this:

By all means, measure.

But don’t forget to matter.

Count your clicks, but make your clicks count.

Optimize for algorithms, but humanize for people.

Because at the end of the day, we’re not marketing to machines.

We’re marketing to humans.

And humans don’t fall in love with metrics.

They fall in love with brands.

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Liam Moroney original post on LinkedIn here.

Thanks for the references by Steve Patti

1. https://6sense.com/blog/dont-call-us-well-call-you-what-research-says-about-when-b2b-buyers-reach-out-to-sellers/

2. https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/12/everything-the-tech-world-says-about-marketing-is-wrong/

3. https://www.fastcompany.com/90862061/demand-generation-and-brand-management-two-sides-of-the-same-coin