Businesses will never have more ways to spend a marketing dollar, or more data that supposedly proves those dollars are working. SEO agencies report rankings. Digital companies report clicks and conversions. Social teams measure engagement. PR track visibility. Paid media produces attribution dashboards. Now companies are adding another layer as they race to optimize AI-powered discovery.
But underneath all those metrics sits a surprisingly basic question: Which investments actually generate qualified opportunities, customers and revenue? For many businesses, the answer is far less clear than the dashboards suggest.
Marketing and business growth strategist Deborah Dodson, founder and managing director of Strategic Alliance Marketing Group, sees a wide gap between marketing activity and business performance. With more than 20 years of experience in marketing, business development and growth strategy, Dodson works with organizations to review vendor performance, challenge recommendations and determine whether individual investments actually work as part of a coherent growth strategy.
“We’ve created an environment where almost any marketing channel can produce numbers that show it’s working,” says Dodson. “The more difficult question is whether these numbers show that the business itself is benefiting.”
If everything works, what actually works?
The problem often develops gradually. A company hires an SEO agency. Later there is paid advertising. Someone else is taking over social media. PR works independently. A new website launched. The company pays for directories, sponsors, memberships and marketing technology. Eventually, what started as individual solutions becomes a widespread marketing ecosystem in which different vendors have different goals, reporting systems and definitions of success.
Dodson describes this as a type of marketing stack creep. Businesses accumulate agencies, platforms, subscriptions and campaigns until it becomes difficult to see where responsibilities overlap, where money is duplicated and whether all those activities still serve the company’s goals.
“One agency reports that rankings are improving. Another shows clicks. Social media shows engagement. PR shows visibility,” says Dodson. “These may all be legitimate measures, but if no one looks over the entire operation and connects these activities to business results, you can end up with a lot of apparent success without knowing what actually produces growth.”
This distinction is becoming increasingly important because activity is relatively easy to measure. Business impact is not. A campaign can increase traffic without improving the quality of prospects. Search rankings can increase without materially affecting income. Content production can increase without generating meaningful engagement. Multiple providers can potentially claim influence over the same conversion. An impressive dashboard, in other words, does not necessarily mean an impressive return.
AI makes attribution even smarter
Artificial intelligence adds urgency to the issue as it changes where and how customers discover stores. The customer journey was already fragmented. Now, a prospect can encounter a company through Google, an AI-generated response, LinkedIn, a map listing, online reviews, an industry directory, media coverage, or another third-party source before visiting the company’s website.
According to Dodson, that doesn’t mean traditional SEO is dead. It means businesses need a broader understanding of visibility. “SEO is still important, but discovery is no longer limited to a conventional search results page,” she says. “Companies need to think about the authority and credibility they build across their entire digital footprint. The question is not simply, ‘Where do we rank?’ It’s more and more, ‘Where are we found, what does a potential customer find when they meet us, and does this visibility ultimately contribute to the business?’
This includes websites and search performance, but also reviews, credible backlinks, media mentions, social presence, business profiles, directories and other signals that help establish authority over the web.
AI therefore presents businesses with a potential pitfall. In the rush to embrace the newest form of optimization, companies can easily add another vendor, platform or tactic to an already fragmented marketing operation.
Dodson believes the more useful question isn’t just how much to spend on AI search optimization. It’s whether the entire marketing budget needs to be rethought for an era in which discovery happens across so many different environments.
Seven marketing mistakes that can quietly drain the budget
According to Dodson, seven recurring mistakes deserve particular scrutiny because they allow marketing spending to grow without a corresponding increase in meaningful business results.
1. Treat marketing as a collection of unrelated projects. Companies approve websites, advertising campaigns, SEO programs, social media initiatives and PR efforts independently, without a unified strategy that links each investment to specific business goals.
2. Paying MULTIPLE providers for overlapping services. Agencies and consultants may duplicate work, follow conflicting strategies or operate without understanding what other marketing partners are doing.
3. Mistake activity for results. Rankings, impressions, clicks, followers and content volume can look impressive in a report, while saying relatively little about qualified leads, sales opportunities or revenue.
4. Following an old SEO playbook. Search fundamentals remain important, but customers are increasingly discovering and evaluating businesses through AI search, maps, reviews, social platforms and third-party sources. Search strategy must reflect the wider reality.
5. Ignoring the wider digital footprint. A dated website cannot fully compensate for inconsistent business information, weak reviews, limited executive visibility or outdated profiles elsewhere online.
6. Buy visibility without questioning its value. Awards, directories, sponsorships, memberships and other paid opportunities can boost credibility if they reach the right audience. Others may become recurring expenses that survive year after year without anyone asking what they actually contribute.
7. Allow bidders to grade their own work. If the company selling a marketing service also determines what metrics constitute success, Dodson warns that an underperforming program can continue much longer than it might otherwise.
The last point points to a larger liability issue. “There is nothing inherently wrong with a vendor’s own performance report. They should,” Dodson says. “But businesses also need an objective way to determine whether the metrics being reported are the metrics that matter to them. The measurement should follow the business goal, not the other way around.”
What if all marketing expenses had to earn its place again?
One way to discover weak spots is to borrow a concept from zero-based budgeting and apply it to marketing. Instead of starting with last year’s agencies, platforms, subscriptions, sponsors and campaigns and deciding what to add, Dodson suggests periodically examining recurring expenses as if they need to be approved again today.
Would the company still hire this salesperson? Would it still buy this directory listing? Does this platform serve a particular purpose? Are two agencies overlapping functions? Is the organization measuring a channel because the metric is important, or simply because the platform makes it easy to report?
The exercise is not necessarily about cutting the marketing budget. “Sometimes the right answer is to spend less, but sometimes it’s to spend more,” says Dodson. “And sometimes you don’t need to change the overall budget at all. You have to move the money from something that doesn’t contribute enough to something that has more potential.”
That distinction is important. Dodson’s argument is not that SEO, advertising, PR, social media, directories or emerging AI strategies are inherently bad investments. Rather, marketing channels should not become permanent budget line items simply because they have always been there or because anyone can produce a favorable-looking performance report.
From More Marketing to Better Marketing
For marketers and business owners, the proliferation of channels creates an understandable temptation to be everywhere. Every new platform can seem like an opportunity, and every emerging technology can be scary to be left behind.
But adding more activity to an already fragmented system can be the very problem businesses are trying to solve. Dodson’s approach returned to a simpler discipline: What is the business trying to achieve? Who is trying to achieve it? What role should each marketing investment play? How does it interact with everything else? And what evidence would prove that it succeeds?
Their basic premise is that marketing doesn’t necessarily have to do more. It must become more careful, integrated and responsible. The goal is not a clean dashboard or some other impressive metric. It is to ensure that the growing machine around modern marketing remains connected to the reason businesses invest in the first place: to produce meaningful business growth.
As marketing becomes more sophisticated, accountability must become more sophisticated. The businesses that will most efficiently navigate this next era may not be the first to adopt every new platform, metric or AI capability, but those disciplined enough to continually question what each investment is achieving and whether it still deserves a place in the strategy. In a marketplace overflowing with ways to spend, knowing what not to finance can become just as valuable as knowing where to invest next.
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Entrepreneur Leadership Network member Merilee Kern, MBA, is a highly regarded brand strategist and analyst who reports on cultural shifts, trends, and notable industry leaders across both the B2C and B2B sectors. Their work covers a wide range of categories, including field experts, thought leaders, brands, products, services, destinations and events. As the founder, executive editor, and producer of The Luxe List International News Syndicate, Merilee is a respected voice in the business, lifestyle, travel, dining, and leisure industries. She stays tuned to the market, discovering innovative must-haves and unique experiences at all price points. Her work reaches millions worldwide through broadcast television (including her own shows and many others on which she appears) as well as a variety of print and online publications. Connect with her at www.TheLuxeList.com / Instagram www.Instagram.com/MerileeKern / Twitter www.Twitter.com/MerileeKern / Facebook www.Facebook.com/MerileeKernOfficial / LinkedIn www.LinkedIn.com/in/MerileeKern.