Outsource Marketing

One of the hardest parts of positioning is that you eventually have to disappoint somebody.

Maybe it’s the person who wants to keep targeting all 20 industries.
Maybe it’s sales saying, “But we could sell to them too.”
Maybe it’s a founder who hears “focus” and immediately thinks “smaller.”

We understand the instinct. Saying yes to more opportunities feels safer than deliberately leaving some out.

It usually isn’t.

We once worked with a company marketing itself across more than twenty industry verticals. When we looked at where the business was actually coming from, most of the revenue was concentrated in just a few.

They didn’t need twenty better campaigns. They needed permission to stop pretending every market deserved equal attention.

We’ve said for years that positioning is more about exclusion than inclusion. Deciding what you want to be known for means deciding what you’re willing not to be known for.

That can feel uncomfortable. It can also make the rest of marketing a whole lot easier: https://loom.ly/ZZK4eXo

Knowing your company really well can make you surprisingly bad at explaining it.

You know why the new feature matters. You remember the old process it replaced. You know what went into improving the service. You’ve sat through the meetings, made the tradeoffs, and watched the whole thing take shape.

Your customer knows none of that. They arrive in the middle of the story, asking a much simpler question: “Can you help me?”

We once worked with a company that was convinced customers chose them because of the quality of their ingredients. Naturally, their marketing talked about ingredients everywhere.

Then we interviewed the customers. They cared much more about product innovation, shelf appeal, and a service policy that made their lives easier.

The company wasn’t wrong about its ingredients. It was just answering a question customers weren’t really asking.

That’s why we don’t start messaging projects by opening a blank document. We start by listening: https://loom.ly/x5IITx0

We have a phrase around here for marketing that’s perfectly readable but somehow never gets read: invisible words.

Like:
“Industry-leading.”
“Customer-focused.”
“Innovative solutions.”
“Trusted partner.”

Nothing is technically wrong with any of them, but that’s almost the problem. We’ve seen them so many times that our brains know they can safely move along.

The same thing happens to entire websites and campaigns. They can be polished, accurate, and professionally produced, but if they don’t quickly connect with something the customer already cares about, they fade into the background.

AI is making this easier to miss. Vague thinking can be turned into competent sentences. And everyone starts sounding competently the same.

We wrote about why marketing can sound right without actually resonating, and why the work that matters most often happens before anyone starts writing: https://loom.ly/1XAks6w

We’ve been working on something worth cheering for.

New Outmark site launches this Thursday.

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Why isn’t our marketing working?

It’s a fair question. It’s also usually the wrong place to start.

Too many companies jump straight to the fix: a new website, more content, a different agency, another campaign, the latest tool everyone is talking about.

But marketing problems are rarely that neat.

Sometimes the issue isn’t ex*****on. It’s clarity. Positioning. Customer understanding. Internal alignment. Ownership. Measurement. Or a dozen small things quietly pulling in different directions.

We explored why “fixing marketing” has to start with diagnosis, not guesswork.

Read the article: https://loom.ly/NzzFYqU

Why does marketing feel so hard to get right?

Because it is harder.

Your customers are distracted. Your channels are multiplying. Your tech stack keeps expanding. AI is changing how people find answers. And attention is now the hardest thing to earn.

Marketing teams aren’t just dealing with change. They’re dealing with changes that overlap, collide, and create new problems faster than most organizations can adjust.

We explored why modern marketing feels so difficult, and why the best teams are building structure, curiosity, and learning into the way they work.

Read the article: https://loom.ly/-pGlgzA

Team Time, Outmark style.

Our Northwest-based team gathered and escaped a room, cheered on the Mariners, ate extremely well, consumed a respectable number of pastries, learned self-defense from Nick, broke in our new Outmark pickleball paddles, and squeezed in some honest conversations about how we can keep getting better.

Because “it’s fun to be good” isn’t just about the work.

It’s about the people doing it. And this group is pretty dang fun to be good with.

There’s a version of marketing that looks impressive—
and a version that actually performs.

They’re rarely the same.

Flash gets attention.
But discipline is what delivers over time.

Most teams chase the first and wonder where the budget went.

“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.” — Yoda

May the Force be with your marketing.

Most swag is trash. So for Earth Day, here’s how we think about sustainable swag instead.

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