Marketing Mayhem: Mid-Market Mistakes & How to Fix Them

At BlueByrd, we’ve worked with countless mid-sized companies, and here’s what we’ve discovered—marketing can either be your biggest growth driver or your most expensive missed opportunity. Over time, we’ve identified common mistakes that companies like yours make, but here’s the good news: you can fix them (and we’ll tell you how).

If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and give your marketing strategy the attention it deserves, here are the seven most common marketing blunders we see—plus actionable tips to turn things around.

‍

1. Failure to Take a Strategic View of Marketing

Marketing isn’t just about ads and campaigns; it’s about aligning every activity with your business goals. Yet, according to Forbes, over half of CMOs have different priorities than their CEOs—what could possibly go wrong when the leadership is misaligned?

Too often, we see marketing strategies left to “creative teams” without a clear connection to business objectives. Creativity is an asset, but creativity without strategy? That’s costly chaos.

The Fix

• Start with Strategy: Your marketing efforts should stem directly from your business plan. Answer this question first—what are your business goals, and how will marketing support them?
• Collaborate with Leadership: Ensure alignment between your marketing lead and your executive team to create a unified vision.
• Define Marketing’s Role: Marketing isn’t just about generating leads—think about brand positioning, customer retention, and market expansion too.

Example:

A mid-market SaaS firm we worked with lacked alignment between the CEO’s revenue growth goals and the marketing team’s focus on social media engagement. Once we helped them create a strategy tied to measurable pipeline growth, their revenue grew by 32% in six months.

2. Not Setting Aside the Right Resources

No budget, no accountability. No dedicated team, no results. Marketing needs resources to drive results, but we frequently see organizations skimping on budgets or spreading responsibilities across multiple roles, leading to inefficiency and burnout.

The Fix

• Establish a Quarterly Budget: Be realistic, commit to it, and adjust quarterly based on ROI metrics. Having a budget helps you focus on activities that yield results.
• Designate Accountability: Whether it’s an in-house team or an agency, someone needs to be on the hook for the success—or failure—of your marketing efforts.

Example: 

We once worked with a company that had no full-time marketing staff and instead tasked their admin team to “do a little bit of marketing on the side.” When they hired a dedicated marketing lead with a clear budget, they went from flat revenue to 15% growth in under a year.

3. Not Knowing Your Ideal Customer (Deeply)

Here’s a hard truth—your marketing will fail if you don’t truly understand your customers. We’re not just talking about surface-level details like demographics; you need to know what keeps them up at night, their decision-making process, and who influences their purchases (hint: it’s rarely just one person in B2B).

The Fix

• Do Voice of Customer (VOC) Research: Hire someone to get the honest truth about your customers' pain points and priorities.
• Refine Your Target Segments: Not all customers are worth pursuing. Focus on your “dream customers” and avoid chasing time-wasters.
• Map the Buying Committee: Especially in B2B, your messaging should resonate with everyone in the buying process—from the end-user to the CFO.

Example:

A logistics company we advised was targeting every business in their region, wasting time and energy on customers with tiny budgets. After helping them tighten their focus to businesses with higher shipping volumes, their close rate jumped by 20%.

4. Lacking a Differentiated Message

If your message doesn’t highlight what makes you distinct, you’re doomed to compete on price alone. And trust me, nobody wins a race to the bottom.

Hint: Saying your “people” or “technology” set you apart won’t cut it—everyone says that.

The Fix

• Document Your Differentiation: What’s something only you can offer? Make it crystal clear. 
• Train Your Team: Your sales team should lead every conversation with your unique value proposition (UVP). If they can’t repeat it in their sleep, it’s not memorable enough.
• Use It Everywhere: Your website, emails, social posts—your message should be consistent across every channel.

Example:

A consulting firm we worked with shifted its message from being “experienced professionals” (yawn) to highlighting its expertise in tackling projects 3x faster than competitors. Guess what their clients cared about? Speed. Sales skyrocketed.

5. Marketing and Sales Misalignment

"Sell harder" is not a marketing strategy, just as tossing leads over the fence to sales isn’t effective. Without alignment, both teams will spend more time pointing fingers than closing deals.

The Fix

• Create a Unified Process: Build a clear sales and marketing pipeline with agreed-upon definitions for leads, opportunities, and handoffs.
• Align Goals: Marketing and sales should share the same revenue and conversion metrics.
• Form a Revenue Team: Drop the siloed approach and think of sales and marketing as one cohesive team.

Example:

A manufacturing company we worked with built a cross-functional revenue team. When marketing and sales began collaborating on lead scoring and follow-ups, their close rates improved by over 30%.

6. Your Marketing Tech Isn’t Pulling Its Weight

Your website is your hardest-working salesperson—if it’s not converting visitors or providing value 24/7, it’s time for an upgrade. Add in a poorly maintained CRM, and you’re left with zero insight into your pipeline or ROI.

The Fix

• Optimize Your Website: Focus on lead generation through landing pages, strong CTAs, and SEO. If your site isn’t converting, it’s not doing its job.
• Invest in Tech: Ensure your CRM is fully integrated with your marketing tools for total transparency.
• Track Metrics: Use dashboards to track every interaction, from first click to final sale.

Example:

A SaaS company integrated their website, HubSpot, and Google Analytics. Once they could clearly track pipeline activity, they discovered gaps in their messaging and improved conversions by 12%.

7. No One "Owns" Marketing

When marketing responsibilities get scattered across sales, admin, or operations, that’s a recipe for accountability meltdowns. Without clear ownership, marketing becomes an afterthought.

The Fix

• Appoint a Lead Marketer: Whether it’s a senior hire or an agency, you need an adult in the room who takes full accountability for results.
• Create a Marketing Scorecard: Transparency is critical. Track key metrics like leads, conversions, and ROI regularly.
• Stay Accountable: Hold your marketing lead to measurable outcomes tied directly to your business goals.

Example:

One of our clients promoted a junior marketer to a leadership role, empowering them with tools and a small team. Within three months, their streamlined approach led to a 20% increase in brand awareness.

‍

‍