One of the most fascinating things I’ve observed in working with companies across a wide range of industries is this universal truth:
Everyone has a budget.
Nearly everyone has a business plan.
Mission statement.
Sales development plan.
But almost no one has a marketing plan.
Instead, they count on what I call random acts of marketing.
A trade show here. A sponsorship there. A paid search campaign they heard someone else was doing. A social post or two. Maybe even a video.
But none of it is connected or sequenced. It doesn’t build. It doesn’t carry through. It just hangs there. To quote William Shakespeare, it’s “...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
And as I talk to CEOs and CMOs, they all say the same thing about 2025:
“This has been a tough year. We didn’t get the lift we wanted or needed.” They then proceed to tell me all the reasons why, but none of them mention the fact that they didn’t have a plan to create demand. To build their brand.
Random activity does not produce predictable outcomes. In reality, randomness just produces more randomness.
And so everyone will walk into 2026 full of optimism, believing it will be nothing like 2025, while ‘planning’ to do nothing new. We’ve all seen that movie and we know how it ends.
Better outcomes aren’t produced from higher hopes. We all know that hope is not a strategy. Better results come from better structure. From a comprehensive strategy. A plan.
Question: What’s the most common “random act of marketing” you’ve seen this year? Did it produce any results?