Is Your Marketing Function Set Up to Perform, or Just Set Up to Look Busy?

A mediocre marketer in a well-structured function will outperform a great marketer in a broken one. Every time.

I’ve seen this play out more times than I can count. A talented Head of Marketing joins a scale-up, gets handed a team and a budget, and spends the next eighteen months fixing things that were broken before they arrived. Not campaigns. Not messaging. The function itself.

The problem is nobody hands you a diagnostic when you walk in the door. You’re expected to start producing. Show momentum. Prove your worth. And six months later you’re firefighting problems that were already there on day one.

I built a framework for this. I call it The Marketing Function Test.

The five dimensions

The test assesses your marketing function across five dimensions, each scored from one to three.

Strategic Clarity. Does the function have a clear mandate tied to commercial outcomes? Or is it reactive, driven by whatever sales asked for last week?

Internal Credibility. Does the rest of the organisation understand and respect what marketing does? Or does the function spend more time explaining itself than leading?

Fuel and Engine Balance. Is the function producing the right content for the right channels? Or is it over-indexed on one at the expense of the other, lots of content going nowhere, or lots of channels with nothing worth distributing?

Team and Structure. Are the right people in the right roles? Or is the org chart a patchwork of reactive hires that reflects who was available, not what the function actually needs?

Measurement. Does the function measure what actually matters? Or is it reporting impressions and open rates while nobody can connect marketing activity to pipeline or revenue?

How to score it

Score each dimension one to three. One means broken. Two means partial. Three means working. Add up your scores.

13 to 15: Strong foundation. Focus on optimising, not fixing. 9 to 12: Mixed. Prioritise the dimensions scoring one or two before adding anything new. 5 to 8: Structural problem. The function needs rebuilding before it can perform.

What to do with your results

The score isn’t the point. The conversation it starts is.

Take it to your leadership team. The dimensions that generate the most debate are usually the ones that need the most work.

Then fix in order. Strategic Clarity first, Internal Credibility second. Without those two, the other three dimensions can’t hold.

For the full diagnostic including how to read each dimension, the complete fix order, and how to use this framework with your leadership team, read the full issue on MARKETED, my weekly newsletter for senior marketing leaders.

https://marketednewsletter.substack.com/p/the-marketing-function-test