Marketing Truths No One Will Admit

A while back, someone on Reddit asked a simple question: “What is something no one in marketing will admit, but is definitely true?” The thread exploded with confessions from the trenches. They were the kind of things marketers only say to each other after a few drinks.

I’m going to share a few of them here, because they pull back the curtain on why so many businesses feel stuck, spending a fortune on marketing that never seems to move the needle.

Your Spreadsheet is Lying to You

One of the most common confessions was that measuring the real impact of marketing is incredibly difficult. Another was that branding and awareness campaigns are massively powerful, but most marketers ignore them because they don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

These two things are locked together.

The marketing industry has a dangerous obsession with what can be easily measured. We’re addicted to the clean, simple numbers from digital ad campaigns because they give us the illusion of control. But this obsession leads businesses to pour money into quantifiable but low-impact activities, while neglecting the strategic work that actually builds a valuable brand.

Can you imagine Nike skipping its iconic brand campaigns to focus only on pay-per-click ads? That’s what’s happening in marketing departments all over the world. They’re choosing the comfort of a spreadsheet over the hard, vital work of building a brand that lasts.

Most Agencies Sell What’s Easy, Not What Works

Several people admitted that word-of-mouth is the best marketing strategy, but agencies don’t focus on it because it’s hard to scale and doesn’t make them easy money. Another pointed out that in digital advertising, many are just coasting along with no consequences because their clients don’t know any better.

This isn’t just cynicism. It’s a look inside the agency business model. Why spend hours optimizing a campaign when you can spend 15 minutes setting it up and get paid the same? Why educate a client on the nuances of performance when you can just send a report full of cherry-picked numbers?

The advice you get from many agencies is shaped more by what’s profitable for them than what’s effective for you. They aren’t incentivized to do the hard work of building your reputation when they can just sell you another month of ad spend.

Your ‘Emergency’ Isn’t an Emergency

One marketer admitted that there’s no such thing as a “drop-dead date” in marketing, because the deadlines are almost always arbitrary. This hits on a crucial truth. I have friends who are doctors and nurses. They have real emergencies. We don’t.

That doesn’t mean we should be lazy. Speed and efficiency are tremendous assets. But the constant, manufactured urgency in many companies is a sign of dysfunction, not high performance. It leads to sloppy, short-term thinking that undermines real strategic work.

Trust Sells. Flashy Doesn’t.

Someone pointed out that in B2B marketing, a fancy website means nothing, but a long track record and social proof mean everything. This is a lesson I learned the hard way.

When I ran an agency, I had a policy against entering our work into awards competitions. Awards skew your decisions. You start trying to create something that will impress other marketers, not something that will earn a client’s trust. Your website should be a classic, well-tailored suit, not a piece of high fashion. One helps you do business. The other just gets in the way.

The common thread here is simple. Real marketing is about the patient, long-term work of building a reputation. It’s about strategy, not just tactics. It’s about trust, not just transactions. And that’s a truth you can build a business on.