Why Your Marketing Problem Is Not the Real Problem | Maylee Jacob, Maylee Jacob Marketing

Marketing teams often jump to visible solutions: a new website, better messaging, more leads, or another campaign. But the biggest marketing challenges are rarely the ones companies think they have. The real issue is often hidden beneath the surface, whether it is a lack of customer understanding, poor sales alignment, or a product experience that is not meeting expectations.

In this episode of Straight to Voicemail, Adam Sockel hears from Maylee Jacob, a fractional marketer who helps teams identify the problems they actually need to solve. Maylee explains why companies need to question the initial marketing request before jumping into execution and how the right customer insights can reveal what is really holding growth back. 

You’ll learn:

• Why the marketing problem companies identify is often not the actual problem they need to solve
• Why building better messaging, websites, or campaigns cannot fix deeper issues like trust, positioning, or customer alignment
• How customer conversations, sales calls, and support insights can uncover the real barriers to growth
• Why marketers need to get comfortable questioning the assignment before moving quickly in the wrong direction

Jump into the conversation:

(00:00) Why we wanted to hear from Maylee Jacob

(01:24) Why the obvious marketing problem is often wrong

(02:16) What marketing cannot fix

(02:50) Why positioning should start with the customer

(03:05) Why more leads may not solve growth

(03:45) How companies lose sight of customer reality

(04:07) How to find the real problem

(04:55) Why marketing is not always the fix

(05:18) Why marketers should question the assignment

Straight to Voicemail is for CMOs, CEOs, and Heads of Marketing in B2B tech who want insights from the people who've been there. Each episode centers on one big question answered like a voicemail you'll want to play again.

Don't miss this conversation! Follow Straight to Voicemail and explore our big little wins newsletter for more B2B content strategy insights. 

What is Straight To Voicemail?

What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?

At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.

Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.

Adam Sockel (00:10)
Maylee Jacob thinks a lot about marketing, but more specifically, she thinks a lot about the types of marketing that companies both think they need and what they actually need. I actually love this from her LinkedIn profile. She says that she's a fractional marketer for teams that need both the thinking and the doing. And that's what the voicemail that she left me was all about. Because there's so often when a company will assume they need a specific type of marketing.

Adam Sockel (00:37)
They need a new website. They need to bring in more leads. They need to go do that specific event. But it's not always, in fact, it's usually not aligned with the actual problems that they are experiencing. And these are the things that Mailey thinks so much about and works with all of her clients on. when we met, she said to me, you know, I I really think that companies don't.

Adam Sockel (01:00)
Understand the problem that they actually have. It's very misaligned with what they want to do. And so I asked her a question that she had an incredible answer to. Explain what you mean when you say that the marketing problem a company thinks it has often isn't the actual problem.

Maylee Jacob (01:24)
Hey Adam, sorry I missed your call. I wanted to leave you a voicemail to answer your question. so the marketing problem a company thinks it has often isn't the actual problem. And what I mean by that is companies are often so quick to jump into the thing that they can see. So it's like, we need better messaging, we need more leads, we need more content, we need a new website. And it's like, sure, okay, maybe, but

Maylee Jacob (01:47)
that's not the actual problem that's underneath it. A lot of the time it's just the easiest thing to point out. So if someone says we need better messaging, my first question is, why do you think messaging is the problem? What's actually happening? What are customers saying?

Maylee Jacob (02:00)
What are sales people hearing? where are people getting stuck? And the biggest question is, if we fix this thing perfectly,

Maylee Jacob (02:09)
Would the outcome actually change? Because You can do really good marketing work against the wrong problem.

Maylee Jacob (02:16)
Maybe the real problem is people don't trust you. Maybe you're talking to the wrong audience. Maybe the product experience is bad. Maybe sales sucks at following up, or they're not doing it at all. Marketing can't magically

Maylee Jacob (02:28)
fix all of those things. It can't paper over that. And I often see this in things like positioning, right? So a company says, we need to explain what we do better. And then you get into it and they realize that they're explaining the business in a way that makes sense to them. But customers don't care about your org chart. So they're not sitting there thinking like, hmm, which part of this company should I engage with?

Maylee Jacob (02:50)
They have a problem, they want to know if you can solve it. So sometimes a positioning problem is really the company is starting with itself instead of starting with the customer. Company could say, we need to rebuild trust or we need to tell customers something is changing. It's like, sure.

Maylee Jacob (03:05)
You can write a better email. But if the business hasn't actually done something to earn that trust back, like what are you supposed to say? How are you supposed to build that back? Otherwise, it's just words on a paper. And then another one, we love to hear it, and that's sarcasm, is we need more leads. But before you go spend more money and generate more demand,

Maylee Jacob (03:24)
What are you doing with the ones you already have? Are they good? Are people following up on these people? does sales agree with marketing and what a good opportunity even looks like? Because if not, more leads just mean people are getting dropped into the same messy process. And it's not a win because, one reason companies get into this is because it's a visible solution. It makes it feel easier for them.

Maylee Jacob (03:45)
So let's redo the website feels a lot more comfortable than we're not actually sure why people aren't buying. Because you're inside a company, you're surrounded by your own stuff all day, your roadmap, your target, your people. Everybody's in this bubble. And leadership wants to push something this quarter. eventually everything starts to feel like customer reality when it actually isn't, because customers are thinking about their own problem.

Maylee Jacob (04:07)
So I push back on the ask. What do we think is the problem? What evidence do we have? What are customers actually doing or saying? What are sales calls telling us? What are support issues telling us? What are we seeing in lost deals? There's so much good context in the stuff that exists or should exist. And if you don't have that, you need to start getting those things. you don't have to always launch some giant research project and then disappear for three months, like

Maylee Jacob (04:30)
Sure, research project has a good place, but you should have so much gold that you're sitting on already. How do you dig into it? So sometimes a few customer conversations tell you a lot. Sales calls can tell you stuff. Sometimes it's just in support tickets, and nobody has combed through all of those and done some sort of understanding of what the common themes are. So you really want to get clear on what needs to change.

Maylee Jacob (04:55)
Marketing is not always the first thing that needs fixing. So the tricky part is when marketing gets involved, somebody's already decided something, they've said new website, nurture, campaign, whatever it is, you need to spend more time figuring out what you're solving and is it the right problem before you start moving really fast in the wrong direction. And that often means getting comfortable questioning the assignment before you execute it.

Maylee Jacob (05:18)
don't be seen as questions as annoying because they're not. Questions are good. Everything should be poked at and looked at from different angles. Doesn't have to become a whole overwhelming waterfall of things, but get to the core issue and try to understand what the underlying foundational piece is before you start going off different directions. that's where the more useful work starts.