The 92% Myth: why proper Marketing is mostly strategy (not promotion)

I once tried to run what I’d call a proper marketing campaign in specialty insurance. Proper because of the research: we dug into FBI crime stats across states, mapped trends, designed red-state vs blue-state messaging, and ran detailed competitor product analysis.

And all of it was ignored.

• We picked the wrong state to promote in, because that’s where our office was.

• We toned down the visuals, because the broker preferred it.

• We beiged-up the messaging, because compliance insisted.

I could live with those compromises. But what stung was pricing.

Our research showed we were under-pricing by ~$10,000 per policy. Even basic Goldilocks pricing theory tells us most buyers choose the middle option: too high feels unaffordable, too low feels suspicious. Yet we left money on the table.

That’s the cost of treating marketing as the 8% you can see, and ignoring the 92% that actually drives growth.

Marketing isn’t promotion, it’s a core business function

I’ve always prided myself on my grounding in marketing theory. And one stat that has always stuck with me is about just how little of what marketers should be doing is promotion - even though that’s what everyone assumes we do.

In a podcast with Joe Glover, Mark Ritson said:

“The promotion piece in marketing is actually only 8.25% of marketing. I round it down to eight … that’s how much of the time you should spend on marketing comms.”

This wasn’t news to me. My beloved SOSTAC framework proves it every time.

So why does everyone mistake marketing for advertising? Because advertising is the part everyone sees, it’s the output. But Marketing is both the inputs and the outputs. Nobody queues overnight for the new iPhone because of a billboard - they do it because of years of product design, positioning, and relentless delivery on the brand promise.

What people don’t see is the insight work, the user testing, the pricing strategy, the analysis of behaviours and competitors. The millions invested before a single ad runs.

Gartner calls marketing ops the backbone across process, tech, and data.

Why marketers are natural CSOs and CGOs

According to Google, a Chief Growth Officer (CGO), “drives company growth by integrating sales, marketing, and product development, focusing on customer acquisition, revenue generation, market expansion, and customer retention.”

That’s exactly what modern marketers do, we just don’t tend to get recognised for it.

Marketers, when they’re doing the job properly, sit at the intersection of insight, product and growth. They already deal in the numbers CEOs care about:

• Revenue and margin impact (not vanity metrics).

• Pipeline quality over volume - what’s converting, not just what’s filling Salesforce.

• Balance of long- and short-term growth, as Binet & Field’s research proves, in B2B the optimal split is 46% brand, 54% activation.

• Future demand creation - the 95:5 rule shows only 5% of buyers are in-market now, meaning 95% of revenue depends on brand and memory-building, not this quarter’s activity.

The best CMOs already orchestrate across product, sales, service, and data. As budgets tighten, their role isn’t producing more brochures, it’s joining the dots that drive growth.

Why insurance hasn’t caught up

The industry rightly gives brokers and underwriters a strong voice, they bring in revenue and manage risk - but their influence often overshadows other functions. What’s missing is balance: marketing, operations and technology should sit alongside them in shaping growth.

In other B2B sectors, the rise of the Chief Growth Officer, Chief Strategy Officer or even Chief Client Officer, shows recognition that growth is multi-dimensional, spanning customer, product, brand, and pipeline. In (re)insurance, unless you’ve directly won clients, or you’re an accountant, the path to those titles is still closed.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: insurance hasn’t historically been a customer-centric industry, it’s been product- and distribution-led. That’s not a criticism, it reflects how the market evolved, but as expectations shift and regulators demand evidence of good customer outcomes, the industry needs to rebalance. Marketing is uniquely positioned to lead that change: connecting customer insight, proposition design, and distribution strategy to create both growth and compliance strength.

Here's how I frame the Marketing Mix

An action plan for insurance leaders

1. Create a light growth project management team (strategy, ops, finance).

2. Rebase budgets: fund research, proposition and measurement first.

3. Adopt brand/activation guardrails (46/54) and a 95/5 demand plan.

4. Build a live Board Growth Dashboard with lag + lead indicators, embedding customer metrics.

Proper marketing is the 92% you don’t see - the strategy, propositions, pricing insight, data and measurement that actually drive growth. I’m not suggesting marketing suddenly take over pricing in this industry, but there’s value in giving those perspectives a seat at the table.

Promotion is just the output. Growth comes from the quality of the inputs.

The fastest way to waste money is to treat marketing as the 8%.

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Author: Cara McFadyen, Founder, Ooshka