John Wanamaker thought he was wasting half his advertising.
He was being optimistic. The real figure is 80%.
This is not a marketing book. It's a revenue book. Written for the people who sign the cheques — not the people who spend them.
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half.— John Wanamaker, c.1900
Most B2B businesses are running a very expensive illusion. They have a marketing team, a budget, campaigns running on multiple channels. They measure impressions, click-through rates, engagement metrics and follower counts. At the end of the year, the marketing team produces a polished presentation full of graphs pointing upward.
And yet the pipeline is thin. The leads are low quality. Revenue growth is sluggish. Nobody can explain the disconnect.
The explanation is simple: most of what is being called 'marketing' is not generating revenue. It is generating activity. And in business, activity without commercial output is just cost.
If you've ever sat in a board meeting wondering why the marketing budget keeps growing and the pipeline keeps disappointing — this book was written for you.
You know the leads aren't good enough. You know the blame cycle is structural. This book gives you the argument — and the fix.
You're watching the marketing budget grow and the revenue disappoint. The problem isn't the team. It's the structure. Here's the structural fix.
If revenue growth is your problem and marketing spend is your tool, this book will fundamentally change how you think about both.
Blunt, sometimes uncomfortable, entirely actionable. No academic citations. No theories that haven't been stress-tested against a quarterly target.
The single most important distinction in B2B marketing — and why confusing them costs a fortune.
An honest verdict on every channel — advertising, email, events, cold calling, partners, direct mail. What each actually does.
Why social media fails in B2B — with one vital caveat. The only platform worth your time, and exactly how to use it.
The honest answer. Simpler than most marketing plans acknowledge — and chronically underinvested in.
Why marketing must answer to sales. The blame cycle explained — and the one structural fix that eliminates it.
How hiring a CMO can make things significantly worse — and what to do instead.
The sales-led marketing model that actually works. Budget allocation ratios. Who hires what. Shared language.
The channel only your competition reads. What a B2B website actually needs to do — and what it will never do.
Why the best product rarely wins. How consulting firms really make recommendations. What to do instead.
When marketing spend goes up and revenue goes down. One of the most reliable leading indicators of a business in serious trouble.
Stop inventing problems nobody has. How to find real buyer pain — and why inventing it almost never works.
The highest-return channel nobody has the guts to use. The Callaway benchmark. Why bold work lives off the corporate website.
A four-step process to identify exactly where your 80% is going — and redesign the allocation toward what actually works.
of your marketing budget is producing nothing. This book tells you which 80% — and exactly where to move the money.
Get the Book →"The fix is not more creativity, more channels, or more spend. The fix is structural."
"The conflict between marketing and sales is not a personality problem. It is a structural one. And it has one structural solution."
"A poor website will cost you clients. A good website will not win you clients. It will simply avoid losing them."
"When you see marketing spend increase rapidly in a struggling business, you are usually watching the final act."
"Viral marketing does not require a big budget. It requires the courage to approve something that makes the room uncomfortable."
"Never try to create a new message to sell a product into a market that does not already recognise the problem it solves."
The book ends with a concrete process. Do it honestly and you will know exactly what to change — and where to move the money.
"The goal is not to spend less on marketing. It is to stop spending on things that feel busy and start spending on things that produce qualified conversations."
— Miles Corrigan, Conclusion
List everything — including internal time at fully loaded cost. Most businesses underestimate by 40%.
Where did the relationship actually begin? Not where they first saw your name. Where the first real conversation started.
The mismatch between spend and source is your wasted 80%. Visualised, concrete, undeniable.
Move money toward what demonstrably produced clients. Cut what produced nothing — regardless of how professional it looks.
A practical field guide for sales directors, MDs, founders and anyone responsible for revenue growth in a B2B business.