72% of Business Owners Say Their Marketing Team is Exhausted, But Their Growth is Flat
by Chad de Lisle • January 22, 2026
TL;DR
Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive. After 600 conversations with business leaders last quarter, we found that 72% aren’t struggling with a lack of effort—they’re struggling with a lack of rhythm. If your team is “slammed” but your results are stagnant, you don’t need more people. You need a better system.
The “Busy” Mirage
Every week, we hear the same three phrases from business owners:
- “We’re slammed.”
- “We’re doing everything we can.”
- “The team is working nonstop.”
When we hear these, we usually ask one follow-up: “Is it working?”
The silence that follows is the Marketing Execution Gap. Most companies are measuring movement (activity, hours logged, emails sent) instead of momentum (revenue, profit, closed deals). Being busy is often just a mask for being unaligned.
What 600 Leaders Admitted
In Q4, we spoke with 600 executives and marketing leaders. The data was a wake-up call:
- 72% said their marketing isn’t actually performing.
- 69% admitted they don’t have a clear roadmap for the year.
- 43% feel their agency is a “black box” with no real accountability.
These aren’t “marketing” problems. They are marketing execution failures. Here is how to close the gap.
1. Focus: The Discipline of Saying “No”
Most teams fail because they are chasing ten “priorities” at once. In reality, if you have ten priorities, you have zero.
Marketing Execution isn’t about speed; it’s about elimination. The businesses that scale in 2026 are the ones that protect their “Deep Work.” They make decisions faster, run fewer (but better) meetings, and say “no” to good ideas so they have the energy for the great ones.
If you want to grow, stop looking for what to add. Look for what to cut.
2. Systems: AI is a Chaos Multiplier
The 2026 obsession is AI. But AI doesn’t fix a broken process—it just fast-tracks your mistakes.
If your marketing systems are disorganized, automation won’t save you; it will just make you disorganized at scale. Before you buy another tool, ask:
- Does every task have a single, named owner?
- Is our reporting based on real-time data or “gut feel”?
- Do we have a feedback loop that survives an employee quitting?
One client told us: “We’ve got a tool for everything, but accountability for nothing.” Don’t let your tech stack become a graveyard of expensive distractions.
3. Accountability: The End of “Optimizing”
43% of business owners feel burned by their agencies. Why? Because “Optimizing” has become a buzzword for “We don’t know why it’s not working.”
Real marketing execution requires ownership. If your agency can’t explain exactly where your money is going—or if they’ve swapped your account manager three times in a year—you aren’t buying performance. You’re buying a headache.
At Disruptive, we have a simple rule: If the client loses, we lose. That is the only metric that matters.
The Reality Check
Great execution isn’t flashy. It doesn’t happen in a “brainstorming session.” It happens in the boring, daily habits:
- KPIs that everyone actually understands.
- Feedback that happens weekly, not once a quarter.
- Data that forces you to change course when things aren’t working.
If your team is “always busy” but your growth is flat, the problem isn’t your people. It’s the system you’ve put them in. Marketing execution can be measured, diagnosed, and fixed. But you have to be willing to look at the cracks.
The Takeaway
The best agencies in 2026 won’t just “run ads”—they will run outcomes. Stop rewarding effort. Start rewarding impact. Before you launch your next campaign, ask yourself: Are we building momentum, or are we just staying busy? Effort is a given. Execution is the win.
