Why Marketing Keeps Getting Blamed for a Problem It Didn’t Create

As someone who heads a business with more than 1,900 real estate professionals across 11 countries, I see it and hear it all. Different brands. Different markets. Different conditions.

Yet despite those differences, the same conversation plays out again and again.

When growth slows, marketing gets blamed.

It doesn’t matter whether the business is operating in Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK or Asia. When the numbers stall, when recruitment drops off or momentum fades, leaders are quick to point to marketing rather than where the issue usually sits, upstream.

Structure.

Marketing departments across real estate are routinely expected to create something from nothing.

They are asked to generate noise without substance, momentum without activity and growth without a clear plan. They work relentlessly, stretching minor updates into campaigns, searching for anything that resembles movement, because there is nothing meaningful happening elsewhere in the business.

That is not a marketing failure. It is a leadership one.

Marketing cannot amplify what does not exist. It cannot manufacture momentum when recruitment teams are inactive. It cannot compensate for BDMs who are not in market, prospectors who are under-supported or leadership that has failed to define a clear growth strategy.

In real estate, leads have always been created by people. Recruitment teams, BDMs, prospectors, state managers and performance leaders exist to open conversations and build momentum. Marketing’s role is to support that engine, not replace it.

Yet too often, those growth functions are quiet while marketing is still expected to deliver outcomes.

When recruitment does nothing, marketing is amplifying silence.When leadership lacks clarity, marketing is promoting confusion.When there is no vision, marketing has nothing to support.

Across every market I operate in, the pattern is consistent. There is no shared definition of what a lead actually is.

There is no clear ownership once a lead exists. There is no infrastructure connecting effort to outcome. Despite this, expectations remain high and accountability remains misdirected.

Marketing’s true value is not in magically producing listings or recruits. Its role is to build credibility, authority and familiarity before a conversation ever takes place. It makes calls easier, meetings warmer and recruitment discussions stronger. But it can only do that when there is genuine activity to amplify.

You cannot campaign your way out of inaction.

The networks that continue to grow understand this. Leadership sets the vision. Growth teams execute it in market.

Marketing amplifies the activity.

Tools make the system repeatable. Remove any part of that chain and growth breaks, regardless of country, brand or market conditions.

Most networks do not have a marketing problem. They have an infrastructure problem. They want outcomes without activity, growth without ownership and noise without substance.

That approach fails everywhere.

Marketing supports momentum. It does not invent it. And until leadership takes responsibility for building proper growth systems, marketing will continue to be blamed for a problem it was never designed to solve.