The Three Signals I Study Before Building Any Successful Marketing Strategy

Every marketing plan I’ve ever built whether for a startup, a SaaS company, or a mid-market enterprise starts in the same place- with the signals already happening inside the business. Over the years, I’ve learned that predictable growth is never created by guessing or copying trends. Predictable growth comes from understanding how your market actually behaves.

I call these the three strategic signals, and they show up long before a company thinks they’re ready for a marketing strategy at all.

The first signal is how people discover your brand. Your discovery patterns tell me exactly where demand is forming and whether your message is aligned with the channels that naturally convert. If your discovery looks noisy or inconsistent, that’s usually the earliest sign the revenue engine needs attention.

The second signal is how people talk about your brand, both publicly and privately. Their language reveals the truth about your positioning; not the language you wish they would use, but the language they genuinely believe. This is where I find the biggest gaps between what a company says they do and what customers actually experience.

The third signal is what people expect once they decide to move forward. Expectations are powerful. They expose friction points, broken handoffs, and opportunities for operational alignment between marketing, sales, and success. When expectations and experience don’t match, conversion drops long before anyone realizes why.

I study these three signals because they tell me whether your marketing, sales, and operations are aligned enough to support predictable revenue. This is the part most companies miss. They want speed. They want campaigns. They want fast results, but speed without clarity creates churn, waste, and inconsistent performance.

Clarity is what accelerates growth.
Clarity is what improves conversion.
Clarity is what builds a system that keeps working long after the initial launch.

When the strategic signals are clear, the demand-generation plan practically writes itself. You stop chasing trends. You stop guessing. You start operating from a level of intention that makes your entire engine smarter and more efficient.

This is why my approach is always rooted in behavior, not “hopes and dreams”. When you truly understand how people discover you, talk about you, and expect to engage with you then you finally have the data, insight, and alignment you need to build a marketing strategy that serves both the customer and the business.