The hidden cost of playing defense in marketing

I was digging into a potential client recently, a 10-figure B2B SaaS company with an eight-figure marketing budget, a top-tier team and all the shiny new toys. From the outside, everything was going well: regular product updates, strong positioning as the mature, industry standard and solid revenue performance. 

Despite all that, they were still losing ground to startups with smaller budgets — not dramatically, but enough to raise eyebrows and threaten jobs if things don’t turn around. 

The real question is why? The more I looked, the more it became obvious. They’d pointed their marketing engine in the wrong direction. They’d built a castle as the market leader and were more focused on protecting their status than they were on adding new customers, and the market could feel it.

The castle and moat strategy

In business school, we’re taught to find a valuable, rare, inimitable core competency and to build a strategic moat around it — strategic partnerships, products, legal frameworks, brand, etc. It’s like building a castle around precious resources and putting up all these defenses — archers, catapults, boiling oil and a moat with crocodiles — to protect it. It was solid in 1995 when Jay B. Barney and Michael Porter suggested it. Markets moved more slowly and competitive advantages lasted longer. 

But today, business changes at the speed of the internet, and there is an inherent flaw in that logic. When businesses turn inward to protect their market leader position, they become blind to opportunities for growth that are staring them in the face.

Take Google. In October 2022, they were the undisputed king of search. Then, in November, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Now, when people have simple questions, they use generative AI because it’s faster, more direct and — crucially — good enough. 

Google’s internal team was using technology like ChatGPT at the time, which they could’ve released to the public far earlier. But because Google’s team made a fortress of their search dominance, they missed their opportunity and OpenAI did the equivalent of the pink guy vs. Bane meme… and somehow won. They didn’t storm the castle; they made it irrelevant.

How the moat mindset shows up in marketing

This moat mindset is everywhere in mature marketing teams. They build defensible brands, tight ICPs, polished positioning and data-driven multi-channel campaigns. They do everything by the book, and then they turn inward. Focus shifts from recruiting new buyers to strengthening the company’s prestigious position, and marketing suffers. 

Instead of speaking to their customers, the messaging starts bragging with phrases like, “We’re the market leader in industry X. We’re a trusted brand. We’ve won all these awards.” None of that helps the customer better understand their problem, available solutions or why company X fits them best. The brand loses mobility and forgets about the customer.

Meanwhile, the market doesn’t wait. New entrants show up with sharper tech, clearer positioning and a better understanding of what customers want right now. Buyer expectations shift. Decision criteria evolve. And, suddenly, despite every advantage, incumbent market leaders are outmaneuvered, like a record label still shooting for CD sales. 

It’s not because they lack resources or talent. It’s because they traded agility for authority. And while the world kept shifting, they didn’t. Instead, their fortress became a prison and they can’t explain why, even though they’re the ones who locked the door from the inside.

In today’s market, the win goes to those who adapt fast, speak clearly and act in sync with their buyers, not the ones with the most awards, but the ones who can still read the moment.

Why Goliaths lose and Davids win

In early 2020, Skype was still a giant. It had 100 million monthly active users, was acquired for $8.5 billion by Microsoft and was a verb. Then 2020 hit, the world shut down, and suddenly everyone needed a simple, reliable way to work from home. Skype should’ve owned it, but two things happened:

• Microsoft cannibalized its own offering with Teams.
• Skype’s marketing talked like a category leader — talking at, not with, customers.

Zoom did the opposite. It zeroed in on what people needed: stability, ease of use and cross-platform compatibility — just fast, clear, frictionless video calls. Zoom said, “We’re here now and it just works.” 

Zoom won because it listened deeper and spoke to the moment. That’s how it outmaneuvered one of the largest companies in history and tripled its revenue and valuation. Customers don’t care about your market leader status. They care about who gets them and can give them what they need right now.

Dig deeper: How marketing’s broken promises are sinking your renewal rates

3 tests to challenge castle thinking

This is the pattern I see everywhere today: well-staffed, well-funded — and well… stuck. Marketing isn’t focused on converting new customers anymore; it’s focused on defending turf. The messaging is packed with category justifications and maturity signals, but it lacks momentum, aspiration and forward movement.

It’s not bad marketing — it’s defensive marketing. And that quiet shift from recruitment to protection slowly erodes ROI, market perception and pipeline energy. In my experience, most teams don’t even notice it’s happening, not until the numbers flatten and stay that way.

Great marketing isn’t built on moats — it’s built on movement. It’s the ability to outmaneuver the competition and focus on what matters most: winning customers. Here are three tools to help you break free.

1. The car ad test

If your marketing reads like a car ad — all features, name-drops and shiny specs — you’re not positioning, you’re posturing. You’re not helping customers decide, you’re just tooting your own horn. Instead, ditch the pitch. Tell the story of how you solve their problems. Remember, agility means speaking to their needs, not your ego.

2. Find the friction others ignore

Incumbents map strategy to pipeline stages. Agile marketers focus on purchase friction. Instead of asking, “Why aren’t they buying?” they ask, “What are they deciding right now — and what’s in the way?” That shift builds trust — and trust drives sales.

3. Test for terrain, not tactics

Incumbents often double down on tactics that worked last year. Agile marketers stay nimble by constantly testing tactics for relevance and checking for what customers need today. That goes beyond simple A/B testing or surveys. It’s about listening deeper and pivoting faster.

Marketing teams that stick to the moat mindset are setting the stage for irrelevance. And for SaaS and many other industries, irrelevancy is a death sentence. Customers don’t wait for you to catch up. And the more your team sticks to defense, the less time they have to try.

Shifting your marketing from protection to customer acquisition

And that’s the danger of building castles. An organization remains stationary, but the market doesn’t. Every day you’re defending your castle, you’re losing ideal customers to competitors who actually get them. And that disconnection is creating millions in missed deals and a reputation that’s fading fast.

Companies that can move with customers don’t just survive. They thrive. Ask yourself: Is your marketing recruiting the right customers or just guarding a rusty throne? Because in a world that won’t stop moving, only the agile win.

Dig deeper: The competition you’re ignoring is costing you customers