Marketing Problem Solving Starts With Looking Beyond the Assignment

Sometimes the assignment itself is perfectly clear. Build a sponsorship package. Create a brochure. Develop a website. Write an email campaign.

But completing the assignment isn’t enough. That deliverable also needs to work within the larger business and marketing ecosystem. If it doesn’t, you can unintentionally create new problems while trying to solve the original one.

My approach to marketing problem solving starts by working backward and outward. I want to understand what needs to be true for that particular piece of marketing to accomplish its purpose. I want to understand what needs to be true for that particular piece of marketing to accomplish its purpose.

That process often exposes gaps that aren’t part of the original assignment.

Maybe the messaging isn’t strong enough. Maybe the website doesn’t support the campaign. Maybe the audience hasn’t been clearly defined. Maybe there isn’t enough digital reach. Maybe the customer journey breaks down somewhere between awareness and conversion.

At that point, I have a choice. I can simply create what I was asked to create, or I can address what could prevent it from working.

I’m almost always going to choose the second option.

A Sponsorship Package Became a Much Bigger Marketing Strategy

One of the best examples came when I became the Sponsorship and Media Officer for the Arizona Motorcycle Riders Association.

One of my responsibilities was developing sponsorship opportunities and helping bring greater value to AMRA’s sponsors.

As I worked through what we could offer potential sponsors, I started looking at the proposition from their perspective.

Why should a company invest its marketing dollars with us? What audience could we give them access to? How much exposure could we provide? What measurable value could we offer beyond putting a logo somewhere?

That’s when I saw the bigger problem. We needed a stronger digital presence.

I could create a beautiful sponsorship package, but a package alone wouldn’t create value for sponsors. If we wanted to sell digital exposure as part of that package, we first needed an audience worth reaching.

So, the sponsorship assignment expanded into a much broader marketing strategy.

I began by creating an actual marketing strategy for AMRA, something the organization had never had. First, I strengthened the brand. Then I built a new website optimized for search, including SEO, AEO and GEO best practices. I implemented consistent social media marketing, improved the email program using current best practices, created optimized print and digital race materials, and continued building out the organization’s marketing ecosystem.

The goal was to create a consistent digital presence and build an audience around the organization, its races, riders and sponsors.

That wasn’t a problem someone handed me and asked me to solve. It became obvious when I reverse-engineered what we ultimately wanted the sponsorship program to accomplish.

What followed was a substantial undertaking. I wasn’t simply creating a new marketing strategy from scratch. I was also responsible for implementing and executing that strategy across multiple channels.

Two Years Later, the Strategy Changed What We Could Sell

The difference today is significant.

Instead of simply telling a prospective sponsor that AMRA can put its logo in front of riders, we can demonstrate the digital audience we’ve built and the additional exposure that sponsorship can provide.

The website has roughly doubled in traffic year over year from 2025 to 2026, with both visitors and sessions increasing approximately twofold. Facebook has grown by 65%, while email open rates have reached 35% to 46%, with CTA rates reaching 6%.

Those results are now part of the value proposition.

The original deliverable didn’t change. We still need sponsorship materials.

What changed was everything supporting them.

That’s the difference between simply executing a marketing tactic and looking at the larger system required to make that tactic successful.

Dyslexia Has Shaped the Way I See Marketing Problems

For a long time, dyslexia was something I thought about primarily in terms of the things it made more difficult.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized another side of it.

I can absorb a tremendous amount of information, organize seemingly unrelated pieces and start seeing connections between them. I’m constantly looking at how one thing affects another.

That makes reverse engineering almost instinctive for me.

Interestingly, my CliftonStrengths results reinforce many of the same characteristics. My top five strengths are Learner, Futuristic, Intellection, Achiever and Activator. I’m naturally driven to understand how things work, consider possibilities, think deeply about problems and then turn ideas into action.

In marketing, that combination means I’m rarely satisfied with checking a deliverable off a list.

I want to know whether it will work.

Marketing Problem Solving Means Finding the Problem You Weren’t Given

This approach can turn what appears to be a relatively simple project into a much larger conversation. That’s not because I believe everything needs to become complicated. Quite the opposite.

Sometimes identifying the underlying problem makes the solution much clearer.

A brochure can’t compensate for confusing positioning. A social media campaign can’t fix a website that doesn’t give visitors a clear next step. A sponsorship package can’t promise meaningful digital exposure if the organization hasn’t built an audience.

And a beautiful marketing deliverable isn’t successful simply because it looks good. It needs to accomplish something.

That’s why I reverse engineer the assignment. I look at the desired result, work backward through everything required to achieve it and identify the gaps along the way.

Sometimes that means I end up solving a problem nobody asked me to solve.