Words: Alex Coe – Digital Director
Category(s): Campaigns, Content
Date: 15th August 2025
The case for sustainable long-term strategies and tactics (and the case against quick-win grifts)
I saw a LinkedIn post this week get tens of thousands of reactions. It shared a “proven GTM framework to 10x your pipeline”, with a glossy-looking org chart composed of ai agents, and reams of bullet points that said nothing.
It was bullshit, but it worked (if the only KPI we’re judging it by is reach). And it ‘worked’ because of the formula:
- Propose a solution to a fear.
- Game the algorithm by getting users to comment some meaningless phrase to access said solution.
The fear they’re capitalising on will be familiar to those in tech marketing: I feel like I am falling behind.
And it left me wondering, “Is this what marketing has become? Where the grifters win, and the rest of us are left in fits of anxiety, wondering if they know something we don’t, and tempted to try these tactics?” But actually, the marketing game has always been rife with those who promise quick-win solutions with no substance.
In fact, I almost called this post: “B2B tech marketing near me.”
A nostalgic callback to once upon a time when some marketing grifters would promise rankings in the blink of an eye, and go on to stuff the phrase “near me” into their client’s content – “Restaurant near me”, “Restaurant near me London”, “Best restaurant London near me” – and these keywords (sometimes in white text so the user couldn’t see them) would effectively trick Google into ranking the sites higher.
Their clients would delight, and the grifters could say: “See? We get results.”
This wasn’t the only trick in their book. There was also:
- Backlinks from content farms: Low-quality websites created solely to link to others, because links are a sign of authority.
- Keyword-stuffed redirected pages: Pages overloaded with target phrases that were simply redirected to a real site.
- Pixel-stuffed ads: Tiny 1×1 pixel ads hidden on pages so they technically “served”, which inflated impression stats, despite nobody actually seeing them.
And then there were fake countdown timers, bot traffic, comment-stuffing, fake reviews, bought followers, clickjagging…
All of it worked, until it didn’t.
Those quick-win tactics, that were lacking in substance, soon resulted in penalised websites, a crash in traffic and a pile of burned cash.
Why we can’t have nice things
In 1975, economist Charles Goodhart stated: “Once people know how something is measured, they game the system to optimise that metric, often undermining the original goal.”
This explains quite plainly what’s been going on in tech marketing for decades. And it’s easy to see how Goodhart’s Law is becoming even more prolific. With mounting stakeholder pressures, moving goalposts, and harder-than-ever KPIs in tech marketing, even the “good” kind of marketer – the kind that’s above trying to take shortcuts – will occasionally fall for the grift with its golden promise of results.
Goodhart probably never imagined his law would explain why so many of us can’t resist commenting “HUSTLE” to get access to GTM Playbooks 🚀, building AI agents to write 50 social posts a day, or even hacking websites to create a ‘source’ for LLMs to reference us. (That’s what you currently risk buying from ‘experts’ selling GEO, by the way).
But somewhere along the way, we started confusing noise with momentum. If it made the graph go up, then it must be working, right? But look closer. The tactics got shallower, the returns got thinner, and the audience – the real one – tuned out.
When our brand story is unclear, when our positioning is stale, when we can’t articulate why we exist – that’s when the grift becomes tempting. Because if we can’t explain our value, we might as well try to game the algorithm.
The specific problems we solve, the change we create – that’s our competitive advantage, but only if we can articulate it. Because if we can, then we don’t need to growth-hack our way to relevance.
So, what now?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be seen, or with using the best tools available to do it. But if the work we’re doing isn’t rooted in something real and relevant, then we risk simply acting out Goodhart’s Law for eternity.
This is where your story comes in. We’re not talking about a fluffy brand exercise here, but a story that becomes the foundation on which all of your content marketing is built. This story should convey the fundamental reason you – a B2B tech business – exists; the distinct value you offer to the world, and more precisely, the distinct value you offer to a specific type of customer with a particular need.
The way you find and develop this story? By carrying out a thoroughly researched positioning process.
Positioning and story: the secret to B2B tech marketing
The right story – in conjunction with good optimisation work – will in and of itself go a long way to ensuring your target market finds it. So of course you want to find clever ways to rank. But positioning and storytelling is your sustainable growth hack. You’ll find it leads to B2B tech marketing that delivers growth and revenue over the long term.