Stop leaving your marketing team out of revenue conversations
This piece was originally shared on LinkedIn in response to recurring conversations with founders and leadership teams around this topic.
I’m publishing it here as part of an ongoing body of thinking around restaurant strategy, market entry, and operational decision-making.
I was in a conversation recently about a revenue problem. When I asked what the marketing plan looked like, the answer came back as content performance, social reach, and which posts were landing.
That's advertising. Important, of course, but only one part of marketing.
The real value of a strong marketing team sits much earlier.
Too many businesses see marketing as a superficial layer on top of the operation rather than something embedded in the middle.
When businesses get under pressure, they often reduce marketing to pictures, captions, and media spend.
That misses the point entirely.
The strongest marketing teams I've worked with were never just executing. Instead, they were in the room when the growth conversations started.
They’re the ones championing the customer, working on the offer, positioning, and price point. And then deciding how to communicate it.
If marketing only joins the conversation once the campaign starts, you have involved them too late.
Since first sharing this, I’ve seen the same issue surface repeatedly — particularly with businesses entering new markets or scaling too quickly. The underlying challenge is rarely strategy itself, but how early decisions constrain execution later.
Andrew Jobes is the founder of Jobes & Co., a Dubai-based advisory working with restaurant and hospitality businesses across the Middle East and international markets.