- Kara McMaster
- Posts
- You didn't fail at marketing. You were handed the wrong map.
You didn't fail at marketing. You were handed the wrong map.
Three things happened in the last 24 months that changed everything for consultants.
Hey ,
I want to start with something that might sting a little.
If your LinkedIn outreach stopped working...
If your ads cost real money and produced nothing...
If you hired someone to run your social media and got likes but no clients...
None of that was your fault.
You were handed the wrong map.
Here's what actually happened.
In the last 24 months, three forces converged and permanently changed how B2B clients find consultants. Most consultants never got the memo.
FORCE 1: The platforms stopped rewarding manual targeting.
LinkedIn's 360Brew and Meta's Andromeda both rebuilt their systems around one new logic.
The AI signal is the new targeting.
They no longer want you to define the audience. They want you to send a clear signal of your value and their AI finds the matching buyers for you.
The old playbook (stacking interest audiences, building lookalikes, manually selecting job titles) is not just ineffective now. It's actively working against you.
FORCE 2: The buyer went dark.
Nine in ten B2B buyers complete most of their research before contacting a vendor. Two-thirds now use AI to do it.
The buying decision is being made before you ever have a conversation. Based entirely on the signals you're sending right now.
If you're not visible in the research phase, you don't exist.
FORCE 3: The 2026 arbitrage.
There is a window open right now. Most of the market has not caught up.
The consultants who understand the signal game are closing deals that others are not even seeing.
I watched this happen with Wesley Crook, CEO of FP Complete.
His team was monitoring signals. Specifically, new CTO appointments at companies in the blockchain space. In that world, a new CTO means a project is off-schedule and they need expert help fast.
The system flagged a hire. The outreach went out within 48 hours. Forty days later, Wes closed a $1 million contract.
The signal was there the whole time. Most consultants just weren't looking for it.
That window will not stay open forever. The consultants who move now will build a structural advantage that compounds. The ones who wait will find themselves competing in a market where the early movers have already locked up the best positions.
The question is not whether the game has changed. It has.
The question is whether you're going to play the new game or keep losing at the old one.
If you want to understand what the signal approach looks like for your specific business, I have a limited number of intro call spots open right now.
15 minutes. No obligation. Limited spots available.
Talk soon, Kara
P.S. Hit reply and tell me: what's the biggest thing you're struggling with right now in your pipeline? Even one sentence helps me understand how to be useful to you.