The Cost of Fragmented Strategy Across Teams and Vendors

Recently, in an initial conversation, the marketing leader I was talking with paused mid-conversation and asked: “Wait—are we leading strategy, or is the agency we’re currently working with?”

It was a fair question. Multiple internal stakeholders. Several vendors and partners. A vague plan. Lots of activity. But no clarity on who was actually driving the strategic vision.

That moment stuck with me—and eventually became a story I shared in The Digital Marketing Success Plan. It captures a common problem: when responsibility for strategy is spread thin or left undefined, execution suffers. And worse, the business feels the consequences.

Let’s unpack why this happens, how it erodes results, and what to do when your marketing feels more like a game of telephone than a coordinated campaign.

How Strategy Gets Fragmented

It often starts with good intentions. You’ve got a web dev partner here, a paid media agency there, and an internal content team making things happen. Everyone’s talented. Everyone’s busy.

But the cracks start to show when these teams don’t share a single strategic plan—or don’t know one exists.

Suddenly:

• Your SEO agency is chasing rankings that don’t align with your audience.
• Your content team is writing blog posts to meet a quota, not a business goal.
• Your internal stakeholders are unsure what success actually looks like.
• And your paid media budget? It’s getting burned on “tactics” without clear intent.

This isn’t just inefficient. It’s expensive. Fragmented strategy leads to duplicate efforts, inconsistent messaging, and wasted time retracing steps because teams are misaligned from the start.

In my Search Engine Journal article for brands, I called this out plainly: the most successful agency relationships are built on clarity of roles and expectations. When no one owns the strategy—or everyone assumes someone else does—teams default to siloed execution.

And as I later shared in the follow-up article for agencies, agencies also have a responsibility to push for alignment. Saying yes to every request without grounding in a shared plan doesn’t serve the client or the results.

What Fragmentation Really Costs You

Disjointed strategy doesn’t just slow things down—it costs you in real, measurable ways:

• Lost ROI: When efforts aren’t working toward the same business goal, performance gets diluted. Campaigns may “perform” on paper, but they don’t produce business-impacting ROI.
• Missed Opportunities: Without a shared view of the customer journey, teams miss chances to create connected experiences and capitalize on what’s working.
• Internal Frustration: Conflicting priorities and unclear responsibilities create tension—not just between partners, but within your own team.
• Leadership Doubt: Executives start to wonder why marketing isn’t driving results, and you’re left explaining tactics instead of impact.

A scattered team can be full of smart people doing the right things—but if they’re not working toward the same strategic goals, those right things become the wrong activities.

What Alignment Looks Like (and How to Get There)

The fix isn’t just more meetings or another 50-page slide deck. Strategic alignment means knowing:

• What you’re trying to achieve
• Who owns what
• How all the moving parts fit together
• And when and how progress will be measured and adjusted

This is where the START Planning Process comes in. Whether you use it, or a different framework, it is important to have a process for planning that arrives at a fully defined plan.

When we walk clients through START (Strategy, Tactics, Application, Review, and Transformation), we’re not just building a marketing plan—we’re building alignment. And most importantly, we’re creating a tool that helps internal teams and external vendors stay aligned long after the kickoff.

Let’s break it down:

• Strategy defines your goals, audiences, and messaging—and makes clear who owns what.
• Tactics identify the best channels, tools, and playbooks to achieve those goals—chosen intentionally, not inherited by default.
• Application outlines the assets needed and who will create them—from websites to ads to creative briefs.
• Review builds in business outcome-mapped KPIs and checkpoints—so no one’s surprised when it’s time to measure or pivot.
• Transformation ensures the plan is documented, accountable, and evolves based on performance—not gut instinct or scattered feedback.

By the time the plan is done, clients know what each partner is responsible for. And when that’s missing? You see it. Quickly.

Even with great agencies, smart teams, and good intentions—marketing without shared strategy becomes a collection of isolated tasks.

Bringing Strategy Back Together

So if you’re in a spot where:

• Your vendors don’t talk to each other…
• Your team is unclear on priorities…
• Or you feel like the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing…

It might be time to revisit the question: Who owns the strategy?

Better yet, ask this: Who is accountable for maintaining shared visibility into the strategy?

The answer should never be “everyone” or “no one.” And once you have that clarity, you can shift the focus away from activity for its own sake—and toward execution that actually creates business impact.