At the risk of becoming a broken record, marketing your small- to mid-sized business is not getting easier. It feels like the harder we push, the more resistance we feel.

The Verge reports that Claude is now touting “AI Watermarking”. Anthropic is planning to add invisible, machine-readable watermarks to Claude-generated text and include provenance metadata in supported files. This way, platforms and authorized detectors can easily tell that the content was created by AI.

Then there's AI Slop. Like or hate the term, this low-quality, mass-produced content is filling the feeds and drowning out your message with noise. And it won't be going away anytime soon. It's how LLMs are trained. Think about it. The quality of AI content we get is directly correlated to the quality of the human-created content AI is being trained on. Bad input means bad output.

So while AI promised to make marketing easier (AI-driven creation does take less effort and time), in reality, it may also be making your marketing muscles atrophy.

Marketing your business is like a muscle. As a golfer, if I let someone else swing my club for me, that muscle (and skill) would get weaker.

On the other hand, if I want to improve my golf swing, I can't just swing harder.

Physics is the study of motion and how motion, energy, and time all create cause and effect. Your business is trying to create motion, to move customers and prospects from awareness to action.

But motion alone will not create success. Marketing, like a golf swing, needs to have a tempo associated with the motion.

The Physics of a Golf Swing

If you watch a pro golfer, they make hitting the ball look effortless. That is because they have mastered the tempo of the golf swing. They have mastered their physical ability to propel a movable object (the golf club) to a static object (the golf ball), transferring the power from the body to the ball.

Most amateurs (like me) have different swings for different clubs (the driver, fairway woods, irons, chipping, and putting). The pros have two.

It takes a pro about 1 second to draw the club back and then hit the ball. The difference is a 3:1 ratio for full swings and a 2:1 ratio for chips and putts.

Granted, there are many more complexities, like balance, turn, arm movements, and club head position when striking the ball, but all of those are based on the individual's age, strength, and body makeup.

The 3:1 and 2:1 ratio tempo is the main consistency that pros have, and amateurs do not realize. Swinging faster will make the golf ball travel farther (kinetic energy transfer), but the tempo is the key to better contact and more consistency.

Having the right swing tempo creates balance and a more repeatable, successful result.

Having the right marketing tempo can also create balance and more repeatable, successful results.

Marketing Has Motion

Many marketing gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk preach an “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” approach to marketing, which focuses on platform saturation and repurposing, and is built on quantity over quality.

That philosophy requires you to create an overwhelming amount of text, images, video, and audio, and flood the zone faster and stronger than your competition.

He suggests aiming for over 100 pieces of content each day, divided into many “segmentations” of the same main idea, all presented in different formats and on various platforms.

That is the golf swing equivalent of just swinging harder and faster than everyone.

Although I believe creating content in multiple formats is good, it’s more important to have a consistent tempo in delivering the same content across multiple platforms (your website, email, and social media) to build repeatable success.

Activity is not always momentum.

If the message is unclear, the audience is wrong, the quality weak, or it lacks a logical next step, all that work can feel like swinging as hard as possible and watching the ball fly into the woods or a lake.

The physics are off.

Quality marketing creates energy that moves your brand and offerings forward. Each piece of text, images, audio, and video should support each other. They should mimic the questions buyers actually have. They should create momentum to propel your audience to action.

Your team should be made aware of what a client or prospect saw, downloaded, or cared about before a conversation begins.

When those pieces are connected, marketing starts to feel less like random activity and more like a system.

Tempo Matters

Tempo is often overlooked in both golf and marketing, but it’s actually quite important.

In golf, rushing from the backswing to the downswing can throw everything off balance. Similarly, in marketing, jumping straight from the first impression to the sales pitch can also cause problems.

• Not every buyer is ready to try a demo after just reading a LinkedIn post.
• Not every website visitor needs to be immediately prompted to “Book a Call” before they understand what you do.
• Not every lead should be treated the same just because they filled out a form.

Good marketing knows when to push forward and when to allow things to unfold naturally. This doesn’t mean being lazy; it means being deliberate.

You want a steady flow: helpful content, clear positioning, thoughtful follow-up, relevant evidence, and a clear next step when the buyer is ready. The aim isn’t to force the sale. The aim is to create the perfect sequence.

Better Motion, Not More Motion

Great golfers seem to be effortlessly swinging. Their swings are smooth, and their timing is spot-on. The end result looks effortless because the mechanics are doing the heavy lifting.

The same principle applies to marketing.

A successful marketing strategy isn’t about a single viral post, a huge ad budget, or a constant stream of unrelated content. Instead, it builds momentum over time through repetition, relevance, and trust.

Before trying to swing like a pro, consider these simple questions:

• Is your message consistent across all platforms?
• Are you addressing issues that your customers actually face?
• Does each piece of content naturally lead to the next step?
• Is your marketing and sales aligned on the same message?
• Are you capturing data, or just aiming at clicks and views?

A smooth golf swing can produce more distance than a wild swing fueled by effort alone. Marketing is no different.

The answer is often not, “Swing harder and do more.” The answer is to create a tempo that seems more intentional and effortless.

Closing Thought

It’s often said that golf is a game of inches. The most important 6 inches in golf is the space between the golfer's ears. A brain that watches too many golf videos often trades one bad habit and replaces it with another that makes the game more complex than it has to be.

Golfers do not always get better by just playing more golf. They usually improve with consistent practice that converts 30,000 swing thoughts into a consistent tempo.

The same goes for marketing. AI, and all its trappings, are just another marketing swing thought. It will help you sling content faster and harder, but what you actually need is better quality content with a consistent tempo of delivery.

Marketers do not always get better by producing more content. They usually improve by creating consistent messaging that converts awareness into action.

You do not need more motion.

You need BETTER motion.

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.