By AK Infinite
It’s an obvious supposition. If every marketing organization is following the same formulas, how can brands substantively differentiate themselves?
The logic is simple: if something works for a competitor, replicate it.
That model was more effective when access to information, and to tools, was uneven. However, that is decidedly no longer the case.
Best practices and their proponents are everywhere. They’re often embedded in platforms, baked into software, and repeated across blogs, webinars, and content feeds. LLMs and agents have accelerated that spread even further, turning once-specialized knowledge into instantly accessible guidance.
The result is a landscape where most teams are now doing the “right” things. This has created a deficit of creativity in marketing approaches, though it has raised the bar for the bare minimum in marketing wisdom.
“Best practices used to be an advantage, it is actually the whole reason we call them ‘best’,” said Robin Emiliani, Chief Growth Officer at Catalyst Marketing. “But they’ve now become the baseline. If you’re only executing what everyone else already knows, you’re going to get average results.”
When Correct Execution Leads to Average Outcomes
Marketing execution has become more standardized across industries. Campaign structures often follow identical segmentation. Personalization in outreach, content, ads, and account-based marketing has proliferated as a requirement instead of a differentiator. And high-creative volume, with the advent of AI, is now non-negotiable.
None of this is inherently or philosophically wrong in marketing circles. In many cases, it leads to technically sound work.
But technical soundness is no longer an assurance of effectiveness.
When multiple competitors are drawing from the same playbook, differentiation becomes harder to achieve. What once signaled competence now signals conformity. The gap between “good” and “memorable” widens.
This is especially evident in B2B marketing, where risk aversion has long driven teams toward proven approaches. In a traditionally reserved environment where budgets are scrutinized and outcomes are closely tied to revenue, deviating from established methods can feel unnecessary or even irresponsible.
But, perhaps ironically, a renewed tolerance for risk is likely the next best practice in B2B.
“When every team is optimizing for what’s proven, you start to see the same ideas show up everywhere,” Emiliani said. “At that point, you’re not competing on strategy anymore; it becomes a competition on who can execute the same thing slightly better. So to win, you need to be bold and willing to experiment.”
The Rise of the Playbook Economy
Part of the challenge is structural. Marketing knowledge has been increasingly codified over the past decade. Playbooks, templates, and repeatable systems have made it easier to scale efforts across teams and organizations.
AI has taken that one (or likely many) steps further.
Large language models can now generate campaign structures, messaging variations, and content strategies based on widely accepted frameworks. What once required experience or specialized expertise can now be produced on demand.
That change has lowered the barrier to entry for competent marketing. It has also compressed the range of what most teams are willing to try.
As more organizations adopt the same tools and follow similar guidance, the output begins to converge. Differences in execution still exist, but they tend to be incremental rather than transformative.
The result is a market filled with campaigns that check all the right boxes but fail to create meaningful separation.
How to Create an Advantage
If best practices are no longer a differentiator, the question is obvious: what is?
Increasingly, the answer comes down to judgment.
Knowing when to apply a framework and when to adjust it. Understanding how a tactic fits within a specific market, audience, and moment in time. Recognizing when a “proven” approach may not be the right one for a given situation.
“Effectiveness comes from context,” Emiliani said. “The best marketers aren’t just following a playbook. They’re making decisions based on what they’re seeing in real time, and adjusting internal workflows and best practices based on the context and outcomes of their decisions.”
Instead of asking whether a tactic is considered a best practice, teams need to ask whether it is appropriate for their goals, their customers, and their current constraints. Instead of focusing on replication, they need to focus on relevance.
“This is where many organizations struggle,” Emiliani continues. “You must be willing to take some risks that aren’t codified in a playbook. But you can’t understand which risks to take without a deep contextual understanding of your audience, your brand’s place in their world, and yes, how your marketing fits and does not fit into the standard frameworks.”
Playbooks provide clarity and a sense of control. They reduce ambiguity and make it easier to align teams around a shared approach. Moving beyond them introduces uncertainty, which can be difficult to manage at scale.
But without that shift, the upside is limited.
Moving Beyond “Best”
None of this suggests that best practices should be ignored. They still serve an important function. They establish a foundation for what good execution looks like and help teams avoid common mistakes.
The issue arises when they become the endpoint rather than the starting point.
In a market where access to knowledge is no longer a constraint, competitive advantage comes from how that knowledge is applied. It comes from the ability to adapt, to experiment, and to make informed deviations from the norm.
That does not suggest abandoning structure. It means using structure as a guide as opposed to a rule.
It also means rethinking how success is defined.
Efficiency and consistency are valuable, but they are not substitutes for impact. A campaign that follows every best practice and produces average results is still average.
As Emiliani puts it, “Being correct is no longer the same as being effective.”
