The Case for More Helpful Marketing

By Sam Holmes, Head of Marketing

Rethinking What Marketing Should Feel Like

The more time I spend in marketing, the more I find myself looking outside of it for inspiration. As a B2B marketer, this usually involves taking inspiration from cutting-edge B2C brands and forward-thinking B2B ones. But lately, I’ve been thinking less about campaigns to take creativity from and more about service. Not customer service in the traditional sense, but broader. The kind of attentiveness, timing, and care that great service providers get right instinctively. Like Apple’s Genius Bar, or a Michelin-starred restaurant where you feel seen, heard, and appreciated. So, I’ve started asking myself: what if the best marketing didn’t feel like marketing at all and instead felt more like service?

It’s a question that’s contributing to how I think about our own marketing strategy at Force24. Outside of the obvious funnel and commercial objectives, marketing should be helpful – it should make people’s lives easier, their decisions simpler, and their experiences better. But somewhere along the way, we became obsessed with reach and frequency, KPIs, and funnel stages. We built automation journeys that push messages, instead of nurturing moments. And that’s a mindset I’m actively trying to move to.

Moving from campaigns to conversations

When I look at what makes great service, it’s not about shouting the loudest. It’s about noticing, anticipating, and responding, making someone feel you’re on the same page as them. And when you apply that to marketing, the shift is subtle but great. When you ask your marketing team for examples of good campaigns they’ve received or will receive soon, it’s usually examples like these. Put simply, you stop asking, “What can we send next?” and start asking, “What would be most useful right now?”

That might sound idealistic, but I genuinely believe it’s where marketing is headed. Especially with the tools we have today. Automation, when done right, isn’t about mass delivery. It’s about timely relevance and the ability to act ‘in the moment’. To trigger a follow-up when someone lingers on a product page or to switch tactics when a contact is unengaged. Having these behaviors kept live and moving in a unified database allows you to reframe your messaging when someone’s needs have clearly changed. And crucially, to do all this with a human tone and an empathetic mindset.

Service in the Details

I’ve been trying to build this into our own approach at Force24. It’s not about huge changes but more about the small decisions we make every day. Do we send that reminder email at a convenient time for us, or a helpful time for them? Do we write our copy with personality, or do we stick to safe and generic? Are we rewarding attention with relevance, or just adding to the noise?

One thing I’ve found helpful is thinking in terms of moments and not messages. A message is what we send – a moment is what they feel. Great examples of lifecycle marketing happen when those two things align. It’s the welcome email that actually helps someone get started, or the retargeting ad that reminds you of something you genuinely wanted. It’s the re-engagement campaign that doesn’t beg for attention but offers a shortcut to something better.

Smarter, Not Louder

This isn’t about stripping everything back. In fact, I think marketing has more power than ever. We just need to use that power with more care. The platforms are sophisticated. The data is rich. The automation capabilities are incredibly advanced. But if we use all that just to hit send faster, we’re missing the point. The opportunity lies in thinking smarter, not just scaling harder.

A service-led mindset also opens up new questions. If someone unsubscribes, is that a dead end or a signal to adapt? If someone converts, is that the end of their journey or the start of a new one? If we’re automating a journey, how do we make it feel like a conversation, not a flowchart?

Walk in your audience’s shoes

I’ve started putting myself in the shoes of the recipient more often. Not just in theory, but in practice. What would this email feel like to me on a busy Wednesday morning? What would this subject line look like sandwiched between five others in my inbox? Would I feel nudged, helped, or harassed?

Because ultimately, service-led marketing is about empathy. It’s about recognising that every contact is a person with pressures, distractions, and expectations. And if we can deliver something that cuts through that with clarity, helpfulness, and warmth, we’ve done more than market – we’ve hopefully earned trust.

A mindset to aim for

This is still a work in progress. I don’t think there’s a finish line here. It can be a way in which we begin to work, the way we plan, and the way we measure success. Not just opens and clicks, but signs of value throughout the evolving customer lifecycle. These should be signs that we’ve made someone’s day easier, faster, or reassured them about a decision they want to make or have already made.

So, if your next campaign isn’t delivering the numbers you’d hoped for, or if your automations are ticking along but not really resonating, try changing the frame. Ask yourself what this would look like if it were a service. What does helpful look like here? What does timing mean in this context? What would make this feel less like marketing and more like a brand that actually gets it?

People don’t want to be marketed to; they want to be understood and helped. And the brands that do that consistently don’t just win attention, they win loyalty. That’s what I’m aiming for. Not perfect campaigns, but marketing that shows up in the right way and serves.