Welcome back to Marketing Qualified! Here’s what we’re talking about this week:
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What Japanese philosophy can teach you about B2B marketing. How to find your ikigai.
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Is your ad dying a slow death? The early warning signs.
🧵 What Japanese philosophy can teach you about B2B marketing.
There’s an old Japanese concept called Ikigai. It roughly translates to “a reason for being.” It’s that sweet spot where passion, skill, market demand, and money all align.
It’s found when 4 elements come together:
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What you love
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What you’re good at
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What the world needs
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What you can get paid for
If all four overlap, you’ve found your Ikigai.
Now, this concept is usually talked about in the context of life or career decisions. But it also maps surprisingly well to marketing.
Let’s reframe for B2B marketing teams:
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What you love → The kind of stories or content your team is excited to create.
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What you’re good at → The channels, formats, or strategies where your team consistently performs well.
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What the world needs → The real challenges your buyers are trying to solve.
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What you can get paid for → The offers, messaging, or solutions that fit your business model and drive revenue.
When your marketing hits all four of those? That’s when it lands. That’s when it feels aligned, authentic, and (most importantly) is effective.
But if even one part is off, you feel it, and so does your audience. Say you’re running a campaign that performs but feels like a chore to your team or one that’s fun to make but doesn’t connect to your revenue—no good.
So, how can you find your B2B marketing ikigai? Ask yourself:
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What’s one recent campaign where you felt truly “in the zone”?
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What’s one that fell flat?
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Which of the 4 ikigai boxes did they check? Which were missing?
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Where’s the gap?
📰 In the news this week.
👍 Average engagement rates across 8 social media platforms.
⛹️♀️ Is women’s sports the next big marketing trend?
🔒 Instagram tests lockable posts to enhance engagement.
🧍 How to create a lead generation website.
🔴 5 ways to engage audiences with live event streaming.
😵 Is your ad dying a slow death?
Even your best-performing ad will stop working eventually. It’s annoying, but it’s something marketers have to face.
It won’t be like flipping a switch. It’s more like a slow, invisible leak. And if you’re not paying attention, creative fatigue will quietly tank your performance while you sit there scratching your head about why your CPC doubled.
How to spot problems before they wreck your results.
When performance dips, most marketers do one of three things:
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Change the CTA
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Swap the audience
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Rewrite the hook
But these are all reactive moves.
It’s better to catch creative fatigue before it starts. You can do this by watching out for 3 leading indicators:
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CTR velocity → how quickly is your click-through rate falling?
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CPM vs. CTR relationship → If your CPM is rising while CTR falls, the ad platform is most likely penalizing you.
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Frequency vs. reach → If your frequency is high but reach is flat, you’re annoying the same group of people over and over.
It’s better to hunt for ads on the decline than the ones that are already dead.
Keep or kill?
Before killing or refreshing a creative, run it through these tests:
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Is the ad platform punishing you?
If CPMs are up and CTRs are stuck, then yep.
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Is your audience burned out?
If frequency is 2.5+ but reach has stayed flat, they’re done.
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Would you still click it?
Be honest. Watch the ad. Read the hook. If you’re bored, then your audience definitely is.
😂 Marketing meme of the week.
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