Diversified Marketing Engine
Stack multiple growth engines so no single channel determines your trajectory.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 98%
The Diversified Marketing Engine treats distribution as a portfolio rather than a single winning tactic. A company first maps its established demand engine, then anticipates where audience behavior and platform economics are moving. It gradually redirects time, talent, and money into complementary engines such as freemium products, newsletters, podcasts, creators, communities, and YouTube. Each engine is expected to produce measurable demand, but investments are judged over an appropriate time horizon because influence channels compound more slowly than performance marketing. The goal is not to prevent every channel decline. It is to stack enough independent sources of growth that gains elsewhere outweigh losses, preserving healthy portfolio-level demand even when a formerly dominant channel deteriorates.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain, where the hosts explain how HubSpot began diversifying beyond its blog years before search traffic declined.
Core principles
- 01Every successful channel eventually matures or declines.
- 02New growth engines require investment before the incumbent channel fails.
- 03Owned media compounds influence across the customer journey.
- 04Portfolio-level growth matters more than any isolated traffic chart.
- 05Each engine should contribute measurable demand rather than vanity metrics.
How to run it
- 1
Audit the Current Engine
List the channels that generate traffic, demand, customers, and revenue. Identify how much growth depends on the strongest channel.
Pro tip Separate genuine customer creation from surface metrics such as visits or impressions.
Watch out Do not mistake a large audience for a resilient distribution system.
- 2
Form a Future Thesis
Study changes in audience behavior, content formats, technology, and platform economics. State where influence and demand are likely to migrate over the next three to five years.
Pro tip Look for structural shifts before they become obvious in current performance data.
Watch out A thesis should guide investment without pretending that every disruption can be predicted.
- 3
Choose Complementary Engines
Select channels that reach the audience in different contexts and reduce dependence on the incumbent engine. Favor assets that can compound, such as owned media, communities, products, or creator relationships.
Pro tip Choose engines that reinforce one another rather than creating disconnected campaigns.
Watch out Adding many small channels without strategic fit creates complexity, not diversification.
- 4
Acquire the Missing Capability
Decide whether to build expertise internally, hire experienced operators, or acquire a team and existing assets. Match the approach to the speed and difficulty of the opportunity.
Pro tip Acquiring experienced talent can compress years of capability building into months.
Watch out Buying an audience without retaining the people and operating knowledge behind it may destroy its value.
- 5
Fund the Transition Early
Move time and money into the new engines while the original channel is still productive. Give slower influence channels enough time to develop formats, audiences, and operating systems.
Pro tip Use the incumbent engine's cash flow and reach to seed emerging channels.
Watch out Waiting for the dominant channel to collapse removes the resources and time needed for a smooth transition.
- 6
Measure Portfolio Demand
Track demand, customers, acquisition economics, and branded influence across the complete distribution system. Accept losses in one engine when stronger gains elsewhere produce healthy net growth.
Pro tip Use different leading indicators for each channel while preserving shared revenue-level outcomes.
Watch out Do not evaluate long-term influence investments solely by short-term performance-marketing standards.
In the wild
HubSpot anticipated that informational search would not sustain the same growth indefinitely. It acquired The Hustle, expanded My First Million, launched a podcast network and creator program, strengthened YouTube, and continued investing in freemium distribution. When English-language blog traffic later declined, these newer engines were already generating substantial demand and brand awareness.
→ HubSpot reduced the business impact of blog-traffic losses by building several additional sources of influence and demand.
A SaaS company that depends heavily on paid search notices rising acquisition costs. It develops a certification program, a practitioner community, and a weekly expert video series while paid search remains profitable. Over time, graduates recommend the product, community discussions surface in search and AI answers, and videos create direct and assisted demand.
→ The company gains durable distribution channels that reduce its exposure to paid-media inflation.
Common mistakes
Squeezing One Play Forever
Teams keep iterating on the original winning channel after its available market has flattened, leaving no replacement engine when performance falls.
Expecting Immediate Attribution
Influence channels are abandoned because they do not show the same short-term return profile as performance marketing, even though their value compounds over time.
Confusing Activity With Diversification
Launching disconnected campaigns across many channels adds workload without creating independent, measurable sources of demand.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for established businesses that have one strong acquisition channel and need resilient, scalable growth.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for very early businesses that have not yet made one acquisition channel work reliably.
From the transcript
“what your job is is to add multiple Little Engines”
“the same thing happens in marketing you have to have a diversified approach”
“have a clear perspective about the future then shift time and money over over a long period of time into new areas of investment in…”
From the episode
Did HubSpot Lose 80% of Blog Traffic? Here’s What Actually Happened