Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
290: Why Is Strategic Marketing More Important Than Daily Posting?
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, host Kendra Corman sits down with marketing strategist and educator Jessie Fernández, who brings 20+ years of experience across traditional and digital media. Together, they dive into the real, behind-the-scenes challenges of doing marketing the right way—strategically and with patience.
Jessie shares her story of evolving from local TV marketing in Honduras to teaching at a college and running her own strategic marketing brand. Their conversation peels back the glossy veneer of social media marketing myths and explores what really works in the modern marketing world.
The Reality of Modern Marketing
- How the flood of “quick-win” tactics on social media has damaged perceptions of what marketing really is
- Why strategy must come before execution—every time
- Why good marketing isn’t fast, easy, or cheap (despite what TikTok says)
- The importance of learning not just what works, but what doesn’t, through experience
Why Strategy Outweighs Tactics
- Why posting daily doesn’t equal success—and what to do instead
- The critical role of identifying the real problem before jumping to solutions
- Why strategy needs time, patience, and a client who’s willing to trust the process
The Unsung Hero: Project Management in Marketing
- How project management skills like setting deadlines and stakeholder coordination are essential for execution
- Why most marketing failures happen during execution—not strategy or planning
- Tools and mindset shifts that help marketing professionals stay organized and deliver results
- Jessie's #1 project management tip: “You set the deadlines, so don’t stress them.”
Key Takeaways for Marketers
- Strategy isn’t rigid—it’s flexible, iterative, and deeply rooted in understanding your audience
- Good marketing is a process of learning, testing, adjusting, and being patient with outcomes
- Execution matters just as much as planning, and both need structure and deadlines
- Give yourself grace—but don’t let it become an excuse
Whether you're a solo entrepreneur, marketing team leader, or agency owner, this episode is a reminder that imperfect marketing is still powerful—when it’s strategic, intentional, and adaptable.
Connect with Jessie Fernandez:
Website: https://jessiefernandez.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soyjessiefernandez/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soyjessiefernandez/
🎧 Ready to ditch the marketing myths and learn how to build something that works? Tune in to hear Jessie’s insights and refresh your mindset on how real marketing success happens.
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science, and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Korman, and today I am really excited because we're going to be talking about strategic marketing, which is a huge passion of mine, and I am joined today with Jesse Fernandez. Thank you so much for joining me. I am super excited to be talking about this today.
Speaker 2:Hello Kendra, thank you so much for this space and for being able to share one of my passions with your audience, and I think this is going to be a very impactful episode for everyone.
Speaker 1:How did you get into marketing strategy?
Speaker 2:Oh, well, there's a big story about it. So, first of all, as you said, my name is Jessie. I've been working in marketing for the last 20 years and well, I, technically I lived all the transition from traditional media to digital media, so marketing has grown with me as a professional and as a person. I did started working on traditional media on a local TV station here where I live. I'm based in Honduras, in Central America, so, if you like really hot weather, this is the country of the beaches and the sand and everything that comes with it. So I started with traditional media, working on developing and executing marketing strategies, not just for the television station, but for each program by itself. Then the transition to digital started and I moved to sales. I work in sales with Forbes magazine, the Central American part of it. So that was a great experience, and afterwards I moved to digital marketing.
Speaker 2:So I've been shifting a lot as marketing itself has changed, and this has made me a better person and a better marketer. And it's not just what you learn but what you teach, and I love sharing what I've learned with the new generations so they don't have to live what I live, and I've been teaching at a local college for the past seven years and for the last year, I've been on my own. I have my own I don't know if to call it a boutique agency or just my own brand but very focused on strategic marketing for local and international brands. And as marketing continues to evolve, I continue to evolve with it. I continue learning and getting new skills, and that's what has taken me to the place I am right now.
Speaker 1:That's great, yeah. So I came up through traditional media myself and was there. I still remember when Facebook came out and we were advertising on it and I was the Jeep advertising manager, we had to find somebody who had a college student to see our ads, because we couldn't log into Facebook without a university email. So, just yeah, I remember the fun times that we had back in the day, very cool.
Speaker 2:I do teach that digital marketing course and when we start social media, I have a screenshot of my own Facebook page but it still says the Facebook, I think. But the interface is completely different and they're like in chalk, like computers supported that. I mean, yes, computers did support that, so, yeah, it's very interesting.
Speaker 1:That's so funny. Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, there's so many things that we could go down that rabbit hole on, but let's, let's, let's go ahead and let's talk about. So actually, I was in a networking meeting last week and somebody had said you know, what'd be really great is if you explain to people why marketing is important, because now that I understand it's important, I'm doing better marketing. And I'm like how do you deal with clients that don't understand marketing itself, let alone why it's important?
Speaker 2:Oh well, that's my day to day basic. I think that the reality right now is that, because of our cell phones and all this information that we have access to, we can see a TikTok, a Reel, hear an influencer and we make our minds of what marketing is based on that Right. So marketing, unfortunately, is the profession where everyone has an opinion. But not everyone has really studied marketing and how it works and there are a lot of people out there selling marketing that doesn't work. So when these companies, when they see this influencer, this TikTok video, and they start working with them or implementing that and that doesn't work, it's not the fault of the person that sold them that service, it's marketing's fault. So here they will need to open up to learn to do marketing the right way and the strategic way to do it.
Speaker 2:And that's a challenge for us. In this field and as information-based social media keeps growing and evolving and we're getting more access, it's getting a little bit more complicated, but it's in our hands to really do marketing the way that it needs to do. That. It's strategically, because anyone can make a reel, can make a post, can even set up ads, but if you don't have the strategy behind it. That's not going to work for you, so that's where we come in.
Speaker 1:What did I say? I posted not too long ago on LinkedIn and I was like posting on social media every day does not equal a strategy.
Speaker 2:And I've been there myself, because there's something about strategy that, yes, you need to plan, but those plans can bend depending on what's happening, and there's a part of marketing where you need to try. Where you need to try, I did have my face on LinkedIn where I posted every single day, but then something click and this is not working. So we go back to the strategy, we change the strategy, we implement it and now we're starting to see results. But I needed to step on that stone first to realize that. So that's another thing that companies need to learn that marketing, I mean, it's not straight if we can say it's not like written on stone or something that it's really flexible and you need to try new things to get to know what works for you.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's important, Like, what works for one person isn't going to work for another, and there's a multitude of reasons for it. Even if you're targeting the same people or the same kind of people, there's a personality difference or a branding difference, because we're not all the right fit for everybody, right, and so you might be targeting the same, we'll say, type of person as I am, but there's's gonna be different people that are drawn to the content that you provide versus mine. Maybe, you know, mine are on LinkedIn and yours are on Instagram, or you know. Again, it's just, it's an. It's very interesting because, while we like to make some generalizations within the world of marketing, it's not a perfect science. I mean, that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because it does.
Speaker 1:You have to adjust, you have to take a look at things, you have to you know, read the room, for lack of a better phrase in terms of, like, what's going on in the world and what's going on on social media and all of these different things to be able to adjust what you're doing. Now, the thing that I struggle with when working with some clients is that they love to go straight to the tactics. I want to post more on LinkedIn. I want to do more speaking gigs, whatever that tactic happens to be. That's where they hone in on when that may not be the right even tactic, because they haven't taken the time to set the strategy, but they feel like setting a strategy is a waste of time. What do you say to those people?
Speaker 2:The first thing that I tell my clients is that if they want to work with me, they need to have patience and they need to go into the process, because marketing is a process. Yes, we do have money, we have investment. I do have my fee process because marketing is a process. Yes, we do have money, we have investment. I do have my fee, but it's a process. So you need to walk with me grabbing my hand. Are you willing to do this client to see if we are a fit right? And then I always tell my students that clients will come to you with a problem they think they have, but when you take your time to study the client, that's not their problem. They have other problems. Or maybe that's the problem, but not the correct way to execute it. And I know where that tactic or execution comes from. Right, everyone wants to sell, everyone wants to grow, but they need to focus some time on the strategy, because I have learned with my own clients through my experience, that it works when you set up the basis, even the way you execute in the end and the results that come with it. They're better when you have a good strategy. And marketing is not magic. It's not that I'm going to start executing a strategy right now and I'm going to sell all my stock in two weeks. That doesn't happen. You need to be consistent. So you need to have a marketing manager that really handles these skills and really walks you through it.
Speaker 2:And again we come to the beginning. All this information out there in social media makes you think that marketing is fast, that marketing is simple, that marketing is cheap. But in the end it's not that way. It's not simple, it's really hard. End. It's not that way. It's not simple, it's really hard and it's not cheap. And you need to study, and you mentioned that a couple of minutes ago. In marketing you need to study your client. You need to study your client's client, the market, and it will take you minimum a month before giving strategy. But sometimes some marketers don't like to study and some clients don't see that time as valuable. But here's when it comes, like finding your perfect match as a client and the client opening a little bit up to trust the person that's handling their marketing.
Speaker 1:I think that there's a lot in that. So, yes, you have to be patient, you have to take the time. What I really loved is how you were talking about yes, the social media makes it feel like marketing is easy, that anybody can do it, and I do believe that a lot of people are very capable of doing it right. I mean, it's not, you don't need a marketing degree necessarily to do it, but you do need some experience in dealing with clients and writing and things like that. I was on TikTok. I'm going to say late 2024. And somehow I got into this. Like that kept showing up on my page all of these ads for these people that were like you can build a $10,000 a month digital online business. You know, just ask chat GPT and it will create something for you that you can start selling and you're going to make millions. And I'm like no, that's not how this works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not how it works. And it's again this information that everything is simple and we don't like to give that extra step right. And the thing is that with marketing plans let's be real anyone can make you a marketing plan right. I mean, the deck can have everything, you can sell it. But the execution part if you don't have a strategy, your execution is not going to work. And it's in the execution part that most marketers and companies fail. They don't know where to start. They have never worked with deadlines, they have never worked in project management. So those are things that need to change in order to make marketing better.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about that. You said that they've never worked in project management. Talk to me a little bit about the role you feel that project management or that skill plays in marketing.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the most important skills. Sometimes in project management you create the strategy and that makes it flow a little better. Other times, someone else creates the strategy and you just execute. But the problem with execution is that you need to handle a lot of pieces at the same time and there are people out there that they haven't had the opportunity to learn to project manage, to learn to work with deadlines, to learn to negotiate with vendors. I know people that they don't even know how to call a vendor to ask for pricing and I'm like dude, but that's basic, I mean, and that's a skill that helps you in life and helps you in marketing. I think that my years in project management did really shape the marketer that I am right now and made me look into marketing planning differently, Because now I plan thinking on the execution, not planning just for planning.
Speaker 1:So I use Asana. That's my project management tool. I have templates for onboarding new clients and for projects and different types of campaigns. The podcast has certain templates and things like that, because, yeah, you're managing multiple steps, multiple projects, multiple pieces, and some of them are dependent on one being done before another can start right. So I was a couple minutes late for our recording because I was out changing a sign for a client, because I have to change all of their signs and all of their, their website and everything all within the next, like you know, four to six hours, because everything has to to happen at the same time Right For for the campaign. And so I think there's a lot to be said for project management. What's one of your best project management tips?
Speaker 2:for someone that might be struggling with that a little bit, oh yeah, this is something that someone told me in the last two years. That continues to resonate with me is that you set the deadlines so you have control of your project management.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so good.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's really good and that has. That sticks with me every single day with every project that I manage. Why am I going to stress, if I am setting the deadline? And then I read something, something else I think it was on LinkedIn that it's not that you don't have time, you don't have a deadline. So that's like the second part of the quote.
Speaker 2:So everything that we need to do, even in planning, because the deadlines start in the planning phase and some clients have never worked with deadlines. They One of my last clients. I was helping them set up their marketing team and make them work more efficiently and the problem was that they have never worked with deadlines, they've never worked with agendas before a call, they've never sent emails after a call. So they just didn't know what to do after. I mean, they had work, but they don't know how to project, manage all the work. And then they say, oh, marketing doesn't work. I mean that's not that. True, you need to start like organizing yourself. But yeah, it's very, very scary when you look at the reality that's over there.
Speaker 1:Well and I really like you, know what you said you set your deadlines right and don't stress. So one of the things that I am notoriously horrible at is I I have a tendency to stress because I did set the deadline and I usually set it too quickly because I do want things to move for my clients and stuff like that. But I think you need to take a step back, look what's reasonable, look what's the right thing to do and then set the deadline. That way. I've been setting longer deadlines recently for several projects. I've been pushing out several meetings saying, okay, I can do this in two weeks, those types of initiatives and that's really taken a lot of the pressure off and I'm able to do better work too when it's not rushed or compressed on an unrealistic timeline. So I think that that tip about project management is a huge, huge skill to get in marketing is a huge, huge skill to get in marketing.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you need to hear your team when you set the deadlines, you need to hear your team and you need to know their capabilities as well. And something very important, even with deadlines and with planning, is that marketing in companies moves very fast. Things are for yesterday. You're just telling me that you need something changed in the next six hours. So, yes, we do plan, we use a strategy, but we move really fast. So, as marketers are people that are always busy, are always thinking ahead, and sometimes the client doesn't think ahead. They just think on this moment, because I want to sell right now, I want to do this right now, but what happens after now? So, yes, I mean being a marketer right now. It is challenging, but it's the best career in the world. I wouldn't change it for anything.
Speaker 1:I'm with you on that 100 percent. So this has been an awesome conversation, I truly believe. I love how we talked about people blaming marketing for things that aren't marketing's fault right. So definitely that marketing is not as fast and as easy as social media makes it look like. Right. Posting on social media is not going to just automatically bring you in a ton of business. You need to create a strategy and then project manage the initiatives that come from that strategy, especially with measurement, right, because marketing can be flexible to a point where you do have to iterate and experiment and try different things out. So very, very cool. I have loved our conversation, but there is a question that I ask all of my guests. That is that this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because, as we know and as we just discussed, marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, kendra, thanks again for having me here. This has been a very meaningful conversation. Oh wow, marketing is imperfect, but I am also imperfect, but I think that the greatest lesson that marketing has given me is to be patient Be patient with the processes, be patient with the client, be patient with the vendors, because there was a time in my career that I did things like really fast, but that doesn't take you anywhere. So you need to be more patient with yourself, give yourself some grace and also support yourself. I mean, you know you have everything to succeed, so also be patient in that part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so great. Patience is something that I think a lot of marketers do not have enough of, and definitely, giving themselves grace is definitely something that I find marketers either have not enough of or way too much of, and they miss deadlines right. So there's got to be a happy medium and I think that having that patience and giving yourself that grace is really important as you work through marketing because, again, it's not perfect. We're not perfect, as you said, and it's really about figuring out what's going to be right or what is going to provide the best outcome that's going to help drive your strategy forward.
Speaker 1:This has again been an awesome conversation, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, jesse, for joining me. For those of you listening and watching, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. If you learned something and I really hope that you did, because I have enjoyed our conversation do me a favor and rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. That really helps us out. Until next time, have a great rest of your day.
