A startup marketer, a mid-sized marketer, and an enterprise CMO walk into a bar. The startup marketer asks if anyone there wants a demo. The mid-sized marketer asks which drink has the highest margin. The enterprise CMO asks whether legal has approved the cocktail names. It is a joke, but not by much.

People still talk about marketing strategy as if it were one universal discipline that simply gets louder as the budget grows. It is not. A marketer inside a startup, a marketer inside a mid-sized company, and a CMO inside a large enterprise may all use the same vocabulary, but they are not solving the same problem. They are not under the same pressure. They are not being judged by the same math. And they are definitely not making decisions inside the same operating reality.

That matters more than most people admit, because much of the marketing advice rests on a lazy assumption: that all companies are playing the same game with different levels of funding. Post more content. Broaden your channel mix. Invest in brand. Improve attribution. Tighten conversion. Fine. But before any of that, there is …