There's something about Friday nights in Texas that the rest of the country doesn't quite understand.

Under those stadium lights, with 10,000 fans packed into bleachers, you're watching more than a football game. You're watching strategy unfold in real time. Adjustments. Audibles. Calculated risks that either end in touchdowns or teach hard lessons.

After 25+ years in digital marketing—and plenty of Friday nights watching my son play for the Allen Eagles—I've realized the parallels between football and digital advertising aren't just convenient metaphors. They're fundamental truths about how winning actually works.

Whether you're calling plays from the sideline or running campaigns from a marketing dashboard, the principles are the same. Here's what Texas football taught me about digital advertising.

Every coach walks into Friday night with a game plan. Hours of film study. Tendencies mapped out. Plays designed to exploit specific weaknesses. And then the first quarter happens. The defensive end is faster than expected. The safety is cheating toward the run. The play-action that worked in practice gets blown up twice in a row.

This is exactly what happens when you launch a digital campaign. You've done your research. You know your audience. Your creative is solid, your targeting is dialed in, and your budget is allocated based on sound reasoning. Then reality shows up. The audience segment you prioritized doesn't convert. Your best-performing ad from last quarter falls flat. The landing page that tested well suddenly has a 70% bounce rate.

Here's what separates good marketers from great ones: the willingness to adjust at halftime. Bad coaches stick to the game plan because they spent too much time on it. Bad marketers do the same thing with campaigns. They're so invested in the original strategy that they ignore what the data is screaming at them.

Great coaches—and great fractional CMOs—walk into halftime, look at what's actually happening, and make changes. Not random changes. Strategic adjustments based on what the first half revealed.

In digital advertising, this means shifting budget away from underperforming channels within the first week, not the first month. It means testing new creative variations when early engagement metrics look weak. It means adjusting audience targeting based on who's actually converting, not who you assumed would convert. The game plan matters. But your ability to adapt matters more.

Here's something casual football fans miss: the flashy plays—the 60-yard touchdown passes, the highlight-reel catches—only happen because five guys up front did their job. The offensive line doesn't get the glory. They don't show up on SportsCenter. But without them, your quarterback is on his back and your running game goes nowhere.

Digital advertising has its own offensive line, and most businesses ignore it completely. Your offensive line is your infrastructure. It's the boring stuff: website speed and performance, conversion tracking that actually works, landing pages that load properly on mobile, forms that don't break, analytics configured correctly, and CRM systems that capture and nurture leads.

I've seen companies pour $50,000 into paid media while their website takes 8 seconds to load on mobile. That's like investing in a star quarterback while your offensive line can't block a middle school defense.

Before you spend another dollar on advertising, ask yourself: Is my offensive line ready? Can your website handle the traffic you're about to send it? Is your tracking set up so you'll actually know what's working? Do you have a system to follow up with leads within minutes, not days? If the answer to any of these is "no" or "I'm not sure," you're about to waste money. Shore up the line first. Then throw the ball.

The best teams don't just play hard on Friday night. They spend hours during the week studying film. They're watching their own performance, finding mistakes, identifying patterns. They're watching opponents, looking for tendencies, spotting weaknesses to exploit. Film study is boring. It's tedious. Nobody wants to sit in a dark room watching the same play twelve times. But it's where games are won.

In digital advertising, your "film" is your data. Google Analytics. Google Search Console. Heatmaps and session recordings. Conversion path analysis. Attribution reports. Competitive analysis tools.

Most businesses glance at their data. They check top-line metrics—traffic, conversions, revenue—and move on. That's like a coach watching the final score and skipping the film session. The insights that actually move the needle are buried in the details.

Which pages do people visit before they convert? Where exactly do they drop off in the funnel? What search terms are driving qualified traffic versus tire-kickers? How do conversion rates differ by device, by time of day, by traffic source? What are your competitors doing that you're not?

This is the work that most companies don't do because it takes time and expertise. But it's the difference between running plays and running the right plays. When I work with clients as a fractional CMO, film study is the first thing we do. Before we change anything, we need to understand what's actually happening. The data tells a story. Most businesses never take the time to read it.

In football, special teams is the third phase of the game. Kickoffs. Punts. Field goals. It's not as glamorous as offense or defense, but it can swing a game by 14 points or more. Teams that neglect special teams—that treat it as an afterthought—give away easy points and field position all season long.

Digital advertising has its own special teams: the channels and tactics that don't fit neatly into "paid" or "organic" but can dramatically impact results. Your special teams includes email marketing and automation, retargeting and remarketing, review management and reputation, conversion rate optimization, referral programs, and local SEO and Google Business Profile.

These aren't the headline strategies. Nobody brags about their email nurture sequence at marketing conferences. But they're often where the real ROI lives. Consider retargeting. Someone visits your website, doesn't convert, and leaves. Without retargeting, they're gone—probably forever. With retargeting, you can stay in front of them for weeks, bringing them back when they're ready to buy. It's not sexy, but it works.

Or take conversion rate optimization. A 10% improvement in conversion rate does the same thing as a 10% increase in traffic—but it's often easier and cheaper to achieve. That's special teams math: small improvements that compound into significant results. Don't neglect special teams. The boring stuff often matters most.

In football, the scoreboard is the ultimate truth. You either won or you lost. No amount of excuses changes that. But smart coaches know the scoreboard doesn't tell the whole story. You can win a game while playing poorly. You can lose a game while doing almost everything right. The process matters as much as the outcome, because the process predicts future outcomes.

In digital advertising, revenue is the scoreboard. It's the number that matters most. But if you only look at revenue, you're missing critical context.

Here's what I mean: Imagine a campaign that generates $100,000 in revenue. Looks great on the scoreboard. But when you dig deeper, 80% of that revenue came from one customer who found you through a referral, not your ads. Your cost per acquisition is 40% higher than last quarter. Your lead quality has dropped significantly. Your best sales rep closed most of those deals, and she just gave notice.

The scoreboard says you won. But the underlying metrics say trouble is coming. This is why dashboards matter. Not vanity dashboards that only show the numbers that make you feel good—real dashboards that show leading indicators alongside outcomes.

Track the metrics that predict future success: lead quality scores, not just lead volume; customer acquisition cost trends over time; conversion rates at each stage of the funnel; customer lifetime value by acquisition source; and pipeline velocity and sales cycle length. When the scoreboard looks good, dig into why. When it looks bad, dig into why. The story behind the numbers is where the insights live.

In football, every player on every play has a specific assignment. The left tackle blocks the defensive end. The tight end runs a seam route. The running back checks for the blitz before releasing into his route. When everyone executes their assignment, the play works. When one person misses theirs, the whole thing falls apart.

Digital advertising campaigns work the same way. A successful campaign isn't just a great ad. It's a coordinated system where every element executes its assignment. The ad catches attention and generates the click. The landing page delivers on the ad's promise and guides the visitor toward action. The form or checkout makes it easy to convert without friction. The confirmation sets expectations and builds confidence. The follow-up nurtures the relationship and drives next steps. The sales team closes the deal professionally and quickly.

When one element misses its assignment, the whole play breaks down. You can have the best ad in the world, but if your landing page is confusing, you're wasting money. Your landing page can be perfect, but if your sales team takes three days to follow up, you're losing deals.

This is why I take a holistic view with clients. It's not enough to optimize one piece of the system. You need to make sure every player knows their assignment—and executes it.

The best football programs don't just focus on this season. They're constantly recruiting, building relationships with talent that won't be on the field for years. Why? Because they know that sustained success requires a pipeline. The star running back graduates. The all-state linebacker moves on. If you haven't been developing the next wave, you're in trouble.

For businesses, "recruiting" is brand building and audience development. Too many companies focus exclusively on bottom-of-funnel, direct-response marketing. They want leads now, sales now, revenue now. And that's important—you need to convert today's opportunities. But if that's all you're doing, you're depleting your pipeline without refilling it.

Brand building is your recruiting. It's the work you do today that creates demand tomorrow: content marketing that establishes authority, social media presence that builds familiarity, thought leadership that earns trust, community involvement that creates goodwill, and PR and earned media that expand awareness.

These activities don't convert immediately. But they fill the top of your funnel with people who already know and trust you. When they're ready to buy, you're the first call—not a cold Google search. The best marketing strategies balance both: aggressive conversion tactics for today's revenue and consistent brand building for tomorrow's pipeline. Ignore either one, and you'll pay for it eventually.

Here's a truth that casual fans don't want to hear: talent doesn't win championships. Coaching does. Every year, teams loaded with five-star recruits underperform. Every year, teams with less raw talent overachieve because they're better coached, better prepared, and more disciplined.

Great coaches take average players and make them good. They take good players and make them great. They build systems that maximize what they have instead of wishing for what they don't.

This is exactly what a fractional CMO does for growing businesses. You might not have the budget of your Fortune 500 competitors. You might not have a full marketing department. You might not have the luxury of making expensive mistakes while you figure things out. What you can have is strategic leadership that helps you punch above your weight.

The right marketing leadership prioritizes the channels that actually move the needle for your business, avoids the shiny-object syndrome that wastes limited budgets, builds systems that scale as you grow, develops your team's capabilities over time, and keeps you focused on the metrics that matter.

You don't need a $300,000/year CMO to get this. You need someone who's been in the game long enough to know what works—and what doesn't—and can apply that experience to your situation. That's the fractional CMO model: championship-level coaching without the championship-level price tag.

The best football programs aren't built in a single season. They're built over years of consistent recruiting, player development, and system refinement. The programs that win year after year—the Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Mater Deis—didn't get there overnight.

Digital advertising success works the same way. The businesses that consistently outperform their competition aren't running one brilliant campaign. They're executing a long-term strategy with discipline and patience: building brand equity over time, compounding SEO gains quarter after quarter, developing deeper customer relationships, refining their systems based on continuous learning, and investing in capabilities that pay dividends for years.

Quick wins matter. You need to generate revenue today. But if you're only optimizing for the short term, you're never building the foundation for sustained success. The best marketing strategies do both: capture today's opportunities while building tomorrow's advantages. That's how you win—not just once, but consistently.

In football, the clock is always running. You can't get those seconds back. Every play counts, and the game doesn't wait for you to figure things out. Same goes for your market. Your competitors aren't standing still. Your customers' expectations are evolving. The channels that work today won't work forever.

The time to get your marketing strategy right isn't next quarter. It's now.

If you're a growing business that needs senior marketing leadership without the full-time cost, let's talk. That's exactly what I do at TexasCMO—bring fractional CMO expertise to businesses ready to compete at a higher level.

Because the clock is running. And the best time to start winning was yesterday. The second-best time is today.