That hides whether your systems are building commitment or compounding loss.
Financial • Reputational • Environmental
35
YEARS EXPERIENCE
7
NATIONAL AWARDS
65K
ACRES PROTECTED
25+
YEAR PARTNERSHIPS
THE PROBLEM
90% of marketing budgets die in the gap between attention and commitment, simply because the bridge was never built.
We get it, attention feels great. You get likes and impressions. People fill your booth and take all your swag... but then what?
That's the question we answer in a profoundly different way than traditional marketers do.
THE RISK
It manifests itself as risk and also consumes reputations and planetary resources that don't belong in a landfill or in our air and water.
Attention is a black hole that feeds on budgets. It feels so good, and it gives the illusion of success. But you can't eat likes, impressions are meaningless unless you can tie them to action, and a busy trade show booth often means nothing unless the people who visit are actually prospects instead of people who like free things.
Every tactic—swag, content, influencers, traditional media, AI—writes a script about your brand. When attention is the goal, that script is rarely the one you intended. Case in point: In an effort to appear relevant on social media, many brands are pushing out AI-generated content at breakneck speed. Now, there is a genuine audience and algorithmic backlash to this practice. Imagine if people now perceive you as someone who has no original thoughts? Read how a cost-saving swag decision lost a customer for life and repositioned a brand.
The materials, energy, and resources deployed to generate attention that never becomes commitment don't disappear. They end up in landfills, strain ecosystems, and reposition your brand in ways you never intended.
Over 35 years, I can count on one hand the number of organizations that invested in functioning engagement, incentive, and commitment systems instead of endlessly spending money on attention traps.
But here's the deeper problem that makes the gap invisible and so much more perilous: most organizations are measuring the wrong metrics.
Everyone is hitting their KPIs. So there is no incentive to change.
Marketing measures attention instead of commitment. Procurement measures cost savings instead of brand risk. And leadership is left holding a budget they can't defend because there is no connective tissue between spending and results.
The board continues to ask harder questions that no one can answer.
What if we could build better marketing systems that bridge the gap between attention and commitment, that increase efficiency, improve outcomes, and cause less harm to the world we all share?
— Dave Betke, Founder,
Do Better Marketing
THE THREE SYSTEM FAILURES
Most leaders feel the dysfunction before they can name it.
No System
PASSIVE RISK
The booth is busy. The campaign ran. And then nothing. The bridge between attention and commitment was never built.
WRONG SYSTEM
ACTIVE RISK
You're using B2C tactics on people making career, mission, or partnership decisions. Your system answers the wrong questions, and the right people walk away.
BROKEN SYSTEM
AGGRESSIVE RISK
Leadership approves more budget. Everyone hits their KPIs. The wrong KPIs hide the dysfunction until the damage is done.
PURPOSE-ECOSYSTEMS™
I see systems as alive, growing and connecting like mycelium, the underground fungal networks that connect entire forests.
Most organizations' engagement and commitment systems are the opposite. Not living networks but collapsed bridges, with no connection between the attention they generate and the commitment they need. No path for others to join them, choose them, or walk alongside them on their mission.
What if people didn't need to be convinced to join you, because the system you'd built made joining feel like the most natural thing in the world?
That's what a Purpose-Ecosystem™ creates. Not a funnel. Not a campaign. A living system where people find themselves in your story, see themselves as heroes rather than targets, and choose to walk alongside you, often in ways you never anticipated and couldn't have designed alone.
WHY THIS APPROACH IS DIFFERENT
While marketers learned to manipulate targets, I studied what makes people trust, engage, and walk alongside you.
That difference shows up in what I focus on. Most organizations optimize for what feels good in the short term. I focus on what they actually need.
Attention feels good immediately. Actions, sales, and hires are what you actually need.
Donations feel like immediate success. What you actually need is to advance your mission.
I diagnose which system failures are costing you outcomes, then design purpose-ecosystems where people aren't manipulated into action, they're invited to join a shared journey to co-create mutual success.
I don't know if this man uses a different part of his brain than other marketing types, but he and his ideas are entirely new and refreshing. Best of all, they work! His small company has pummeled marketing giants in national awards competitions, and for good reason. David combines genuine goodness and humanity with clever, strategic ideas that deliver results."
Michelle Morra-Carlisle
Three Services. One Ecosystem.
Diagnose the dysfunction, redesign the system, deploy strategically. Three services that work as a holistic ecosystem. Each one can be an entry point. All of them connect.
01
You're spending $25K+ annually on tactics, but you can't connect that spend to outcomes. Your team reports activity metrics. Your board asks for business results. The gap widens.
02
Triage reveals what's broken. Purpose-Ecosystem™ Design fixes it by focusing on a singular organizational goal and answering the questions your heroes ask before they commit.
Designed to follow Marketing Triage™ diagnosis.
03
How your organization deploys a $3 item reveals how it deploys a $50,000 budget. Every touchpoint writes a script in people's heads about:
PROVEN RESULTS
—Dave Betke
My approach was born 35 years ago with no marketing budget and a 65,000-acre forest in British Columbia that needed protecting. Since then, fixing systems rather than chasing attention has driven results across every sector I've worked in.
65,000
Acres Protected Forever
West Arm Provincial Park, British Columbia. The origin of the Symbiotic Systems Methodology — still proving itself 35 years later.
3×
Engineers Hired
Created a Purpose-Ecosytem™ for 12 candidates. Hired three. Goal was 1.
6000%
B2B ROI
Within 6 months of launch. Multiple decade's long partnerships.
25 Yrs
Festival Partnership
Edmonton Folk Music Festival. 300% increase in merch sales first year.
7
National Awards
Across B2B, nonprofit, cause marketing, and association work.
IS THIS FOR YOU?
I work with leaders in high-stakes B2B, associations, nonprofits, and public sector environments — changemakers who care deeply about the communities they serve.
"David was driving our staff crazy with 'why' questions. No one else had ever asked them before. The competition brought hats. We hired 3 senior engineers. Our goal was one."
Paul Ruffell, CEO
EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd.
Decade-long partnership: 300 → 1,200 employees
YOU MIGHT KNOW US FROM
A bi-monthly networking event that connects people who are making a difference for others, communities, and our natural world.
GreenMeets isn't a typical networking event. It's a purpose-ecosystem in practice. With 40–60 regular attendees who are highly engaged and heavily connected. It's where real partnerships form, collaborations launch, and solutions to shared challenges get co-created.
The most common questions about Marketing Triage™, Purpose-Ecosystem Design, Dimensional Advertising, and speaking engagements are answered in full on the FAQ page.
Two entry points. One conversation before anything else.
Let's have a strategic planning conversation before you order anything.
5% of success is product choice. The other 95% is planning.
Prefer to reach out directly?
+1 (780) 474 • 6563
Do Better Marketing
(a division of Avatar Brand Management Inc.)
Do Better Marketing diagnoses dysfunctional marketing and communication systems that are addicted to attention and have no functional methods to tie that attention to lasting outcomes. We replace them with Purpose-Ecosystems™ focused on a single organizational goal — where waste becomes mission fuel, commitment replaces attention, and outcomes become predictable. Creator of Marketing Triage™ and the Symbiotic Systems Methodology. Founder of GreenMeets™, a bi-monthly global gathering of sustainability and regenerative practitioners
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