3 Bottlenecks Slowing Down Enterprise Marketing Execution (and How to Solve Them)

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Hot take: most enterprise marketing teams aren’t short on ideas or talent - they’re short on momentum.

If you grew up in the 90s, you know Sonic the Hedgehog - Sega’s little blue rodent famous for being fast. But if you go back and play those classic games, you’ll realize they weren’t just about speed - they were about momentum. Sonic couldn’t blaze through loops from a standstill; he had to build momentum first. Without it, he’d fall or simply never make it through the loop.

We’re not just waxing nostalgic here - this concept applies to enterprise marketing too. Even the most efficient strategies get bogged down by bottlenecks, causing momentum to be lost. Campaigns stall. Pages take weeks. Tests don’t get shipped. Cross-functional work is riddled with friction. Tactics get stuck in approval loops. Once that momentum is lost, execution slows to a crawl - or stops entirely.

So what’s the underlying issue? Infrastructure: Technical, operational, and cultural.

In this article, we’ll break down the three biggest bottlenecks holding enterprise marketing teams back today. We’ll explore what causes them and how to overcome them so your marketing execution can clear those loops at top speed.

Bottleneck #1: Developer dependency for basic marketing tasks

Marketers aren’t developers, nor should they be.

Unfortunately, marketers are often stuck relying on developers for routine tasks: updating landing pages, publishing content, running A/B tests, or even swapping an image. Meanwhile, developers are focused on product work and don’t have time to babysit the CMS.

This all causes marketing to become the bottleneck’s bottleneck and creates a culture of constraint:

Everything becomes a tradeoff
Execution slows down
Creative ambitions shrink

Our metaphorical Sonic is losing all his rings just thinking about it—and he definitely can’t go fast.

It’s a common misconception that this is a people problem, but in reality, it’s a systems problem. When it comes to identifying the root cause, there are a few usual suspects (often multiple at once):

The CMS is built for developers, not marketers

Bloated or fragile content modules

No reusable component system

Lack of autonomy built into tooling

The real bottleneck isn’t that devs don’t want to help - it’s that they shouldn’t have to. Hiring more developers won’t solve the problem either; it just adds coordination overhead. The real fix is to give marketers the autonomy to do their jobs without developer intervention.

Restructure your CMS with marketers in mind

Add modular components, guardrails and intuitive design so marketing can do simple tasks independently - without needing devs.

Introduce reusable design systems to reduce repetitive work

Let marketers easily duplicate past assets to speed up page building and edits.

Build with marketing ownership in mind

Use a headless CMS or composable frontend that cleanly separates the marketing and dev work environments.

Bottleneck #2: Tech debt masquerading as “security” or “stability”

Technical debt often goes overlooked because you can’t always see it.

Tech debt hides behind overengineered content models, fragile release systems, and tribal knowledge.

This lack of visibility means tech debt is rarely prioritized because it’s rarely understood. It can’t be tracked like conversions or CAC, and companies don’t want to burn cycles on work that doesn’t show immediate, trackable value.

The result?

No one owns cleanup - it’s seen as “extra” or “unnecessary” work
Legacy codebases get layered with patches instead of proper refactors
Lack of documentation, versioning and general component governance
Misalignment on who actually owns the marketing site

Marketing teams are told “we can’t make that change because it’ll break something”, “that’s too risky right now” or “we’re replatforming next year anyway”. These barriers become accepted as fact when, in reality, they can be torn down. You just have to put the work in.

You might be wondering what tech debt actually looks like. Many think it's simply bad code, but tech debt can take a number of forms, including:

Bloated codebases with no guardrails

Poorly integrated tools that result in manual work

Marketing/dev hand-offs that rely on Slack threads, favors, and other undocumented processes

No version control or reuse of structured components

And yes, sometimes it’s bad code

Here’s the truth: tech debt kills execution speed. It reduces dev capacity by up to 42% and creates brittle systems where even simple changes cause regressions. Change is impossible when meaningful progress can’t be made.

The Fix

If we’re being blunt, the only fix is to address the root causes of your tech debt.

Of course, we know addressing the root causes of tech debt is easier said than done. But addressing tech debt can increase an organization’s effective development capacity by at least 25%.

And 25% is huge: it means you can deliver more features, faster fixes, and get a clear win in customer satisfaction thanks to your improved quality.

Small fixes can add up to real momentum. Here’s how you can help make incremental progress towards reducing and eventually eliminating your tech debt:

Don’t treat tech debt as a separate ticket

Instead, build cleanup into every project.

Tie cleanup to defects, not idealism

If a marketing task breaks five things, it’s not just tech debt - it’s an obstacle to delivery.

Speak the business’s language:

Translate tech debt into outcomes and KPIs including time-to-market, velocity, brand risk and dev productivity.

Prioritize cross-team trust

This is a people-problem, not just a code one.

Bottleneck #3: Misaligned ownership of the Website

Companies often find themselves going in circles about who actually owns the marketing site.

Does engineering own it for security reasons? Does marketing own it for speed? This tension creates a bottleneck where progress is paralyzed by permissions and philosophical debates.

This issue goes beyond code, front-ends, and back-ends - it’s a value issue.

When companies prioritize speed, trust, and results over gatekeeping and having the “perfect architecture”, velocity improves. Rebuilding the social contract between teams is just as important as rebuilding the stack.

The marketing site is a revenue engine - but it’s often treated as an afterthought, playing second fiddle to product, marketing, and the business itself.

This neglect doesn’t just make impact suffer, it leads to:

Marketing lacking technical staff or tooling

Devs fearing CMS limitations, integrations, and instability

Everyone sprinting in different directions

The focus needs to shift away from an “us versus them” mentality towards building a site that lets everyone do their jobs effectively.

Define clear ownership lines

It’s a marketing site, so marketing should own it with tech input - not the other way around.

Enable, don’t gatekeep

Use composable systems that let marketing move quickly, while still respecting security and infrastructure requirements.

Build bridges

Assign a dev liaison to marketing or use design systems to simplify site changes.

Measure the right thing

Don’t just measure website buzzwords like “security” and “speed” - track cross-functional velocity and team satisfaction.

Speed is a system, not a shortcut

It’s simple: you can’t achieve the speed modern business demands without momentum - and momentum can only be reached by removing the bottlenecks of dev dependency, invisible tech debt, and unclear ownership.

Much like our pal Sonic blazing through Green Hill Zone, you’ll always move faster on a clear path than when you’re stuck leaping over obstacles and bottomless pits.

Want help rebuilding your system for Sonic-speed? LeadPulse helps brands ship faster, market better, and stop fighting their tech stack (and each other). Let’s talk.