Welcome back to Marketing Qualified! Here’s what we’re talking about this week:

• The Law of Distribution Arbitrage. Things work… until they don’t. What you should do about it.

• Marketing in a nutshell. The cleanest summary we’ve seen in a while.

📉 The Law of Distribution Arbitrage

Every marketing channel has a honeymoon phase. Low competition. Cheap reach. Obvious wins.

Things work… until they don’t.

The playbook spreads. Everyone copies it. Costs rise. Attention fragments. Results flatten.

This is called The Law of Distribution Arbitrage.

You’re probably familiar with the concept, even if you haven’t heard a name for it.

The pattern is always the same. Only the channel changes.

• Organic social worked… until algorithms tightened.

• SEO worked… until every SERP turned into a knife fight.

• Cold email worked… until inbox trust collapsed.

• Paid ads worked… until cheap traffic disappeared.

None of these channels are “dead.” They’re just significantly less forgiving.

Here’s the mistake marketing teams make:

They treat distribution like infrastructure.

Pick a channel, invest heavily, optimize forever.

But marketing teams that keep winning recognize the truth:

When a channel is working like gangbusters, it’s a temporary advantage.

Which leads to a better operating rule:

Your job isn’t to perfect old channels. It’s to discover arbitrage opportunities on new ones.

Practically, that means:

• Treat new channels like experiments, not bets.

• Set exit criteria before results flatten.

• Expect diminishing returns as a rule, not a surprise.

• Always run one distribution motion that feels a little premature.

If your entire growth plan depends on a channel that’s already mature, you’re competing on pure execution.

And pure execution is expensive and hard.

📰  In the news this week.

📺  Ready or not, AI-generated ads are coming to your TV.

💬  Tips for brands looking to build engagement on Reddit.

🟰  Google says optimization for AI search is ‘the same’ as doing SEO for traditional search.

🔗 Meta is considering charging business pages to post links.

👀  Why lawyers buy so many billboards?

🥜 Marketing in a nutshell

If you’ve ever struggled to explain what good marketing actually does, this is the cleanest summary we’ve seen in a while.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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