Friction: A marketing obstacle? Or strategic data in disguise?

When digital marketers sit down to nut out a 12-month strategy, it’s natural to want to smooth out friction points.

Optimising for algorithm updates. Streamlining funnels. Making customer journeys as frictionless as possible. But what else are your friction points telling you?

Rethink your relationship with resistance. Friction is data in disguise.

What if, instead of seeing friction as an obstacle to overcome or skirt around, you looked for deeper strategic meaning in the friction points you encounter. The places where things catch, rub and stall might just be telling you where your next marketing strategy needs to fundamentally change.

Here are three common examples of friction points that can inform strategy:

• The Vanity Metric Friction Point. It’s when marketing teams are popping champagne over lead volume, but the sales team is drowning their sorrows. It’s a flashing warning light telling you your strategy needs a major shift to focus on lead quality over quantity.
• The Content Bottleneck Friction Point. Finding time to create topical content is hard enough. When it takes days or even weeks to secure sign offs for a 15-second reel, the trend is dead. Maybe it’s time to promote employee advocacy and greater autonomy for content creators.
• The Leaky Bucket Friction Point. If you’ve nailed down your lead acquisition cost, but your customer churn rate is through the roof, something needs to change. How about reallocating some of your budget to customer onboarding and marketing and community-led retention?

The more you interrogate your friction points, the more they tell you. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing at State of Social ’26: Friction.

Because friction is where your next strategy begins. So, if you haven’t already, make the first of many important strategic moves. Grab your All Access ticket 👇