Post by Mohammad Dayem A.

For your 2025 Marketing Plan: STOP thinking in channels. & START thinking in networks. For years, marketers have planned their campaigns by obsessing over channels. Email marketing, paid ads, social media, direct mail—these have been considered the main ways to connect with buyers. But are they really? The truth is that channels are simply communication tools. And these days, each is flooded with noise and endless attention-grabbers. What truly matters now is who’s delivering the message. The MESSENGERS. Because we’re no longer in the Industrial or Manufacturing Age. We’re past the Information Era of the 80s–early 2000s, when computers and data first reshaped how we exchanged knowledge. We even moved beyond the Experience Economy, which emphasized user experiences and brand storytelling. Today, we’ve arrived at the Relationship Economy, where building genuine human connections is the last true competitive advantage. Look at real estate development—especially high-rise projects. There’s a multiplier effect when you tie together retail brands, office tenants, and investors. Each of these groups brings its own network of relationships, far more impactful than a single “channel” could ever be. In other words, networks behave differently. A network is multi-dimensional—like a web of interlinked people, brands, and places. Think of LinkedIn: it’s not just a channel, it’s an enormous collection of networks, each individual representing their own slice of influence. The same principle applies to your tenants, your retail partners, your investors, and your extended media contacts. They’re all potential catalysts for growth. It’s why PR-based, owned-audience-based, and relationship-based leads tend to be the most potent. They’re fueled by trust. And since we’re in a Relationship Economy, the big puzzle is: How do we scale these relationships? How do we manage the countless interactions that build (and sustain) them? The first step? Creating a “network map” (or ecosystem map) of your world. Identify every person, brand, place, and platform you can engage with to meet your ideal audience or client. Gauge the potential reach of each “node” in your network, and sketch out how they interconnect. Then, prioritize. Who can help with introductions? Who could co-brand with you, or even share direct leads? Channel thinking is small. Network thinking is limitless. And trust me, I’ve seen this firsthand. As CMO at The Vertical, and as CEO at Voortgang, I’ve learned that forward-thinking companies need well-structured processes to tap into all these siloed interactions and build a machine that runs on relationships. That’s where real momentum and returns come from—because you go from 6-8 channels to 600-800 networks, each a new avenue to growth. So the question becomes: how will you design systems that execute across these silos and truly scale your relational touchpoints? Solve that, and you’ll be unstoppable in the Relationship Economy.