Why Your Marketing Isn't Working (And It Probably Isn't the Tactics)

Most businesses that call me are busy. They are posting, running ads, sending emails and paying an agency retainer. Activity is not the issue. Direction is.

The symptom and the cause

The symptom is usually "we are not getting enough enquiries". The cause is almost always one of four things: the market you are speaking to is too broad, your proposition is indistinguishable from your competitors, your channels do not match how your buyers actually buy, or nobody has agreed what success looks like.

Start with the commercial numbers

Before any channel decision, I want to know your average order value, your typical sales cycle, your win rate and your target revenue growth. Those four numbers tell you how many qualified enquiries the business needs each month. Once you have that figure, marketing stops being a matter of taste and becomes a matter of arithmetic.

Then narrow the market

Ambitious SMEs lose more money to vagueness than to underspending. If you sell into manufacturing, engineering and construction, those are three different conversations with three different buying processes. Pick the segment where you already win, and dominate it before you widen.

Then choose channels deliberately

Search demand capture, targeted outbound, trade events and LinkedIn all work. They do not all work for the same buyer at the same stage. Map your buying journey first and the channel plan writes itself.

Then agree the measurement

If you cannot see cost per enquiry, enquiry to opportunity rate and closed revenue by source, you are not measuring marketing. You are measuring effort. Fix the reporting before you increase the budget.

Strategy is not a document. It is a set of decisions about where you will compete and what you will refuse to do. Once those decisions exist, the tactics get much easier and much cheaper.