Why Your Marketing Feels Broken (And What to Do About It)

You’re doing everything you’ve been told to do, and it’s just not working.

You’ve posted on social media.

You’ve had a new website built.

Maybe you’ve run an ad or two.

You’ve been to a few networking events, handed out business cards, asked for referrals and maybe even paid someone to help (and then wondered what you actually got for the money).

Some of it worked for a bit, but most of it didn’t, and now you’re back to square one wondering what you’re doing wrong.

To be honest, you’re not bad at marketing.

You just can’t see how the bits fit together yet.

The real problem

Most business owners I work with are really good at what they do.

Plumbers, accountants, coaches, consultants, trainers, therapists, builders, designers… they’re all (ok, most of them) great at the actual work.

But when it comes to marketing, they’re stuck.

They’re not lazy or daft, nobody ever showed them how it all connects.

So they do what anyone would do, which is grab whatever seems to be working for someone else and give it a go.

“You need to be on Instagram.” So they start posting.

“Email is where the money is.” So they set up a list.

“Have you tried Facebook ads?” So they throw some money at it.

None of that is bad advice on its own, but with nothing connecting it, it’s just random acts of marketing - a bit of this, a bit of that, hoping something sticks.

That’s not a strategy, it’s a lucky dip.

Tactics without strategy

This is the thing I bang on about the most, and I’ll keep banging on about it (most days, in the Marketing Memo) because it’s the biggest thing holding most businesses back.

Strategy ALWAYS comes before tactics.

A tactic is a thing you do.

Post on LinkedIn, send an email, run an ad, build a new website.

A strategy is the plan that ties all of them together: why you’re doing them, what comes first and how each one leads to the next.

Without one, you’re just collecting tactics, and a pile of tactics is like a pile of jigsaw pieces without the picture on the lid.

You’ve got all the bits but you can’t see how they fit, so you try random combinations and get fed up when nothing works.

Most businesses don’t have a marketing problem.

They have a strategy problem.

Fix the strategy and the tactics start making sense.

Why it feels so overwhelming

There’s another reason marketing feels broken…

…there’s just too much of it.

Every day someone’s telling you about a new platform, a new tool or a new approach.

TikTok, AI, Reels, Threads, SEO, funnels, webinars, chatbots…

The list never ends!

And every one comes with someone telling you it’s what you need to be doing right now or you’ll get left behind.

No wonder it’s overwhelming, you’re drowning in options with no way of deciding which ones matter for your business.

So here’s what I’ve learned after 17 years of doing this…

…most of it doesn’t matter, not for you, not right now.

What matters is a clear strategy and the basics done properly.

The basics done well will always beat the fancy stuff done badly.

Half-built bridges

There’s one more thing that keeps coming up, and it might be the most important idea I can share with you.

Most businesses aren’t struggling because they’re doing nothing.

They’re struggling because they’re doing too many things and finishing none of them.

They start posting on social media, then stop after three weeks.

They set up an email list, then never send anything.

They get a website built, then forget about it for two years while the phone number on it goes out of date and the contact form quietly stops sending.

I call these half-built bridges.

You start building a bridge to your customers, get halfway across, spot another one that looks more promising and start that one instead.

Then another.

And another.

You end up with five half-built bridges and no way of actually reaching anyone.

One bridge, built properly, all the way to the other side, is what works.

So what actually works?

Your marketing has six stages.

I call it The Perfect Customer Journey, and most businesses only have two or three of the stages covered.

That’s why it feels broken.

The tactics aren’t the problem, the gaps between them are.

The six stages are:

1. Get Noticed, being seen by the right people
2. Connect, getting their details so you can follow up
3. Engage, building trust and showing you can help
4. Convert, making the sale
5. Deliver & Wow, doing a job they’ll talk about
6. Create Fans, turning happy customers into people who recommend you

Each stage has a job, and each one earns you the right to move on to the next.

Skip one and the whole thing breaks down.

Once you can see all six, you stop guessing and stop chasing the next shiny thing.

You look at your marketing and say “right, Connect is where I’m losing people” and you fix that.

That’s strategy before tactics, and it’s how marketing goes from feeling impossible to feeling manageable.

It’ll never be easy, but it can be easier

I’m not going to tell you marketing is easy, because it’s not.

It takes work and it takes showing up when you don’t feel like it, doing the boring stuff that nobody sees.

But it can be a hell of a lot easier than it feels right now, and most of that comes down to seeing how it all fits together.

Your job today

Grab a pen and write down the six stages.

Next to each one, write what you’re doing for it right now. Don’t overthink it.

If a stage is blank, good, now you know where the gap is.

That’s your starting point.

Want me to look for the gaps?

That’s exactly what Your Web Review does.

I go through your website, Google profile, reviews and socials, and send you a video of me talking it all through, with the three things I’d fix first.

No big sales pitch.

Get your free Web Review

And if you’d like one short email every Sunday on making your marketing easier, get the Marketing Memo. It’s free.