Running a small business comes with its fair share of challenges, and one of the most daunting—and important—can be figuring out why your marketing isn't delivering the results you need.
If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you understand what to do if your small business’s marketing isn’t working.
1. Assess your current strategy.
Before you do anything, it’s important to take a look at your current marketing efforts and what they’re doing—or not doing—for your business. Are you achieving your business goals? Are you attracting your ideal clients? Is your business growing like you want it to?
If you're confident that you offer a great product or service and provide an excellent client experience but still aren’t seeing the growth you’re looking for, it's likely that the problem lies within your marketing strategy.
More often than not, we see small businesses believe that simply doing the marketing work—posting on social media, running ads, having a website, etc.—is enough to bring in leads. However, it's essential to ensure that these efforts are actually working, and that’s where marketing metrics come in. By tracking these metrics, you can see what is and what isn’t generating results and then pivot your strategy accordingly.
This data can help you see if your marketing tactics are effective and worth your investment. For example, let’s say you run a weekly email newsletter. If the data shows that no one is reading the newsletter or that those who do aren’t clicking any of the lead-generating links, then it’s not an effective tactic. At that point, it’s time to shift your marketing strategy.
2. Clarify your messaging.
Before you dive into trying new tactics, you need to make sure your messaging is clear and customer-focused.
Again, it’s easy to think that simply doing all the marketing things you're “supposed to do” is enough to get you in front of your ideal clients. However, without clear messaging, any marketing efforts you may try are a waste of time and resources.
Think about it. If you were to read a book and the author constantly changed the storyline or topic, would you keep reading? The same goes for your marketing.
To hold your audience’s attention and make them want to do business with you, you need to have clear, consistent messaging. And, that starts with your Marketing Guiding Statements.
If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, Marketing Guiding Statements are written statements that provide you with the information needed to craft clear, customer-focused, and effective messaging within a story-based framework.
By taking the time to create Marketing Guiding Statements, you and your marketing team can refer to them when developing website copy, blog posts, social media posts, or any other content. This ensures your marketing is customer-focused—rather than boastful or overly salesy—and has the power to convert your ideal customers.
Think of your Marketing Guiding Statements as the GPS for your marketing efforts. Once you have them, and as long as you follow them, you’ll more easily reach your goals because all your marketing materials will resonate with your best customers.
3. Use a proven marketing strategy.
Once you have clear and consistent messaging, you’ll need a proven marketing strategy.
Many small businesses try to market themselves by piecing together various tactics or jumping on the latest marketing trends. However, using marketing tactics and having a comprehensive marketing strategy are not the same. Simply “doing marketing things” as you have time won’t lead to consistent results or sustainable growth.
As a small business ourselves, we know you don't have time to waste on marketing strategies that don't work. Instead, you need a marketing strategy with clear steps and objectives that deliver reliable outcomes.
Which is why we recommend the flywheel marketing method.
This marketing strategy ensures that your website and online marketing efforts are in sync, functioning as a flywheel to continually produce results—even when you’re not actively working on your marketing.
Setting up flywheel marketing requires a significant amount of work upfront, but once it’s in place, it operates with minimal maintenance—perfect for busy small businesses. We at Treefrog are passionate about this strategy because we’ve seen it work for small businesses of all sizes and across countless industries.
When you have an effective marketing strategy, you can reach new prospects, making your growth virtually limitless.
4. Work with an expert.
While a marketing strategy is crucial for any business success, implementing and maintaining a new strategy can take time and expertise you simply don’t have.
Yes, the internet can give you a lift, but it’s also crowded with misleading advice, leading to a frustrating cycle of experimenting with ineffective tactics, wasting both time and money.
To break this cycle and gain solid marketing direction, consider partnering with an expert. Whether it’s a marketing coach, a fractional chief marketing officer (fCMO), or a dedicated marketing agency, the right partner can provide the strategic leadership and clarity your business needs. They can help you sidestep poor advice and implement a marketing strategy specifically designed to deliver tangible results for your small business.
What form of marketing expertise you go with will depend on your budget and what exactly your small business needs, but investing in experienced marketing leadership can lead to business growth and ensure that your marketing efforts are effective and aligned with your overall goals.
5. Test & adjust.
While some marketing strategies like the flywheel marketing method essentially run themselves to an extent, marketing is not something you can work on once and then never touch again.
Your business doesn’t live in a bubble. As the world changes, your business and ideal client will too—and so must your marketing. With this in mind, it’s important to continually go back and assess those marketing metrics we mentioned earlier to see what marketing tactics are working and adjust those that aren’t. This way, you’re only supporting elements that are effectively reaching your ideal client and promoting business growth.
And, this goes beyond just your marketing tactics. You can also test and change different elements of your campaigns—such as headlines, email subject lines, images, and CTAs—to see what resonates best with your audience.
For example, let’s go back to that email newsletter you may have. You can test what attracts more link clicks by creating one email with buttons and another with links embedded into the email copy. After running both, see which option generated the most clicks. This gives you concrete evidence on how your audience chooses to interact with you which you can then use to create more engagement and—ultimately—more leads.
Trying to understand what to do if your small business’s marketing isn’t working can be a challenge if you don’t know where to start. By following these steps, you can revamp your marketing strategy and start seeing the results your business deserves. With the right approach, you can overcome your marketing challenges and achieve your business goals.
Small businesses deserve to have a marketing strategy and partner that works as hard as they do.
Treefrog Marketing is a marketing agency for small businesses located in Lafayette, Indiana that builds effective marketing strategies and systems that help small business leaders take their companies to the next level. We specialize in marketing leadership, strategic marketing and advertising, digital marketing, graphic design, web design, SEO, and more. For more information, please visit our website. You can also connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
