Before You Spend Another $1,000 on Marketing, Do This

Most businesses don't have a shortage of marketing ideas. There is always something else you could be doing.

Run Google Ads... Post more on LinkedIn... Start a newsletter... Fix the website... Make some videos... Do SEO... Get serious about TikTok... Apparently we all need a podcast now... (!)

The problem is that when you're running a business, it's very easy for the list of things you could do to become the marketing strategy.

So here's a simple exercise I use with businesses I work with.

Forget about marketing for a minute and finish this sentence:

“This time next year, I want…”

Maybe it's $2 million more revenue. Another 500 customers. Three enterprise accounts. A second location. More recurring revenue. A successful launch. Or simply a steady stream of customers so you're not wondering where next month's sales are coming from.

Once you know that, you can ask a much more useful question:

What would actually need to happen for that to become true?

This is where things get interesting.

You might assume you need more leads, then realise you already have thousands of people sitting in your database who never bought.

You might think you need more website traffic, when doubling the percentage of visitors who enquire would get you much closer to your goal.

You might be about to spend $20,000 finding new customers when there's an opportunity to create something your existing customers would happily pay for every month.

Or there might be one slightly boring partnership opportunity that could outperform six months of Instagram posts. (I have a soft spot for slightly boring ideas that make money... of course, revenue is one of our goals, after all.)

Sometimes you'll work through all of this and discover that, yes, you really do need Google Ads. Great. Now you know why you're running them, what they need to achieve and how you'll know whether they're working.

Don't start with “What marketing should we be doing?” Start with “Where are we trying to go?” Then work backwards.

You'll probably spend less money on things you don't need and start noticing growth opportunities that have been sitting inside the business all along.