All Posts By

Nigel Davey

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What should small businesses STOP doing in their marketing?

By Marketing Plan

We get asked “what marketing should I be doing” on a regular basis. For small businesses that have been trading for some time, perhaps a better question is “what should I stop doing?”.
Why? Because there are many things that people do that they really shouldn’t. Activities that are harming their marketing performance and wasting both time and money. Something that is rarely abundant for them. Here’s what we consider to be the top 11 things that small businesses do that you really shouldn’t…..

1. Stop marketing to everyone

Whether you use the word everyone or anyone, you’re still causing problems for yourself. To target everyone you have to make your marketing messages so generic they won’t resonate with anybody.
Be specific. Identify who your Ideal Clients are (you will almost certainly have more than 1), determine what you need to say to them and develop a marketing strategy around each.

2. Stop creating more and more content

Content is good, but if you’re simply creating it to add to your site, and then not doing anything with it, you’re wasting time. Your content needs to have a specific purpose and be used for that purpose.

3. Stop doing what your competition is doing

Just because your biggest competitor is doing Google Ads (for example) doesn’t mean you have to do it. Do you know if it is working for them?
Doing what everyone else is doing will not make you stand out. You’ll be lost in the noise and never stand out. So think about what you can do that is different and will help people spot you and engage with your marketing. Here’s some ideas to help you stand out.

4. Stop chasing Likes

You cannot pay bills with Likes, Impressions and Hearts! Getting your content seen and engaged with by a few potential clients is far more valuable to your small business than 1000s of impressions by irrelevant people.

5. Stop talking about your business

Nobody cares what you do! What they care about is how you can help them. They care about the experience you have and they care about the proof you can provide that shows you can deliver on your promises. More on this here.
Is the first word on your homepage “We”? That one word is losing you business.
Refocus your marketing messages to show you understand your target audience and you can help them.

6. Stop saying you’re the UK’s Leading Provider of….

We once did a survey of IT support companies and found 29 that claimed to be “London’s Leading IT Support provider”! Unless you can really justify the claim, nobody is going to believe you and it is likely to damage your reputation more strengthen it.

7. Stop changing your marketing too soon

Constant changes to your messaging, your content strategy and your marketing channels will burn through your budget with little return. Marketing takes time to grab the attention of your target audience and get them to get in touch. Some more than others:

Networking

Networking is all about trust. You may get lucky and generate a lead from the room at your first event, but the real value is when you’re getting referred by the people you’ve build relationships with. Depending on what you sell and your target audience, that can take months, or even years.

Trade shows

You meet lots of people, but few will be in active buying mode. Trade shows and exhibitions are about adding to the top of your pipeline and the real value is in the followup.

Social media

This is just networking online. See above

Email marketing

Just 3% of people are in active buying mode at any one time and you have limited information about when the people on your mailing list will enter that mode. Seasonality may help if its appropriate to your business, but not every business is seasonal.

8. Stop treating your website as an online brochure

Your website has to help people become clients for your small business. Every piece needs to guide people towards what you want them to do, whether that is buying online or getting in touch.
Before making any changes to your site, work out how you want people to move through the site and develop a great user experience along that path.

9. Stop marketing to yourself

You are rarely your ideal client, so why should your marketing be what you like? Whether its your branding, your marketing messages or the language you use, keep your target audience at the front of your mind at all times. Will they like the marketing you are producing and sending out? More on this here.

10. Stop relying on word of mouth

“I get all my leads from referrals so I don’t need to do any marketing” is a phrase we hear regularly. Referrals are great, but they are difficult to control and erratic. You don’t know when they are coming in so you cannot plan your business accordingly. More on this here.
Your marketing needs to both give the referrals what they want to see, and help other potential clients discover you.

11. Stop not measuring your marketing

The quickest and easiest way to work out what you should being doing is to start measuring what you are currently doing. Work out whether it is working and then adapt your marketing strategy accordingly.
This will make you ask a potentially uncomfortable question: “why am I still doing this?”

An independent marketing review will identify what you need to stop and what you should consider starting. If you would like SME Needs to look at your marketing and identify what you shouldn’t, as well as what you should, be doing with your marketing, get in touch.

September 30, 2026
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How to Get Your Website Found by ChatGPT and Other AI Search Engines

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance

Whatever your small business sells, you need your website to be found quickly and easily. If you sell directly from your site, you need lots of traffic to your product pages. If your site is primarily a validation tool, the traffic needs to find the site, in particular the evidence and knowledge pages.
It used to be a “simple” case of ranking with the search engines. Now you must be concerned about the large language models (LLM) as well, as more people are simply typing a question into ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude.
So how do you get your business appearing when your target audience starts searching? Here’s some recommendations….

Don’t block their bots

AI search engines use bots in a similar way to the traditional search engines, so you need to ensure you are not blocking them. Here’s some guidance on how to ensure you’re not blocking OpenAI and here’s some for Claude too.

What are the questions your target audience will ask?

When your SEO focused on keywords, many people produced content aimed at the most popular search terms, often stuffing pages and articles with these keywords to drive up their rankings (it was a little more complicated). AI works differently because people using it work differently. People ask questions rather than typing in a few keywords, so answer the questions.
This may seem like something that could be anything, but there are people in your business that will know the answers. Your sales team and other client-facing staff should be able to tell you the questions they regularly get asked.
Make a list and produce content that answers those questions. Your website almost certainly answers some of them, so check so you aren’t duplicating work.
You can then produce content around the questions that aren’t already covered.

Demonstrate your experience

Whether you’ve been running your small business for 6 months or 20 years, you have experience that will help people choose you.
If you’ve got a new business, its almost certainly based on your previous experience working for someone else. You still have the experience that your customers are looking for, so talk about it. If your business is 20 years old, you will have huge amounts of experience, so make use of it. Talk about:

  • The issues you see frequently and how you’ve resolved them
  • The results you’ve achieved for your customers
  • What you’ve learnt over the years.

Everything in this area is about helping people believe you can help them, so use your experience to prove you can.

Keep it simple

Something we regularly see when small businesses are targeting big businesses is that they use lots of big words and make what hey are saying complicated. There is a belief that decision-makers in big businesses have somehow developed a different language to the rest of the world. Nope!
Keep the language simple. Technical terminology is fine, but big words won’t impress anyone.

  • Your blog is a blog, not a thought-provoking exploration
  • A training programme is not a leadership capability framework
  • An IT security audit is definitely a better phrase than technology assurance framework review!

Don’t forget to write for humans. Too many people used to write content for the search engines, and how they are writing what they think the AI tools will consume. Remember who you really want to see your content.

Succinct is good

Why use 5 words when 27 will do? Often attributed to Mark Twain (but apparently it was Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher) who said “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”
People searching topics such as “ideal blog length” see results that range from 800 – 3000 words, so they often err on the long side. Again, nope! With the short attention spans people have today, the sooner you get to the point, the better!

Website structure

Structured data as well as the basics of SEO will help the AI tools use your content. This article from Google will help with this. Make sure the information you provide is clear.
Meta descriptions, header tags and alt tags all serve their purpose with the search engines and the AI tools too, so don’t ignore them.

Combine with your other marketing

AI hasn’t wiped out the need to get your marketing right (thank the stars!). If anything it has made it more important, as the LLMs will be looking at where else your small business is represented. What are you saying on social media? Are you appearing on other sites, in news articles or podcasts? Are your reviews any good, whether on Google, your website or other places such as Feefo or TrustPilot?
A broad digital footprint is a good thing, so the more you can establish credibility outside your website, the better.

We hope this helps, and if you need some help, please get in touch.

September 16, 2026
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The Definition of Marketing Madness

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Strategic Planning

Why Are You Doing the Same Marketing and Expecting Different Results?

There is a well-known saying that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of madness.

Whether or not you agree with the definition, there is a valuable lesson for small businesses. If your marketing isn’t producing the results you need, carrying on doing exactly the same thing and hoping things will improve probably isn’t the best strategy.

Yet this happens all the time.

So why do small business owners continue with marketing activities that aren’t delivering the results they want?

And, more importantly, what can you do differently?

Why does this happen?

There are several reasons.

It’s what you know

Most of us naturally stick with what we know. If you have always relied on networking, exhibitions, email marketing, referrals or a particular form of advertising, changing direction can feel like a risk.

There is also plenty of confirmation bias involved. You know other businesses that use the same approach successfully, so it is easy to assume that it should work for you too. The problem is that what works for one business doesn’t necessarily work for another. Your target market, proposition, competition, pricing, sales process and customer behaviour are all different.

Just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it is the right marketing approach for you.

It used to work

This is particularly common in established businesses. Something worked five, ten or even twenty years ago, so why change it?

Because your market has changed.

Your customers have changed. Your competitors have changed. Technology has changed. The way people research and buy has changed. Think about the difference between the Yellow Pages and Google. For decades, being listed in the Yellow Pages could generate business. Today, most buyers will search online before they pick up a phone.

The same principle applies to almost every area of marketing.

Past success is not a guarantee of future performance.

One of the biggest dangers is when your existing marketing is doing “okay”. It generates a few enquiries and the occasional sale, so there doesn’t appear to be an urgent reason to change. But “okay” isn’t necessarily good enough. If you could generate twice as many enquiries, better-quality leads or more sales from the same investment, wouldn’t you want to know?

You don’t think you have the budget

There is a common perception that trying something new means spending a lot of money. It doesn’t have to. Some of the most valuable changes you can make to your marketing cost very little. Improving your messaging, focusing on a better-defined target market, following up leads more effectively or measuring your results properly can have a significant impact without requiring a huge budget.

The bigger issue is often not the amount of money available. It is where that money is being spent.

If you are spending money on marketing that isn’t working, continuing to spend it there is far more expensive than trying something different.

You don’t have the time

This is probably the most common reason of all.

You are busy running the business. Clients need work completed. Staff need managing. Suppliers need dealing with. Problems need solving. Marketing gets pushed down the list because there is always something more urgent.

But there is an important distinction between working in your business and working on your business.

If you never make time to review your marketing, improve your processes or develop new skills, you can end up spending years doing things simply because that is how you have always done them.

Being busy isn’t necessarily the same as being productive. Sometimes you need to step away from the day-to-day to work out how to make the business work better.

So, what can you do differently?

The answer isn’t necessarily to throw everything away and start again. Instead, take a step back and work out what is actually happening.

1. Measure what is actually happening

If you don’t know what your marketing is producing, how can you decide whether it is working? You should be able to answer some basic questions.

  • Which marketing activities generate enquiries?
  • Which generate the best-quality leads?
  • Which generate sales?
  • How much does each lead cost?
  • How many leads turn into customers?
  • And ultimately, what return are you getting from your marketing investment?

You don’t need an elaborate marketing dashboard to start answering these questions. You just need to start measuring. Once you have the numbers, you can make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.

2. Find out where things are going wrong

It is easy to say, “Our marketing isn’t working.”, but is that actually the problem?

  • Perhaps your marketing is generating plenty of enquiries, but Sales isn’t converting them.
  • Perhaps you are generating lots of leads, but they are the wrong type of customer.
  • Perhaps your website is getting plenty of visitors, but nobody is contacting you.
  • Perhaps your message isn’t compelling enough to make people take the next step.

Before changing your marketing, identify where the problem actually sits. There is little point in generating more leads if you already have enough leads and the problem is converting them into customers.

3. Invest in yourself and your team

You don’t necessarily need to employ a marketing expert or spend thousands on training, but you do need to keep learning. Marketing changes constantly. New channels appear, customer behaviour changes and the tools available to small businesses continue to develop.

Set aside time to learn.

That might mean attending a workshop, reading, taking an online course, talking to other business owners or simply spending a few hours understanding what has changed in your market.

The time you invest today could save you considerably more time and money tomorrow.

4. Stop doing what isn’t working

This sounds obvious, but it can be surprisingly difficult. Once you have identified a marketing activity that isn’t producing results, ask yourself why.

  • Is it the wrong channel?
  • Are you targeting the wrong people?
  • Is your message wrong?
  • Are you using the channel incorrectly?
  • Or is it simply not being given enough time to work?

If the evidence tells you that something isn’t working, don’t keep doing it simply because you have always done it.

Stop.

Then use the time and money you were spending on it to test something else.

And here is the important part.

If the new approach doesn’t work either, you haven’t necessarily lost anything. You have learned that two approaches don’t work. That is progress.

Marketing isn’t about getting every decision right first time. It is about testing, measuring, learning and improving.

5. Get some advice

You don’t have to work everything out yourself. Sometimes the easiest way to make progress is to talk to someone who can look at your business from the outside. An experienced marketing adviser can often spot things that are difficult to see when you are immersed in the business every day.

They can challenge your assumptions, identify where things are going wrong and suggest alternatives. It doesn’t have to mean handing your entire marketing over to an agency. Sometimes you simply need an independent perspective.

If you were lost while driving, you wouldn’t keep going around the same roundabout hoping you would eventually find your destination. You would look at the map.

Marketing is no different.

If you’re not sure where you are going, get some help finding the right route.

6. Talk to your network

You probably already know people who have faced similar marketing challenges. Ask them what works for them. More importantly, ask them what **doesn’t** work. You may discover that someone in your network tried the same approach you are considering and abandoned it for a very good reason. You don’t have to copy what other businesses do, but you can learn from their experience.

There is one other option

Of course, there is always another option. You can carry on doing exactly what you are doing. You can continue spending time and money on marketing because it is familiar. You can continue hoping that things will improve. And you might get lucky.

But if your current marketing isn’t producing the results you need, why would you expect the outcome to suddenly change?

The most successful small businesses aren’t necessarily the ones that get everything right. They are often the ones that recognise when something isn’t working and are prepared to do something about it.

Don’t keep doing the same thing simply because it is what you have always done.

  • Measure it.
  • Understand it.
  • Challenge it.
  • Change it.

And see what happens.

If you would like an independent view of your marketing, SME Needs can help.

We offer a straightforward marketing consultation where you can talk through what you are currently doing, what is working, what isn’t and where you could improve.

Book a marketing consultation and let’s see what we can do differently.

August 28, 2026
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best ways to work in a heatwave

Summer marketing checklist

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan, Uncategorized

As the summer holidays start, are you expecting to get quieter for the next few weeks, or does business carry on as normal?
If you do find yourself with a bit more time on your hands, using that time to improve your marketing is a great idea. Here’s a summer marketing checklist for you, to help you get better results when business starts to pick up again when the kids all go back to school….

Website Checks

Copyright date

Does your site have a copyright date that is not the current year? Whilst only a little thing, it does show both the search engines and your potential clients that your website isn’t important to you. This link will show you various ways to auto-update this, depending on your website’s CMS.

We or you?

Which word is more popular on your website – we or you? Your website should be talking about how you help your clients rather than talking about you. If your home page headline begins “We are the UK’s leading….” or something similar, you really need to review your content.

Proof

How much proof do you have on your website, and is it complete?

  • Case studies that have all the sections they need – click here to see what they are – and that aren’t all 5 years old, or more.
  • Testimonials that show your clients get real value from your services/products

404s

When was the last time you checked how many times people hit a Page Not Found? This is another thing that doesn’t look great, so regular checks are important. Maybe you’ve got incorrect links within your site, or you’ve posted something incorrectly on your social channels.
If its not something you can easily fix, put a redirect in place so website visitors get a great experience when they visit your site.

Basic SEO

Let’s make sure more people find your website and can read about how you can help them.

  • Do you have alt tags on all your images so the search engines (and disability tools) know what is there?
  • Are there unique page titles and meta descriptions on all pages and posts on your website?
  • Broken links cause issues, so finding and fixing them regularly is important

WordPress tools such as Yoast or RankMath can help with this, as can more comprehensive tools such as SEMrush. All have free and paid versions.

Data

A lack of contact information, or incorrect information, is a big issue for many small businesses. Incomplete CRM records are not just a problem for the Sales team, but a big one for Marketing too.

  • Missing email addresses mean focussed email campaigns cannot go out
  • Hi <first_name> doesn’t look great in an email or SMS message
  • Missing lead source data makes it almost impossible to calculate accurate marketing ROIs.

We are all busy, but if you make key fields like this required, it takes seconds per field to ensure that everyone has the data they need.
Look at what integrations are possible between your platforms to save time. Website forms that integrate with your CRM, email platform and others will save you time and keep data records accurate.

Social Platforms

When was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile information, both for your organisation and personally? Is your Facebook business page up to date? Old pictures, out of date experience and a lack of posts is another negative impact on your marketing performance.
Are you posting regularly? If you haven’t posted on X or Facebook for some months, you should seriously consider whether you should have a business page or account on there. If people are visiting, it’s unlikely that they are clicking through to your website because your content is so old.
We see lots of small businesses trying to maintain lots of social media channels – just in case. You will be much better off doing one or two really well, rather than 5 periodically and inconsistently.

Printed collateral

If you do trade shows/exhibitions as part of your marketing mix, do you have enough collateral printed? Is the information on there up to date, and does it still show your business in a positive light?
Print material should be updated periodically to ensure they maintain a fresh look, the right information and the correct marketing messages.

Strategic marketing

Leaving the biggest bits to last was deliberate. Getting you to do smaller bits will get you DOING some marketing work, so then making the bigger steps into the strategic side of your small business marketing should be a little easier….

Measure

What marketing is working, and what isn’t? Do you know? When was the last time you actually checked? Even if you are getting plenty of leads into the business, are there marketing channels that aren’t delivering for you? Identifying and cutting out marketing that isn’t working gives you back time and budget. Resources that can be used to generate even better marketing results, or if you must, be used in other parts of the business.

Your Marketing Messages

If you found more “we”s than “you”s earlier when you checked your website content, there’s a pretty good chance your messaging needs attention.
To put it bluntly Nobody Cares What You Do! They do, however, care about how you can help them. If the marketing messages used across all channels talk more about your target audience than about you, they will be far more effective.

  • Accountants can produce your Annual Accounts, but you’d be far more interested if they talked about reducing your tax bill.
  • IT support providers will keep your Microsoft365 licensing up to date and back up your files, but they’ll grab your attention if they show how they give you peace of mind and security.
  • Solar panel providers will talk about your eco-footprint and reducing carbon outputs, but when they show how your electric car is running on free energy, you sit up and take notice.

What is it that your Ideal Clients really want? Talk about how you can give them that!

Consistent Marketing Activity

Sod’s Law says people will forget your brand just before they need what you sell. If your marketing is happening consistently, on the right marketing channels and using marketing messages about them (not you), they will remember your brand when it is time. They will see the messages, read the proof on your site and be happy to talk to you.

If there is some seasonal variation in your business and you are quieter in the summer, there’s no reason why you cannot work through this checklist and get far better marketing results going forward.

If you are still busy, but concerned about your marketing, we will be happy to help you through this checklist, both the small stuff and the strategic marketing aspects. Get in touch and lets put some time in the diary to talk.

If you would like to discuss your marketing budgets and plans, give us a call and let’s talk.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

July 22, 2026
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I’m not a Fractional CMO – most of the time

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance

From 2011 until early 2025 I described what I do as a Virtual Marketing Director. In Feb ’25 I made a change and started calling what I do a Fractional CMO. Here’s why that was probably not the best idea….

Fashionable

Fractional CMO, or anything fractional, has become the fashionable way to describe anyone that delivers a part-time senior service. I succumbed to this, thinking that it would drive more traffic to the website and more enquiries for my services.

Attract bigger businesses?

In all of the time since I left Managed Networks, the biggest client I’ve had employed 80 people. Charcoalblue (see the case study here) was a great project, but was always going to be short one, as part of what I did for them was show them that they needed their own Marketing Director. Perhaps deep down I wanted to pitch for more projects like that, along with the bigger monthly invoices I would be sending them.

Not any more

If you look at the header menu on this website, you will now see that the Fractional CMO page is no longer there. It has been replaced with a Fractional Marketing Director page because:

  1. My skillset is being a Marketing Director, helping small businesses develop and implement the right marketing strategy.
  2. It is the service that my target audience needs almost all the time.

Difference between the two roles

A CMO will spend almost all of their time working ON the business. They will work on the business strategy, not just the marketing strategy. They will work with the C-suite team on how the service is delivered, setting the direction the business is going and even being involved in arranging investment if needed.

Until a business is approaching £5m a year, what they really need is strong management of their marketing with some strategic guidance.

Who should work with SME Needs?

If any of the following describes your situation, let’s have a conversation soon…

  1. You want to grow your business, but you’ve run out of time to determine what marketing is really needed and then get it done.
  2. You’ve grown the business to where it is now, but don’t know what to do to continue the growth.
  3. You’re not happy with the marketing results you’re getting, whether from your own efforts or from agencies you’re working with.

How does SME Needs help your small business?

1. Identifying problem areas

Whilst much of your marketing may be working, some channels will be delivering better results than others. Identifying what is and isn’t working delivers some quick wins and often frees up budget for other marketing.

2. Focusing your marketing

No business sells everything to everyone, not even multi-nationals. Mapping who your Ideal Clients are and how you help them will make your marketing more effective.

3. Developing the right marketing strategy

We work with you to develop a marketing strategy that will help you achieve your business goals.

4. Delivering the marketing

Working with you and/or a set of marketing specialists, we ensure the marketing strategy is delivered successfully, ensuring you know what is happening.

When I am a CMO

Put simply, when it is needed. As I get to understand your business more, the more I can contribute:

  • What does the business need to do to increase capacity?
  • Are there opportunities to expand, either geographically or increasing the portfolio/product range?
  • How are your clients’ needs changing?
  • And more

If, working together, we identify issues that I cannot help with, there is a good chance I know someone who can and I am more than happy to make those introductions.

The Balance

For the majority of the time I work with my clients, my role is as a Fractional Marketing Director – ensuring the right marketing is done consistently and is delivering growth. For 10-15% of the time, a more strategic focus is required.

If this sounds like a solution that can help your small business, please get in touch.

July 13, 2026
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money is a marketing resource

15 reasons a B2B sale doesn’t close

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Small Business Marketing

If you are generating leads for your small business, but they aren’t converting into sales, its likely to be a combination of some of the issues below. A B2B sale rarely fails because of a single issue. It is usually the result of several small issues that prevent your prospect from feeling confident enough to move forward.

No Clear Business Need

The prospect may like your product or service but does not see it as a priority. If the problem is not costing them time, money, customers, or opportunities, there is little urgency to act.

The Value Wasn’t Clear

Prospects buy outcomes, not products. If they cannot clearly see how your solution will improve their business, reduce costs, increase revenue, or lower risk, they are unlikely to proceed.

Decision-Makers Were Not Involved

In many B2B sales, the person you speak to is not the final decision-maker. If key stakeholders are not engaged early, the sale can stall or disappear altogether. In the MSP space, the traditional first touch, and usually the main contact going forward is the Office Manager. That person may not be the final decision-maker, even though they probably hold a lot of sway.

Lack of Trust

Businesses want confidence that a supplier will deliver. Weak credibility, limited case studies, poor reviews, or inconsistent communication can make prospects hesitant.

If you would like us to review your evidence set, click here.

Budget Constraints

Even when a prospect wants your solution, they may not have budget available, or another project may take priority. Of course budget is often made available if the value and business needs are made very clear.

This is probably the most frequently used excuse for not making the purchase, whether it is true or not.

Poor Timing

The need may be genuine, but the timing is wrong. Organisational changes, busy periods, staff shortages, or economic uncertainty can delay decisions.

If poor timing is genuine for one, or more, of your prospects, this makes 11 even more important. Agreeing with your contact when you should follow up next, and then doing it, is a valuable way to deal with this.

The Return on Investment Wasn’t Demonstrated

Decision-makers need to justify expenditure. If the financial or operational benefits are unclear, they may choose not to proceed.

Too Much Perceived Risk

Prospects often ask themselves:

  • What if it doesn’t work?
  • What if implementation is disruptive?
  • What if we choose the wrong supplier?

If those concerns are not addressed, they may stick with the status quo. You can see more detail about perceived risk here.

Competitors Were Better Aligned

A competitor may have offered a more relevant solution, stronger relationship, lower risk, or simply communicated their value more effectively.

The Buying Process Was Too Complicated

The B2B sale is rarely a simple process, on both sides. Complex proposals, lengthy contracts, unclear pricing, or too many steps can create friction and slow momentum.

Insufficient Follow-Up

Many opportunities are lost because communication stops too early. Prospects are busy, and decisions often require multiple conversations and reminders. There a plenty of statistics out there about following up on sales opportunities, with this one probably our favourite: 80% of sales require 5 or more followups, but most sales people stop after 4!

No Sense of Urgency

Without a compelling reason to act now, prospects frequently postpone the decision. In many cases, “not now” eventually becomes “not at all.”

Internal Politics

Different departments may have competing priorities. A solution supported by one team may be resisted by another, preventing agreement. The more you can demonstrate how your product/service delivers across the company, the more likely you are to get the sale.

Expectations and Reality Didn’t Match

If the prospect expected one thing during the sales process but discovered limitations later, confidence can quickly disappear.

The Prospect Doesn’t Fully Understand the Offer

Sometimes sales are lost because the buyer never fully understood what was being offered, how it would be delivered, or what results they should expect.

Ensuring the story is consistent and clear throughout the marketing and sales process really helps here. If they become a prospect based on the story early on and the story stays the same, the sale is more likely to occur.

The Most Common Underlying Reason

Many lost B2B sales can be traced back to a single issue: the gap between the value the seller believes they communicated and the value the buyer actually perceived.

If a prospect clearly understands:

  • the problem,
  • the cost of not solving it,
  • the value of your solution,
  • and why your business is the right choice,

the likelihood of closing the sale increases significantly. The challenge is ensuring those points are understood from the buyer’s perspective, not just presented from the seller’s perspective.

 

June 22, 2026
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is the client experience going to be good or bad?

The Client Surprise Gap: Why Expectations Matter More Than Ever

By Customer Understanding

When they start working with you, every client begins with an expectation.

Whether they are basing this expectation on a network recommendation or their experience of your website, they will have a picture of their mind of what they expect and believe will happen when they first interact with your small business.

The moment they interact with your business, that expectation meets reality. How will reality compare to that expectation?

Customer Surprise Gap

The difference between what they expected and what they actually experienced is what can be called the Customer Surprise Gap. This surprise can go in two directions – up and down.

When Reality Falls Short

You understand customer dissatisfaction. Hopefully this doesn’t happen too often, but have you really considered what causes it? It isn’t caused by your product or service. It’s caused by the gap between expectation and reality.

An IT provider may solve every technical issue, but if they promised immediate support and took two days to respond, clients focus on the delay rather than the solution.

An ecommerce business may promise next day delivery, but if the Friday order doesn’t arrive on Saturday, the customer will be surprised. If you meant next working day, was that made really clear?

In these situations, the client isn’t simply evaluating the outcome. They’re measuring the difference between what they expected and what they received.

The larger the negative surprise gap, the greater the dissatisfaction.

The Power of Positive Surprise

Of course, the opposite is also true.

When businesses exceed expectations, customers experience a positive surprise gap. This is often where loyalty, referrals and positive reviews are created.

A service provider responds to an enquiry within minutes when the customer expected to wait until the next day.

A hotel guest expects a clean room but receives a complimentary upgrade.

A retailer promises delivery within five days and the order arrives the next morning.

These experiences create memorable moments because reality exceeds expectation.

Why Managing Expectations Is Critical

It is critical because clients rarely talk about businesses that simply meet expectations, but they frequently talk about businesses that surpass them. The ones that surprise them will be talked about.

Too many small businesses focus heavily on improving their products and services while paying less attention to the promises they make.

A good experience combined with realistic expectations can produce delighted customers.

An excellent experience combined with unrealistic expectations can still produce disappointed customers.

This is why successful businesses carefully manage their messaging. They avoid making promises they cannot consistently keep and ensure that marketing, sales and customer service all communicate the same message.

Reducing the Surprise Gap

Businesses can reduce negative surprises and create positive ones by focusing on a few key areas:

  • Be honest about what customers can expect.
  • Set realistic timescales and delivery dates.
  • Communicate clearly throughout the customer journey.
  • Consistently deliver on promises.
  • Look for opportunities to add unexpected value.

The goal is not to lower expectations. It is to align them with reality and then find ways to exceed them.

The Experience Clients Remember

Customers rarely remember every detail of a transaction. What they remember is how the experience made them feel.

When reality falls short of expectation, frustration follows.

When reality exceeds expectation, customers feel valued, respected and confident in their decision to choose your business.

The businesses that earn long-term loyalty understand that customer experience is not simply about what they deliver. It is about managing and exceeding the expectations that customers bring with them.

The surprise gap is where customer perceptions are formed, reputations are built, and loyalty is won or lost.

This article was inspired by something discussed in The Uncensored CMO podcast. If you would like to listen to the whole episode, click here.

 

June 8, 2026
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infographic showing what happens with inconsistent marketing

Why Consistency Matters in Your Small Business Marketing

By Customer Understanding, Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

As a small business owner, you don’t have unlimited time, budget or staff to dedicate to marketing. That makes consistency even more important.

Many small businesses market in bursts. You update the website, post heavily on social media for two weeks, send a few emails, then get busy with running the business and everything goes quiet again. The problem is that inconsistent marketing (sometimes described as feast or famine) makes it harder for people to remember you, trust you and eventually buy from you.

Consistency is what turns marketing from random activity into long-term growth.

Who are you?

Whether someone sees your brand through their own efforts, or they receive some form of marketing from you, the chances are slim that they will get in touch. If they found you, they may be in the market, but they don’t know who you are. They will need more interaction to get to know you more.

If you reached out to them, they’re almost certainly aren’t actively looking for what you’re selling – and they don’t know who you are.

Over time, they may decide to buy from you. If your marketing disappears for months at a time, people forget about you and move on to competitors who stay visible. The Law of Sod says the moment they need what you sell is just after they’ve forgotten your brand!

Consistency builds trust

When your branding, messaging and activity are consistent, your business feels more established and reliable.

That means:

  • Your website matches your social media
  • Your messaging is clear everywhere
  • Your business regularly appears active
  • Your tone of voice feels familiar

Your target audience will notice these things, even subconsciously. Consistency gives them confidence that you are organised, dependable and professional.

For a small business, trust is one of your biggest competitive advantages.

You do not need to be everywhere

We had a client a few years ago that believed they should be on as many social media channels as possible. They wanted to that they were seen in as many places as possible so that as many people as possible saw their brand…. just in case! Whether its just social media, or you’re using many other marketing channels, trying to be everywhere is a bad idea.

Remember the very first line of this article – you don’t have unlimited resources – so you can realistically generate quantity for a period of time, or quality consistently. To be everywhere you will need quantity, but if the quality of marketing isn’t there, it isn’t going to be effective.

Think about who your Ideal Client is. Limit your marketing to the channels most likely to get your brand and messaging in front of your ideal clients. By limiting activity to what is most likely to be effective, you reduce your workload and are able to maintain things consistently.

Repetition strengthens your message

There is no magical frequency that anyone in marketing can tell you will work; you will have to work it out through experimentation. What we can say is that you need to regularly and consistently appear in front of your target audience to ensure they remember you at the point they decide they want what you are selling.

You need to consistently reinforce:

  • Who you help
  • What makes you different
  • Why customers should trust you

The clearer and more repetitive your messaging becomes, the easier it is for people to understand and remember your business.

Consistency helps you compete with larger businesses

Larger companies often have bigger marketing budgets, but small businesses can still compete effectively through consistency and personality. A business that communicates clearly and consistently often appears more professional than a competitor with better resources but weaker messaging.

Over time, consistency creates familiarity, and familiarity creates confidence.

Marketing works over time

One of the biggest mistakes we see small businesses make is expecting immediate results from their marketing. Most marketing works gradually:

  • SEO builds over months
  • Social media grows through repeated visibility
  • Email engagement improves steadily
  • Brand awareness compounds over time

The businesses that usually win are not always the loudest. They are often the ones that simply keep showing up consistently.

Consistency also makes marketing easier

Once you establish a consistent approach, marketing becomes less stressful. You stop reinventing everything every week. You develop:

  • Clear messaging
  • Repeatable content ideas
  • Stronger branding
  • Better customer recognition
  • More efficient workflows

That saves time and helps your marketing feel more professional without constantly increasing effort.

You do not need a huge marketing budget to build a strong business presence. What matters most is consistency.

If your business regularly communicates a clear message, stays visible and reinforces its value over time, you build trust and recognition naturally.

Small business marketing is rarely about one big campaign. It is usually the result of steady, consistent activity that keeps your business in front of the right people long enough for them to choose you.

May 14, 2026
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A Virtual Marketing Director can make a massive improvement in your small business marketing performance. Get in touch with SME Needs to find out how

Who are you accountable to?

By A Helping Hand, Focus, Marketing Performance

As the owner of a small business, you may have a team you are accountable for, but who are you accountable to? Who do you report to, to ensure that you are doing what you need to?

One of the key functions of my Fractional CMO service is to keep you accountable for your marketing, in a similar way to how you may work with a business coach for other aspects of your business. Let’s look at why this is important to the success of your business…

Why should you be accountable to someone?

Having someone to hold you to account can make a significant difference to:

  1. how consistently you perform,
  2. the quality of your decisions, and
  3. how quickly you achieve your goals.

When you operate on your own, you get to do what you want and what you believe is the right thing. What you believe is right probably is most of the time, but not always. Let’s look at this in more detail.

Getting rid of “I really must…”

Many years ago, I had a client that I affectionately named Mr I Really Must. This was simply because that was his favourite phrase when we met (pre-Covid, so it was always face to face meetings). He was looking to start a second career after a successful one in the police force. He wanted to keep busy, but he didn’t need the money, as his police pension was a good one. After 3 months, I stopped working with him because he got almost nothing done.

Money is a great driver of actions, but can drive the wrong actions. Having someone you are accountable to will ensure you follow the plan you developed together. Deadlines become more real and you won’t want to say you’ve not done something you committed to doing.

No more tangents

You know when you hit the internet to search for something specific, but you end up down a rabbit hole that heads off anywhere but where you meant to go, and let’s not even start on social media?

In your role as head of your business, its easy to drift off into something else, promising yourself to get back on track. My job is to keep you on track and, if you do drift, to pull you back. Regular conversations and emails:

  • Keep you working on the right priorities
  • Ensure you are making progress
  • Remind you of looming deadlines.

They help prevent weeks or months slipping by without progress being made. This is particularly important for your marketing, as some aspects take weeks or months to really start showing results.

Keeps you honest

Some people can be their own harshest critic. Others are the complete opposite. As your marketing accountability partner, I ensure you are honest to yourself about what you’re doing, and achieving.

If you are your own critic, I’ll relieve the pressure. If you’re the opposite, I’ll help you improve faster.

Keeping your promises

When you commit to doing something in one of our regular meetings, you can do it as soon as our meeting ends, or 5 minutes before our next one. Which you choose is up to you; you’ve kept your promise to me.

Perspective

The bigger picture. The helicopter view – whatever you want to call it, When you’re accountable to someone, they will help you with this. For your marketing, I will be asking questions you may not have thought of. I will be pointing out blind spots and suggesting alternatives.

Consistency

If your business is just you, its likely you will be doing most of your marketing, simply because there isn’t the available budget to involve others. Even if you have a larger business (and marketing budget), and I’m managing a set of marketing specialists to do your marketing, you still have responsibilities. These may include:

  • Providing information about what you’ve been doing for clients
  • Expert opinion on key topics (I don’t know everything about everything)
  • Providing the budget

To ensure your marketing is delivered consistently (read more on why consistency is key in marketing here), keeping you reporting progress in the areas you are responsible for builds momentum and results.

It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top

Whether your business is just you, or you employ 40-50 people, you are responsible. You have plenty to do and you are the decision-maker at the top of your business. That can feel isolating and the person you are accountable to helps you to share ideas and challenges. Think of them as a sounding board and as a source of encouragement.

Two heads…..

When someone knows what you are working to, your plan and your schedule, they will keep you more focused, more organised and on track. It’s easy to get diverted, to procrastinate or doubt yourself; being accountable to someone keeps you going and generating improved outcomes.

Accountability works because it introduces three powerful forces:

  • Clarity about what you are trying to achieve
  • Commitment to someone beyond yourself
  • Consistency in taking action

If you need someone to keep you accountable for your marketing, let’s put a time in the diary to talk. If it is for some other aspect of your business life, get in touch anyway, as I know a number of others you I am sure can help you.

March 17, 2026
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edit the subject line to improve email marketing performance

Does your brand get people to open your emails?

By A Helping Hand, Customer Understanding, Marketing Performance

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive brand awareness and sales for your business, whether you are B2B or B2C. The absolute nirvana is when people open and interact with every email you send out. If that is happening, you’re doing your email marketing well, but how do you get there? Here’s what is involved…

Before you even press send

People within your target audience can only open your email campaigns if they are delivered to their inbox (or at least their junk folder, initially). For that to happen, you need to prove you are trustworthy to the email receivers. They need to believe that you are really you.

DMARC, DKIM & SPF

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is an email protocol that identifies you as being definitely you. It uses Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to prevent phishing and domain spoofing. This protects both you and your target audience. You can find out more about these here.

Authentication

Your email marketing platforms will all expect you to authenticate your domain and sending email addresses. This improves your deliverability rate, prevents misuse of your domain and makes you an authentic email sender. Your preferred platform will guide you through this, and is likely to keep reminding you until you get it done!

Validate your list

If you are setting up your email marketing for the first time, using a list that you have gathered over the last few years, validating your data is something we really recommend. We use ZeroBounce to identify the email addresses that are still valid, which are no longer in use and even whether there are spam traps.

The quality of your list is another part of your deliverability score (lots of bounces count against you), so the more you can do before you press send, the better.

What are you sending?

This section and the next one can be swapped around. It doesn’t really matter which order, as long as you do both.

If you want to get to the point where people open your email campaigns because they trust you, what you send them really matters. There’s a “simple” way to work out what to send – it has to be useful to them.

If every email you send is trying to sell to them, let’s be blunt, you’re going to upset (insert whatever word you want here) them.

Useful content helps them and they start getting used to getting useful content from you. The more they trust you, the more likely they will open and click your emails.

Who are you sending to?

This can go in front of the previous section.

You can work out who you’re sending to and then work out what will be useful to them, or
You can decide what to send and then determine who that will be useful to.

In almost every case, you will not be sending to your entire mailing list. For example:

  • If you are sending sales email campaigns, only send to the people who aren’t already buying that product
  • If you want someone to buy something again, make sure they have bought it before
  • Content that is only relevant in one country should only go to people based in or operating in that country.

Strong Subject lines are vital

In the early days, this is true. Before your target audience really trusts you, they will open or delete your email based on your subject line. Does it excite them or generate interest? If not, they are likely to skip past or press delete.

Content that matches the subject line

One of the quickest ways to get people to unsubscribe is for the email’s content to be completely different to the subject line. If your subject line promises help with an issue, and your content just tries to sell something, they will click unsubscribe and not your Call to Action.

A name

Next to the subject line is From. If that just says “Your Company Name”, you’re missing a trick. The old adage people buy from people is still true. Having a person’s name there will generate higher open rates, whether the name is yours, your Sales Manager’s or whoever, people begin to recognise the name and start opening because of the name. The first step is strong brand recognition.

Consistency

Any company can produce a great email campaign with useful content. Far fewer can do it regularly. Whatever frequency you can commit to, keep sending to that frequency. People get to expecting an email from you every week/fortnight/month. They may not start drooling when your brand name appears in their inbox, but there is definitely something Pavlovian when you’re consistently producing good email campaigns with useful content.

Why do this?

When people are opening your email campaigns because they recognise and trust the brand, who are they going to go to when they have a need you can help them with? If your brand becomes synonymous with a service, a product or an end result, the people who trust your brand come to you to buy. That a good enough reason?

Need a hand? Click here to book a time to talk, or call us on 020 86345911.

March 3, 2026
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EastEnders, not Titanic

By Customer Understanding, Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

What you can learn for marketing a small business

What’s your favourite film?

For the record, we love Shawshank, both Top Gun films and anything Tom Clancy related…

What’s your favourite long-running TV programme?

Nigel was brought up on EastEnders, Corrie and Emmerdale Farm (as it was called in the old days), but only until he left home!

How are they different?

Now think about how these two programmes differ..

  • One-off (let’s ignore the probable sequel for now) vs. weekly event
  • One if much longer than the other
  • Effectively unlimited budget vs tight budgets (Titanic cost $200m to make if you were curious. Eastenders has a £250K per episode budget)
  • No real deadline vs very strict deadlines
  • Keep filming until its perfect vs. get it to good enough
  • Stunning film from the 1st to the last minute compared to some great episodes and some not so good.
  • Both have a strong audience

Whatever you think of these programme choices, there are stark differences between them. Now compare the marketing of your small business to these two. Which is your approach?

The Titanic Approach

Mostly filmed in Mexico and costing £200m, Titanic took 8 months to produce, starting on the last day of July 1996. Originally meant for release in July ’97, it did not hit screens until December. Technical challenges, a perfectionist director (James Cameron) and even a spiked clam chowder meant delay after delay. Once released it became the highest grossing film of all time and is still ranked 4th.

Do you focus on one thing and will not release it until it is perfect, even if that means nothing goes out in the meantime? Imagine a social post that goes viral for a week. If you asked someone to name a film, even though it’s estimated that 85% of Americans have seen the film (probably similar stats around most of the world), would Titanic be one of the first 2-3 films they mention?

The EastEnders Approach

Filmed on a production set in Hertfordshire, the team responsible has produced 4 episodes a week since 1985 on a budget that is currently around £250K per episode. Episodes typically take no more than two days to produce and are filmed 6-8 weeks in advance to keep everything on schedule. Every episode gets around 3.5m viewers.

Do you work to produce the best you can on a regular and consistent basis, knowing and accepting that sometimes what goes out could have been better? You’re producing marketing that is seen by your target audience regularly, and they keep coming back. If you asked someone in the UK to name a soap, they would say either Coronation Street or EastEnders – maybe Emmerdale.

Where we going with this?

As a small business owner, you’ve probably not got $200m lying around. You may not have £250K either, but you will have some budget, in time or money.  You are far better off producing marketing that is always good enough and sometimes outstanding, that is seen regularly across your target audience. If you get brand recognition with many other people, even better.

The Titanic approach ties your money up for a long time and means nothing goes out to maintain brand awareness during that time. Whilst you may then produce a Titanic or Avatar, you may also produce an X Men: Dark Phoenix and lose big.

If you need a hand with moving to an EastEnders approach, get in touch.

 

February 19, 2026
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graph of returning visitors to support article about getting potential clients back to your website

Are you accurately measuring your marketing?

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance

Or are you making a big mistake?

As a small business owner, you need to be sure you are using your marketing budget effectively; that your marketing is helping you to hit your business goals. To ensure this is happening you need to review, to measure, your marketing regularly. The question is: what are you looking at?

Inspired by a recent LinkedIn post from one of our specialist partners, this article looks at a common mistake many small business owners make, and what you can do to get a more accurate view of what is really working.

The big mistake

Since SME Needs started in 2011, we have seen lots of people make this mistake. When they review their marketing and sales performance, they consider only the big numbers:

  • How much did they spend on marketing this year?
  • How much new business was generated?

Whilst this will give you an ROI figure, it is not particularly useful.

Why look?

Put simply, you measure your marketing to see how it delivered for your business. But when done properly this measurement exercise gives you far more – where there are opportunities to improve your ROI.

You will never have the perfect marketing plan

In a perfect world your marketing will all work, delivering a great ROI from every marketing channel you use.  Unfortunately the world is not perfect. At this point, don’t worry, because every company in the world, from the smallest to the largest, is in the same situation.

Measuring your marketing properly shows you what is working well, what is working okay and what is not working. This allows you make decisions that will improve your marketing results next year…

  • Do at least the same, and possibly more of what is working well.
  • Work to improve the results from what was okay
  • Stop, or fix, what didn’t work.

Look Deeper

To get the information you need to adapt your marketing, you need to look at the detail. For every marketing channel you use, what happened?

  • How much did you spend?
  • What was your ROI, and how did that compare against your target for that channel?

Remember that your marketing activity does different things. Some will be about maintaining or increasing brand awareness, keeping your network up to date with what you are doing. Some of your marketing will be internal, strengthening the company culture and some will be about developing new business.

What is needed?

Spend

The first piece of data you need is spend. What did you spend on marketing, by channel? Assuming you’re using Xero, or something similar, identifying what you are spending should be easy.

Lead Source

Lead source is often the trickier data set to gather. The main reason for this is the information not being collected and/or recorded. If your sales process starts when someone completes a contact form and calls you, do you ask them how they found you? If you haven’t got a digital way of collecting this data, how will you know if you don’t ask?

At this point we often get people mentioning attribution. It is highly likely that your prospects have interacted with your brand in multiple ways – emails, social media, heard a radio advert, and so on. How do you know what made them pick up the phone?

Amazon defines marketing attribution as the way businesses determine how marketing tactics—and subsequent customer interactions—contributed to sales, conversions, or other goals. These marketing metrics are used to identify the channels and messages that inspire potential buyers to take action. A pretty good definition.

Our advice – keep it simple – ask them. They are going to tell you the marketing channel that, in their minds, had the most impact. Until you’re getting 1000s of leads, there is no need to make it more complicated.

Poorly defined lead sources

When looking to define your lead sources, think carefully. You need to match your lead source to your marketing spend. Let’s give you an example…

If you say a lead source is your website and you actively so both SEO and PPC marketing, how do you know which channel to attribute that lead to?

If you use an event as a lead source and you’re using email marketing, social media and PPC to get people to register for an event, which one got them to the event?

Before this wanders off to another topic, let’s get back on track….

Where are the numbers slipping?

Once you know the ROI from each marketing channel, you can start work on improving performance.

Where you’re getting a good ROI, don’t worry too much about this bit – just remember you can always get better results.

By looking at the numbers through your pipeline, you can identify where the problem is. Let us explain.

Where the statistics drop, that is where the problem is!

Marketing & Sales StagesWhere the issue is
Not getting traffic to your website or social mediaMarketing is a problem and needs reviewing
Not getting any leads
Not getting many quality leadsMost likely a Sales/Marketing communication issue
Not converting leads into salesSales is the problem
Not keeping your clientsOperations is the issue

Assuming you have something like Google Analytics and your CRM is being completed accurately (!), you have all the data you need to see where the problem is.

How often should this be done?

This is not a quick exercise so we recommend at least once a year. The more you spend on marketing, as a percentage of revenue, the more important it is to know what marketing is and isn’t working.

Need a hand? If you’re not comfortable doing this, or simply want an independent opinion, get in touch and we’ll be happy to talk more about your marketing performance.

January 30, 2026
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opportunity cost, time is money, smart time management, opportunities

Getting the Timing of Your Marketing Right

By A Helping Hand, Customer Understanding, Marketing Plan

& get better results

Good marketing is not just about what you say. It is also about when you say it. The timing of your marketing affects how many people see it, how relevant it feels, and whether it leads to action. When your marketing appears at the right moment, it works harder and delivers better results.

Understand When Your Product or Service Matters

Every product or service is more useful at certain times. For some businesses this is seasonal. For others it depends on events, customer behaviour, or business cycles.

Seasonal and Event-Driven Opportunities

If demand rises at certain times of year, your marketing should start before that demand appears.

Begin by listing key dates such as holidays, industry events, budget planning periods, and major sales moments. Planning early helps you stay ahead of competitors and avoid rushed decisions.

Instead of launching everything at once, break campaigns into stages:

  • Awareness activity to introduce your offer
  • Consideration activity to help customers compare options
  • Conversion activity to encourage action

This approach keeps your brand visible and supports customers as they move closer to a decision.

Look back at previous campaigns. Note when interest increased, when enquiries peaked, and when sales slowed. These patterns help you improve future timing.

 Match Marketing to the Buying Journey

Most customers do not buy straight away. They usually move through a process that starts with a need, continues with research, and ends with a decision.

Timing Based on Customer Thinking

Marketing works best when it appears while customers are thinking about the problem you solve. If it appears too early, it may be ignored. If it appears too late, the opportunity may already be gone.

Search data, website visits, and enquiry patterns can show when people begin looking for solutions. These signals are often more useful than fixed calendar dates.

Behaviour-Based Timing

For products and services that sell all year round, customer behaviour should guide your timing.

Examples include:

  • Sending follow-up messages after a website visit
  • Starting email journeys when content is downloaded
  • Changing messages when someone returns to your site

Automation tools help you respond at the right time without extra manual work.

Set a Sustainable Marketing Frequency

For non-seasonal businesses, the main question is how often to communicate.

Consistency Matters

Long gaps followed by heavy bursts of activity can reduce impact. A steady flow of marketing builds recognition and trust over time.

Spreading messages across days or weeks usually works better than sending everything at once. Testing different days and times will show when your audience is most responsive.

Timing Across the Funnel

Different stages of the customer journey need different timing.

  • Top-of-funnel activity should run regularly to attract new people.
  • Mid-funnel activity should support research and build confidence.
  • Bottom-of-funnel activity should respond quickly when interest is high.

Use Data to Improve Timing

Data helps remove guesswork from marketing decisions.

Personalisation and Smarter Targeting

Modern tools can spot patterns in behaviour and suggest when people are more likely to engage. This helps you send messages that feel relevant rather than repetitive.

CRM and Engagement Signals

Your CRM can highlight useful timing signals, such as:

  • Email opens and clicks
  • Pages viewed on your website
  • Past purchases or renewal dates

Using this information helps you follow up while interest is still strong.

Plan Ahead With a Marketing Calendar

A marketing calendar keeps activity organised and on track.

It should show:

  • Key campaigns across the year
  • Content deadlines and publishing dates
  • Important industry or seasonal events

Planning at least three months ahead makes it easier to stay consistent and make improvements.

Review and Improve Your Timing

Timing should be reviewed regularly. Customer habits change and marketing platforms evolve.

Track results by day, time, and channel. Look for trends in engagement and conversions. Use what you learn to adjust future campaigns and improve coordination across channels.

Small timing changes can lead to better results.

Getting the timing of your marketing right helps you reach customers when they are most open to your message. It relies on good planning, consistent activity, and learning from data.

When timing is treated as part of your strategy, marketing becomes more effective, more efficient, and easier to manage. Of course, if you need a hand, click here and let’s arrange a time to talk.

January 4, 2026
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getting your marketing ready to make a great start to 2026

How to Make a great start to 2026

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Plan

 

If you have not yet developed a marketing plan for 2026, you are late, but not too late. Here are our recommendations for ensuring your marketing supports your business goals over the year ahead.

Measure: what happened last year?

Understanding what worked in 2025 and what did not is the essential first step in shaping a more effective plan for 2026. Every marketing activity you invested in last year will fall into one of three categories:

  1. It worked, generating strong leads that you successfully converted.
  2. It did not work, but mainly because the execution was not strong enough.
  3. It did not work because it was not the right approach for your target audience.

The data you will need:

  • Your CRM or pipeline tracker, with a clear lead source recorded for every enquiry.
  • Your accounts data, showing what you spent on marketing in 2025 and what revenue those clients generated.

Your goal at this stage is to identify the channels and activities that delivered results so that you can do more of them in 2026.

What about the marketing that did not work?

If an activity underperformed because it was not implemented well, consider bringing in an expert. They can train you to improve your approach or take the work off your hands entirely. If you are confident the activity was delivered properly but still failed to produce results, the decision is simple: stop doing it.

Freeing up that time and budget allows you to focus on what you know works or to test something new.

Focus: who do you want as new clients in 2026?

Look back at the clients you gained in 2025. Did they match your Ideal Client profile, or did you take on some purely for the cash flow?

If your business has evolved, your target audience may have shifted too. If that is the case, it is time to refresh your Ideal Client profile.
Remember, this profile guides your marketing focus. It does not require you to turn away good clients who fall outside it.

Plan: what are you going to do?

By now, you know what worked last year, so those activities should remain in your plan and may even increase.

Based on the assumption that your marketing will perform similarly to 2025, consider how many additional leads and new clients you will need to reach your 2026 goals.

From here, decide:

  • Which activities you will repeat, but with expert support.
  • Which new marketing initiatives you will introduce.

Then ask yourself three key questions:

  1. Do you have the time to manage and deliver this marketing consistently?
  2. Do you have the skills to ensure it is done well?
  3. Even if you can do it, is this the best use of your time?

Deliver: get on with it consistently

With your plan in place, the priority is disciplined execution. Consistent marketing activity is essential if you want to achieve your goals for 2026.

If you would like help at any stage, from strategy to hands-on delivery, get in touch. Click here to see the results we achieve for other clients and then click here to book a time to talk.

December 10, 2025
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resending email campaigns in easy just a few clicks

The Importance of Resending Email Marketing Campaigns in Ecommerce

By A Helping Hand, Customer Understanding, Delivering your marketing, Marketing Performance

Why Resending Matters in Ecommerce Marketing

In ecommerce, email remains one of the most reliable ways to connect with customers. Yet many retailers overlook a simple tactic that can dramatically improve results: resending email campaigns.

Resending is not spam. It is a strategic way to give your content a second chance at being seen. With inboxes overflowing and customers easily distracted, even a well-designed campaign often goes unnoticed the first time around.

On average ecommerce open rates hover around 25–30 percent, meaning three out of four subscribers never see your message. Resending can lift your total opens by up to 30 percent. A second send helps your offer cut through the noise, creating more clicks and conversions without new creative work.

Data-Driven Insights from Resending

Resending is not guesswork; it is a data-led optimisation method. By tracking performance between your first and second sends, you can uncover powerful insights:

  • Preferred send times: Identify when your audience is most active.
  • Day-of-week trends: Learn whether weekday or weekend sends perform better.
  • Subject line responsiveness: Test which tone, length, or emojis attract attention.

By tracking the performance of both original sends and resends, we’ve identified the best times to send email campaigns for our clients. The difference between the best and worst times of the week for one of our ecommerce clients is 1400%!

Increasing ROI Without Additional Creative Work

You’ve spent time and probably money developing great email campaigns. Resending multiplies that investment’s value. Instead of starting fresh, reusing proven content extends its reach and impact.

Example:

We sent a campaign for a firewood company in the autumn that generated just over £3,000.
The resend to non-openers the next evening, with a new subject line, generated another £3,300
That’s >100% uplift in sales for that campaign, from just a few clicks. For this client this type of result happens 1-2 times a year, with the average (over the last 4 years) being a 28% uplift in sales per campaign.

How to Resend Effectively

The difference between a smart resend and a spammy one lies in subtle but deliberate changes. Here are best practices:

  1. Revise the subject line: Add urgency, curiosity, or simplicity to stand out.
  2. Adjust send timing: Try a different day or hour based on audience behaviour.
  3. Segment carefully: Only resend to non-openers or those who clicked but did not buy.
  4. Refresh visuals: Change the hero image, call to action, or headline slightly.
  5. Add a friendly note: Use phrases like “In case you missed this earlier in the week” to show consideration.

These tweaks keep your communication relevant and customer-focused while maintaining brand consistency.

Avoiding Fatigue and Overexposure

Resends do deliver, but too many follow-ups can lead to unsubscribes and brand fatigue.

  • Limit resends to one per campaign, occasionally two for major sales or product launches.
  • Always exclude previous openers and purchasers from resends.
  • Use automation to manage frequency and maintain consistency.

Your emails need to remain as helpful reminders, not repetitive interruptions.

Supporting Broader Ecommerce Goals

Resending isn’t just for sales campaigns; they work for every part of your communications.
Common use cases include:

  • Product launches: Ensures late openers still see your announcement.
  • Seasonal promotions: Reminds customers before sales end.
  • Abandoned cart flows: Gently re-engages hesitant shoppers.
  • Post-purchase communications: Highlights complementary products or loyalty offers.

Each resend strengthens continuity, creating more touchpoints and improving overall conversion rates.

Leveraging Automation and AI

Modern ecommerce tools make resending smarter and more efficient. Platforms like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and Shopify Email can:

  • Automatically detect who didn’t open or click your first message.
  • Optimise resend timing based on past engagement data.
  • Personalise subject lines or offers using AI.

Example:

AI might identify that one shopper tends to open emails at 9 a.m. on weekdays while another prefers 8 p.m. on Sundays. Automated resends can adapt accordingly, ensuring maximum visibility with minimal manual effort.
Automation turns resending into a scalable, intelligent growth tactic, not just a manual follow-up.

Measuring and Refining Performance

Success in resending comes from measurement and adjustment. Track the following metrics for both your initial and follow-up sends:

  • Open rate
  • Click-through rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Unsubscribe rate

Focus on what is important for your business. As an ecommerce business, this will mostly be revenue and that comes from click rates. Open rates are great, but they don’t usually mean revenue. Your email platform will give you stats you can use but use Google Analytics as a confirmation tool as well.

Building a Smarter Ecommerce Email Strategy

Resending is not about repeating yourself. It is about maximising visibility, learning from data, and respecting your customers’ time.
In an ecommerce landscape filled with distractions, persistence pays off. By resending intelligently, you extend your campaign’s reach, recover missed opportunities, and increase sales without additional creative costs.

Resending should become a core component of your email strategy—a practical habit that turns overlooked messages into measurable results.

Of course, if you need some help with this, please get in touch.

November 5, 2025
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SME Needs' four stage marketing process

Get great marketing results without employing marketing staff

By A Helping Hand

SME Needs works exclusively with small businesses (our Ideal Client looks like this), from just one person up to about 40 people, depending on what they do. If you fit into this range, we’d love to talk to you about helping you get the marketing results you’re looking for, but here are some recommended marketing activities you can do without needing to get us involved…

Make use of digital tools and automation

You don’t need a full-time marketer if you use smart tools:

  • Social media schedulers: Tools like Buffer, Later, or Hootsuite allow you to plan posts in advance, saving hours every week. Most of the social platforms will let you schedule posts directly too, just not in bulk.
  • Email marketing platforms: Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) make sending newsletters, promotions, and automated campaigns simple.
  • CRM and analytics tools: Free or low-cost CRMs (HubSpot, Zoho) help you track leads, segment customers, and automate follow-ups. We use a lesser known platform called uPilot and we’re very happy with it.

Tip: Start small. Focus on one or two channels that your audience actually uses.

Repurpose Existing Content

Much of the content you produce can be described as evergreen – it doesn’t change over time. So maximise the value of what you already have:

  • Turn blog posts into social media snippets, videos, or infographics.
  • Turn customer testimonials into case studies or social media posts.
  • Use FAQs from your business as the basis for educational content.

This approach reduces the need for new content creation while maintaining a strong online presence.

Partner with Freelancers or Agencies on Demand

Instead of hiring, outsource:

  • Copywriters or graphic designers for campaigns.
  • Social media managers for short bursts or campaigns.
  • SEO specialists to improve website visibility.

We’re happy to recommend people from our network to you, at least until you’re ready for us to start managing your marketing for you!

Focus on Organic Marketing

Some strategies cost little but yield results:

  • Networking & word-of-mouth: Attend local events, LinkedIn groups, or industry meetups. We love Fore Business for this!
  • Referral programs: Encourage current clients to refer others in exchange for small rewards.
  • Content marketing: Blogs, videos, or guides position your company as an expert without paid advertising.

The trade-off here is your time is being used instead of your money

Use Templates and DIY Tools

Tools like Canva, Visme, or Crello let non-designers produce professional graphics.

  • Email templates, social post templates, and presentation templates save time and maintain brand consistency.
  • Combine this with AI tools for writing and video editing to speed up campaigns.

Track Results and Optimise

You may already know (if you don’t you can find more information here) that this is always the first work we do with any new client – it is that important!

Even without a marketing team, you need feedback:

  • Track email open rates, website visits, and social engagement.
  • See which campaigns bring leads or sales, then double down on what works.

Simple dashboards in Google Analytics, Meta Business Suite, or HubSpot CRM are enough. You can also download a tool we used for years here (along with a number of other useful (and free) tools).

Prioritise Quality over Quantity

Small businesses win by being consistent but selective:

  • Better to have a strong, active presence on one or two channels than a weak presence everywhere.
  • Focus on campaigns that directly connect with your audience and solve real problems.

As a small business owner, your time is limited so you are far better off doing a few things well than trying to lots of things – that end up being done poorly.

Bottom line: You don’t need a marketing team if you use automation, outsource selectively, repurpose content, track results, and focus on high-impact channels. Smart tools + strategic effort = marketing results comparable to much larger teams.

What to do next

Take a look at the tools we’re suggesting here and see what you think. We’re confident you can get better marketing results using these tools than you are currently. If you need further support to get the best out of these tools and really take your marketing forward, get in touch.

October 3, 2025
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Leadinfo leadbot

CANDDi to Leadinfo

By Uncategorized

CANDDi has been part of SME Needs’ marketing techstack for over a decade. We also worked with them in their early days to focus their marketing. So when we were told they’d been bought by Leadinfo, we weren’t sure what to expect. Here’s our first impressions….

The History

Nigel first met CANDDi’s founder, Tim Langley, on LinkedIn sometime around 2011, so the early days of SME Needs. As Measure and Focus are two of the core parts of our approach to successful small business marketing, CANDDi’s functionality fitted perfectly – letting their clients know WHO is visiting their website and what they are looking at on the site.

Since then, we’ve actively promoted CANDDi, rolling it out to a number of clients as well as using it to know what is happening on our website.

What we loved about CANDDi

The core functionality we’ve already mentioned helped us to understand who was doing what on the site. However, there were two other key functions we loved:

  1. A UTM creation tool that allowed us to see who followed our Mailchimp campaigns and what they did after that first click
  2. Notifications when people returned to our website.

Moving forward

When asked about the sale Tim says: “I’d been chatting to LI for about 8 months, I really appreciate their product and customer focused attitude. Their product has a number of features (mouse tracking / LI integration) which will add to the CANDDi client experience”.

Naturally we have started using Leadinfo and we’ve been impressed with the functionality and how it helps us. Here’s the bits we really like

Website engagement

A complete picture of how a visitor moves around our website. If we get to talk to this person, we know what to talk about rather than a standard pitch.

leadinfo screenshot

Having a full history or their activity is really useful too.

multiple visit history from Leadinfo

Leadbots

Encouraging people to engage easily, without filling out a contact form, makes it easyLeadinfo leadbot for people to ask questions. The Leadbot makes this really easy and customisable. As you’re reading this, you may have already seen ours!

CRM integration

Connecting to most of the major CRMs is easy, including Zoho, ACT!, Pipedrive and Salesforce. If your’s isn’t on the list, Zapier will connect them.

Mouse recording

Want to know how people interact with your website? The mouse recordings can give you a real insight.

Much more

We’re still in very early days using Leadinfo, but we know enough to say we believe it will be useful to us and to our clients. As we learn more, we will continue to update this article, so keep popping back!

 

September 17, 2025
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getting your marketing ready to make a great start to 2026

How to Get Your Marketing Really Performing by the New Year

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan

getting your marketing ready to make a great start to 2026As we enter the final quarter of 2025 you may be starting to reflect on the year so far, in order to make 2026 a great one.

  • How has the business performed?
  • Has your marketing been a key driver of your business performance this year?

If you want to make 2026 a great year, its time to start planning now, and not leave it until January. Here’s what you need to review and consider to make sure you get the results you’re looking for when then New Year arrives

1. Review What Has and Hasn’t Worked

The first step is a audit of your current marketing activities (here’s some tools to help with this). Look at your marketing channels: across email, social media, paid advertising, networking, events, and content (delete as appropriate). Which channels have driven leads? Which ones are costing you money without measurable results?

Use the right metrics. Impressions and Likes are indicators but traffic, leads and sales are the real measures.

By cutting what underperforms and doubling down on what delivers, you make your budget work harder well before January.

2. Refresh Your Brand Message

When was the last time you properly reviewed what your marketing is actually saying to your target audiences? Are your brand messages even aimed at specific target audiences or (heaven forbid) at “anyone who….”

Do your messages talk about you or do they talk about your target audiences and how you can help them? The latter is always going to be more effective.

3. Optimise Your Website and Landing Pages

Your website is often the first place people encounter your brand. If it’s slow, unclear, or cluttered, potential customers won’t stick around. Before the new year rush, review your site’s performance.

  • Test loading speeds on mobile and desktop.
  • Check that calls to action are clear and prominent.
  • Update landing pages so they match the promise of your ads or emails.
  • Make sure contact forms work smoothly and are easy to complete.

Small tweaks now can dramatically increase conversion rates, making all your marketing spend far more efficient. If you don’t have (or know anyone) with a SEMrush account, Google Analytics and Search Console can give you a real steer on what is happening on your site.

4. Get Ahead with Content Planning

Content is the engine that powers many marketing channels, from SEO to social media. If you’re creating content on the fly, it’s likely inconsistent and less effective. Plan at least the first quarter of next year now. Outline themes, campaigns, and key messages you want to push. Map these across your blog, newsletters, social media, and video output. Creating a content calendar means you start January with a strong pipeline of material ready to go, rather than scrambling to produce pieces at the last minute.

5. Do you have the right tool set?

Marketing technology has become more accessible than ever, with automation platforms helping even smaller businesses run sophisticated campaigns. If you’re still manually sending newsletters or juggling spreadsheets of contacts, now is the time to invest in tools that save time and improve results.
Email automation, social media scheduling, and CRM integrations can nurture prospects automatically, freeing you to focus on strategy rather than admin. Pair this with data analytics tools, and you’ll have sharper insights into customer behaviour and campaign performance. The sooner these systems are in place, the smoother your new year campaigns will run.

6. What about current clients?

Many of SME Needs’ clients work long term with their clients, rather than on a transactional basis, but these questions still need to be asked:

  • Can your current clients buy more of the same thing?
  • Can your current clients buy more of the full range of products/services you provide?

Making sure that your clients know the full range of products/services you sell can uplift sales quickly. Many of them, if you ask, will say “I didn’t know you did that”.

7. Strengthen Your Social Presence

Social media evolves rapidly, with algorithms rewarding brands that create consistent, valuable content. If you’ve been posting sporadically or relying on generic updates, now is the time to rethink your approach.
Focus on platforms where your target audience actually spends time, and commit to a schedule of meaningful posts that encourage interaction. Consider experimenting with live video, polls, or behind-the-scenes content to make your brand feel more authentic and engaging. By building momentum now, your social profiles will quickly start to deliver results. That means traffic to your site and enquiries – not impressions and Likes!

8. Align Sales and Marketing

Even the best marketing falls flat if it isn’t aligned with sales. Ensure your sales team (if you have one that isn’t you) knows what campaigns are running, what offers are being promoted, and what messaging customers are hearing. Ensure that they agree with what you are doing too. If your marketing is making promises Sales, or even Operations, cannot deliver, you’ve got a problem.

Take a look at your pipeline and see how much is qualified out. That will give you a good steer on what is and isn’t working.

9. Set Clear Goals for the New Year

Finally, don’t go into January with vague ambitions. Set measurable goals now. Whether it’s increasing web traffic by 20 per cent, generating a specific number of qualified leads, or improving conversion rates, clear objectives keep everyone focused.
Break these down into monthly or quarterly targets so progress can be tracked and adjusted as needed. By knowing where you want to be by mid-year, you can course-correct early instead of wasting time.

Getting your marketing performing by the new year isn’t about a frantic December push. It’s about preparing smartly, refreshing your approach, and equipping yourself with the tools and strategy to hit the ground running in January.

Audit your past performance, sharpen your brand message, optimise your digital presence, and plan content in advance. Invest in automation, re-engage existing customers, and build momentum on social platforms. Aligning sales with marketing and setting clear goals ensures your team stays focused.

By taking action now, you’ll transform January from a slow start into a launchpad for sustained growth throughout the year ahead. If you need a hand, please get in touch.

September 8, 2025
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opportunity cost, time is money, smart time management, opportunities

How Small Business Owners Should Really Spend Their Time

By A Helping Hand, Focus

Running a small business is rewarding. It gives you a real sense of achievement (most of the time) but it often feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. With so many responsibilities competing for attention,  how are you supposed to work out what is the work you, as the business owner, should be doing and what should be assigned either to others or further down the priority list. Here’s our thoughts on this…

Strategic Planning and Vision

The most critical role of a business owner is setting the direction for the company. Without a clear vision and strategy, it’s easy to drift aimlessly, responding to daily fires rather than steering the business forward. Regularly set aside time to:

  • Define short-term and long-term goals
  • Evaluate industry trends and adapt accordingly
  • Develop strategies to differentiate from competitors
  • Review financial health and adjust business models as needed

By dedicating time to strategic planning, business owners ensure they are proactively growing their business rather than simply managing it.

Building and Maintaining Customer Relationships

Customers are the lifeblood of any small business; without them you don’t have a business. While automation and delegation can help you manage customer interactions, you should be directly involved in building relationships with key clients. This means:

  • Personally reaching out to top customers
  • Gathering feedback to improve products or services
  • Handling customer complaints effectively
  • Showing appreciation through loyalty rewards or personalised messages

A personal touch can significantly impact customer retention and word-of-mouth marketing, leading to long-term success.

Marketing and Brand Growth

You must never underestimate the importance of consistent marketing. There are parts of your marketing you can, and probably should, outsource but there are aspects where you as the business owner have to be involved. Owners should focus on:

  • Defining what your brand is all about, and for who (your Ideal Clients)
  • Engaging, as the business’ figurehead, with customers on social media
  • Understanding what is and isn’t working, marketing-wise
  • Considering new marketing channels to reach wider audiences, alongside your senior marketing resource (whether internal or outsourced)

Marketing isn’t just about selling—it’s about telling your brand’s story and ensuring it resonates with customers.

Hiring and Developing a Strong Team

A small business’s success is heavily dependent on its team. The owner’s role in hiring and developing talent is essential to creating a thriving work culture. Prioritise:

  • Hiring employees who align with the company’s values and vision
  • Providing ongoing training and mentorship
  • Empowering employees with clear roles and responsibilities
  • Fostering a positive workplace culture to improve retention

A strong team allows business owners to delegate effectively and focus on high-impact activities rather than micromanaging.

Financial Oversight and Profitability

You can leave the everyday finances to your accountant or bookkeeper, but understanding your business’ financial health is crucial. Regularly reviewing financial reports and ensuring profitability should be a top priority. Key areas to monitor include:

  • Cash flow and expenses
  • Profit margins and pricing strategies
  • Tax planning and compliance
  • Opportunities for cost-cutting or investment

Being proactive about finances prevents surprises and ensures sustainable growth.

Systemising and Automating Processes

Time is a your most valuable asset. Implementing efficient systems and automation helps you free up time for more strategic tasks. Consider:

  • Using software for accounting, project management, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  • Automating repetitive tasks such as invoicing and email follow-ups
  • Creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) for routine processes

Well-structured systems improve efficiency, reduce human error, and allow the business to run smoothly even when the owner steps away.

Networking and Business Development

No business operates in isolation. Building a strong network can open doors for you to new opportunities, partnerships, and industry insights. You should allocate time to:

  • Attending industry events and networking opportunities
  • Forming strategic partnerships
  • Engaging in local business communities or online forums
  • Seeking mentorship from experienced professionals

Networking isn’t just about gaining customers—it’s about building relationships that foster long-term success.

Innovation and Continuous Learning

The business landscape is constantly evolving, and staying ahead requires continuous learning. Whether it’s adopting new technologies, improving leadership skills, or exploring market trends, you should dedicate time to:

  • Reading industry news and books on business development
  • Taking relevant courses or attending workshops
  • Experimenting with new ideas and innovations
  • Learning from both successes and failures

A commitment to growth and learning helps businesses stay competitive and adaptable.

Small business owners wear many hats, but their time is best spent on activities that drive growth, improve efficiency, and strengthen relationships. By focusing on strategic planning, customer engagement, marketing, financial oversight, team development, automation, networking, continuous learning, and personal well-being, business owners can create a thriving, sustainable company while maintaining a fulfilling personal life.

Time is the most valuable resource—spend it wisely.

July 28, 2025
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just a trickle coming through because of a blocked pipeline

What’s blocking your growth?

By Marketing Performance, Measure

just a trickle coming through because of a blocked pipelineAnd where is it in your pipeline?

As the owner of a small business, you want to see your “baby” grow. You’re investing time, money, blood sweat and tears into this business and growth is the ROI you need.

Your growth is determined by performance in three areas of your business: marketing, sales and operations.

  • You cannot add clients if your marketing isn’t generating leads
  • Leads need to be converted into sales if your business is to grow
  • Operations needs to deliver, or you will lose clients

If your growth stalls, you need to quickly identify where the issue is, so you can resolve it and restore growth. Here is what we recommend you do:

Is Operations blocking growth?

Problems here will most likely show up as either lower sale values or client churn. You’ve invested time and money in acquiring clients, so losing them through operational issues is going to be painful. As this isn’t our area of expertise, we’ll leave this here!

Is Sales blocking growth?

If the issue is in your Sales function, there are two reasons for this:

  1. Poor quality leads that are never likely to be converted.
  2. An inability to sell

Review your conversion rate.

If historically you have converted 20% of all leads, but now you’re only converting 10%, what has changed? Have you changed parts of your Sales function? A new salesperson may take some time to get up to speed, do this may be a blip. If an individual’s conversion rate has dropped, you need to talk to them and find out why. Do they need more training? Has something happened in their personal life? If you don’t find out, you cannot do anything about it.

Review your leads

Has the quality of your leads changed? Has Sales spoken to Marketing to let them know? If they haven’t and Marketing hasn’t spotted the issue, the conversation needs to happen quickly if you are to unblock your growth.

Is Marketing blocking growth?

The first step in identifying if Marketing is the issue is knowing your numbers. Unfortunately, we see too many small businesses that do not know them. The numbers will tell you what action is needed to turn things around.

Marketing platform reports

Every digital marketing tool you use has a reporting function. They will tell you what has changed:

  • Are you not getting the engagement you used to on your social media channels?
  • Have your email marketing open and click rates dropped?
  • Are you slipping down the search rankings
  • Are fewer people seeing and clicking on your PPC campaigns?

With much of your marketing aimed at driving the right traffic to your website, have you checked Google Analytics to see what is happening with your website traffic? Looking here first will give you a good steer on where you need to look.

Budgets

In times of uncertainty, marketing budgets are often cut first. As the business owner, you’ll know if you’ve cut the budget, but have you checked whether the budget is being used? If Marketing has changed something, they may not have told you.

Is the market changing?

Over time markets change. Fashions, technology and other factors may mean less demand for your products/services. Ask the people who were at Kodak or BlackBerry. Keeping your finger on the pulse if vital for the success of your business.

 

Finding where your growth is blocked is critical in growing any small business. That’s why the first thing we do with any new client is Measure. We make sure that our clients know what is and isn’t working within their business, not just within their marketing so that we can then start planning how to generate the growth they are looking for.

If you need some help in growing your business, get in touch. Let’s talk about your business goals and how to unblock your growth.

April 14, 2025
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