Founder & Chief Executive Officer
I have a client who just booked over a million dollars in revenue, and we were talking recently about the fact that he has absolutely zero social media presence.
I have another client who, without social media, would not book a single piece of business.
What do these two people have in common? Nothing. They are not in the same industry, they do not have the same strategy, and almost nothing about how they win work resembles the other. Both are doing well.
I bring this up because marketing is not cut and paste, and the internet is full of people selling the idea that it is.
The reason those two clients look nothing alike is that their buyers behave nothing alike.
One sells into a world where decisions happen through relationships, referrals, and conversations that never touch a feed. His buyers are not scrolling for a provider, so a social strategy would be effort spent where his market does not look. The other sells into a space where people genuinely discover and evaluate options on social platforms, so being absent there removes him from consideration entirely.
Neither of them is doing marketing better than the other. They are both doing the version that matches where their buyers actually are, which is the only standard that matters.
Summary Two clients succeed with opposite strategies because their buyers behave differently. One sells through relationships and referrals, the other through platforms where buyers discover options, and each matched the strategy to the audience.
This is why I get frustrated by the content strategy template you can download, or the six-week program for $2,000 that promises your business will skyrocket.
I wish it were that easy. I wish you could copy exactly what somebody else did online and have it work for you. These products sell well because they remove the hardest part, which is thinking about your specific situation, and they replace it with instructions that feel actionable.
What they quietly assume is that your audience behaves like the audience of the person who built the template. When that assumption holds, the program looks brilliant. When it does not, you spend six weeks and $2,000 executing well against the wrong channel, and then conclude that you are bad at marketing. You were following a map drawn for somewhere else.
Summary Templates and programs assume your audience behaves like the audience of whoever built them. When that assumption fails, you execute well against the wrong channel and conclude you are bad at marketing.
Before deciding where to put your energy, figure out where your people already are and what they are willing to consume from you.
Where do they go when they need what you sell? Some markets open Google. Some ask a colleague. Some scroll a specific platform. Some rely on an industry association, a trade publication, or a referral network that has existed for decades. Each of those implies a completely different plan, and getting this wrong is the single most expensive mistake in small business marketing, since it wastes everything built on top of it.
Then ask what they actually want to consume. Some audiences happily watch short video. Some want a detailed written piece they can forward to a partner. Some want to meet you in person before anything else happens. Matching the format to the appetite matters as much as matching the channel.
Summary Identify where your buyers go when they need what you sell, whether that is search, a referral network, a specific platform, or an industry body. Then match the format to what they actually want to consume.
I say this as somebody who runs social accounts for a living, so take it in the spirit it is meant. If your buyers do not make decisions on social platforms, you are allowed to not be there.
My million dollar client is the proof. He is not quietly failing at social media, he simply has no use for it, and the energy that would have gone into producing content goes into the relationships and referral work that actually generates his revenue. That is a legitimate strategy rather than a gap in his marketing.
There is a real cost to getting this wrong in the other direction too. Half-hearted social presence across four platforms, maintained out of obligation, produces very little and consumes the time that could have gone into whatever actually works for you. Choosing to skip a channel deliberately is a strategic decision. Doing everything badly because you feel you should is not.
Summary If your buyers do not make decisions on social platforms, skipping social is a legitimate strategy rather than a gap. Maintaining a half-hearted presence out of obligation consumes time that could go toward what actually works.
Here is the distinction I want to make carefully, because the two get confused constantly.
My client has no social media presence. He absolutely has a website, and that matters enormously, because of what happens after somebody hears about him. A referral tells a colleague to call him. That colleague looks him up before making contact, because that is simply what people do now. Around 75% of people judge a company’s credibility based on its website, and roughly 85% of consumers research a business online before purchasing. Those behaviours do not switch off because the introduction came from a trusted source.
So even the most relationship-driven business in the world needs the thing people find when they go looking. Your website is doing verification work, confirming that you are real, established, and worth the call. Good website design makes that moment reassuring, and a capable web developer builds something that holds up to scrutiny from somebody who already has a reason to trust you.
Search matters here too, in a quieter way. Search engine optimization makes sure that when somebody searches your name, or searches for what you do in a moment of need, they find you rather than a competitor. For a referral-driven business, a good SEO company is often protecting the bottom of the funnel rather than filling the top, and that work is just as valuable. Social media is one channel among many. Your website is the infrastructure underneath all of them.
Summary Around 75% of people judge credibility by a company’s website and 85% research online before purchasing, including after a referral. Website design does verification work, and search engine optimization makes sure people find you when they go looking.
All of this depends on knowing your people deeply, which takes less effort than most owners assume.
Ask your existing clients how they found you and what made them choose you, since the answers are frequently different from what you expected. Look at where your best clients came from rather than where your most numerous enquiries came from. Pay attention to the questions you get asked repeatedly, because those reveal what your audience is actually trying to figure out. And notice which channels your competitors invest in seriously, which tells you something about where the market is paying attention.
If you want help turning that into a plan, this is the exact work a marketing consultant or fractional CMO does, and it is the part worth paying for, since getting channel strategy right determines whether everything else you do lands. Some marketing training can also give you the framework to run this analysis yourself. Any marketing agency worth working with should be asking you about your audience before recommending a single tactic.
Summary Ask existing clients how they found you, look at where your best clients came from, and notice what questions you get repeatedly. A marketing consultant or fractional CMO does exactly this work, and channel strategy determines whether everything else lands.
One client books over a million dollars with zero social media. Another would book nothing without it. They share no industry, no strategy, and no common approach, and both are right.
Marketing is highly dependent on your audience, what they are willing to consume from you, and where they buy in the first place. No downloadable strategy and no six-week program knows any of that about your business.
So before you decide where your energy goes, look at your audience and where they shop, then get to know them as deeply as you possibly can. Everything else follows from that.
Sources:
Zippia, Website Statistics (75% of people judge a company’s credibility based on its website; 85% of consumers research a business online before purchasing, and 76% of customers intending to buy in store check the business’s website beforehand).
https://www.zippia.com/advice/website-statistics/
BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey (85% of consumers search a business name alongside reviews before purchasing), reported via Review42.
https://resources.review42.com/online-reputation-management-statistics/
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