Marketing Shouldn’t Just Look Good. It Should Move Your Business Forward.

“We got 40,000 impressions last month.” Great. Did any of them actually do anything?

Marketing has never been short of things to measure. Website traffic, impressions, engagement, followers, email opens, search rankings, the list goes on! 

That’s not to say those numbers don’t matter. They do. But are they achieving the objectives you set out to achieve? 

Good marketing should help solve business problems, whether that means attracting higher-value customers, making sales conversations easier, recruiting better people or building the reputation that supports long-term growth.

When we work with our clients, we don’t discuss “What marketing should we do?”; we start with “What business problem are we trying to solve?” (possibly with a mouth full of jammy dodger biscuits; we love a sweet treat). Let’s explore why marketing should start with your goals, not just making you look good. 

Marketing is a business function, not the colouring-in department

Sure, marketing helps your organisation and brand look great (and we look good doing it too). But as important as it is, there’s more to it than that! 

Sales needs a brochure. There’s an exhibition coming up. Someone thinks the website looks a bit tired. The MD saw a competitor doing something on LinkedIn and would quite like one of those too.

Those requests are all useful marketing actions, but they start with the output. Instead, ask what you actually need that marketing to achieve.

Take the tired website. The real problem might not be how it looks. Perhaps the business has grown significantly, but the website still makes you look like the company you were five years ago. That could be making it harder to attract larger clients or convince prospects that you’re capable of handling more complex work.

Now you have a commercial problem to solve, rather than a homepage to make prettier.

The same applies across marketing. “We need more case studies” becomes “prospects need stronger proof that we can deliver this type of project”. “We need to do more SEO” becomes “we’re too reliant on referrals and need another route into the business”.

Once you know what needs to change, you can make much better decisions about the marketing required to change it.

Marketing metrics matter, but they need context

Likes, impressions, clicks, rankings and website traffic are useful indicators. They help us understand whether people are seeing and engaging with marketing. But they aren’t the entire picture. 

Imagine your website traffic increases by 50% over six months. Sounds brilliant. But, are they relevant visitors that could turn into prospects? 

The same applies to SEO. Ranking number one is only commercially useful if you’re ranking for searches made by people you actually want to reach. Ten thousand website visits from people who will never buy from you aren’t necessarily more valuable than 500 visits from decision-makers actively researching the problem you solve.

That doesn’t mean throwing your marketing metrics in the bin! It means connecting them to something bigger.

Increased search visibility brings more of the right people to your site who see the right messaging. That turns more visits into qualified enquiries that could be nurtured into valuable customers. Then you’ve got tangible business outcomes. 

Start with the business problem, then choose the marketing

One of the easiest ways to waste a marketing budget is to decide what you want to make before deciding what you need to achieve.

If the business wants to win larger clients, the answer might be stronger positioning, better case studies, more authoritative content and a website that reflects the scale of work you’re capable of delivering.

If the problem is a long sales cycle, marketing could help build trust earlier by answering common questions, demonstrating expertise and giving prospects stronger evidence before they ever speak to sales.

If recruitment is slowing growth, the answer could involve employer branding, employee stories, careers content and a digital presence that gives talented people a reason to choose you over the company down the road.

Different commercial problems require different marketing solutions. Starting with the problem stops businesses investing in activity simply because it feels like something they should be doing.

Good marketing should make sales easier

A prospect might find you through Google, read an article, see one of your LinkedIn posts, visit your website, disappear for a few months, come across a case study and eventually get in touch when there’s an actual requirement.

By the time sales speaks to them, marketing has already had several opportunities to answer some important questions. Do these people understand our industry? Have they solved this problem before? Can they deliver what we need? Do we trust them?

Get that right and sales doesn’t have to start every conversation from zero.

It can also help sales teams spend more time talking to people who already understand the value of what you do, rather than explaining the basics for the seventeenth time that week.

Stop asking what marketing you need

The next time someone says, “We need to do more marketing”, ask what they actually want the business to achieve.

More opportunities? Better clients? Faster sales? Greater visibility in a new market?

Marketing should look good, for sure. We’re a creative agency, and trust us, we know what good marketing looks like! 

But looking good isn’t the end goal.

Marketing becomes far more valuable when creativity, strategy and delivery are all focused on solving the right commercial problem.

Need marketing that moves your business forward?

At Spinks Creative, we work with ambitious businesses and lean marketing teams to turn commercial objectives into marketing that actually gets delivered.

From brand strategy and websites to content and campaigns, we bring the strategic thinking and creative firepower needed to solve marketing problems, support growth and give your internal team extra capacity when they need it.

Let’s chat about how we can make your campaigns look awesome and achieve your business goals at the same time.