The Messy Truth About Marketing Your Business | #206

Businesses need marketing. If nobody knows you exist, remembers what you do, or understands why they might choose you, you're going to have a fairly fundamental commercial problem.

But how much of being in business should reasonably be spent demonstrating that you're in business?

In this episode, I look at how marketing has changed from a function of business into something that can feel remarkably like a second business in its own right.

Social media democratised publishing and gave businesses extraordinary access to audiences they could never previously have reached. But it also helped create a culture in which business owners are expected to become copywriters, photographers, videographers, presenters, email marketers, community managers, and personal brands, continually producing evidence that they're worth hiring.

I explore the difference between marketing your work and performing your business, why marketing can become a way of managing commercial uncertainty, and what happens when creator logic gets applied to businesses that don't actually need enormous audiences.

Because a consultant who needs three good clients has a very different marketing problem from a creator whose income depends on millions of views.

I also look at what changes as a business matures. Years of good work, relationships, referrals, recommendations, intellectual property, and accumulated experience create something another social media post can't manufacture overnight: reputation.

Perhaps mature marketing becomes less about manufacturing attention and more about accumulating and maintaining that reputation.

So instead of asking how you can become more visible, there's a more commercially useful question:

What is marketing actually for in your business right now?

The goal isn't necessarily to become so visible that everybody knows who you are. It's to build enough reputation that the right people know why they should call you.

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