Why marketing should be helping to shape your business, not simply communicate what it does.
When we talk about marketing, the conversation often turns to what we are going to do. What campaigns should we run? What should we be posting on social media? Is our website doing its job? Should we be investing in Google Ads, video or perhaps some of the exciting new opportunities that AI is bringing to the table?
These are all important considerations, but I sometimes wonder whether, in our enthusiasm to explore the many ways we can market a business, we overlook the more fundamental role that marketing should be playing.
I recently heard a discussion about the broader value of marketing that prompted me to reflect on this. As someone who has spent more than 30 years in advertising and communications, and over 20 years running my own business, I have seen the marketing landscape change enormously. Yet, despite all the new platforms, technology and opportunities available to us, I believe the strategic role of marketing has become more important, not less.
For me, marketing is not simply about communicating what a business does. It is about understanding the world in which that business operates, identifying opportunities, recognising what matters to its customers and ensuring that the business remains relevant to the people it wants to reach.
And that requires us to look well beyond the next campaign.
Looking beyond the four walls of your business
As business owners, we become incredibly focused on the day-to-day realities of running our businesses. We are looking after clients, managing our teams, dealing with finances, meeting deadlines and making sure that everything continues to move forward. There is often very little time left to consider what is happening beyond our immediate environment.
Yet the world outside our businesses is constantly changing. Our customers’ needs evolve, new competitors enter the market, technology changes the way people search for information and make purchasing decisions, and broader economic and social influences affect how people think, behave and spend their money.
One of the most valuable roles marketing can play is to bring that outside perspective into the business.
It should help us understand not only who our customers are today, but how their needs and expectations may be changing. It should challenge our assumptions about the markets we serve, identify opportunities we may not have considered and recognise when something that worked particularly well in the past may no longer be as effective.
This is particularly important for SMEs. When you are deeply involved in delivering your product or service, it is easy to become so focused on what you do that you lose sight of how the market is experiencing it.
Sometimes the most valuable marketing conversation isn’t about what we should be communicating. It’s about whether what we are offering, how we are positioning ourselves and the people we are trying to reach are still aligned.
Keeping the business focused on what matters
Another challenge I see, particularly in smaller businesses, is that marketing can become a collection of activities rather than a considered approach to achieving business objectives.
We decide we need to be more active on LinkedIn, so we start posting. Someone suggests that we should be using TikTok, so we explore that. We hear about a new AI tool, a competitor launches a campaign or a particular type of content starts trending, and suddenly we are investing time and energy in another direction.
There is nothing wrong with exploring new opportunities. In fact, we should be doing exactly that. But the important question is whether those activities are helping us achieve what we set out to do in the first place.
This is where marketing needs to play a strategic role.
Before deciding what to do, we need to understand what we are trying to achieve. Are we looking to attract a new type of customer? Increase our share of an existing market? Build stronger relationships with current clients? Improve the quality of our enquiries? Establish credibility in a particular sector?
Once those objectives are clear, we can make far more informed decisions about where to invest our time, energy and budget.
At The Creative Distillery, we place enormous value on this clarity. It is why we believe in understanding the business before developing the communications, and why we continually review the results of what we are doing.
Marketing should provide a framework that keeps the business focused while remaining flexible enough to respond when circumstances change.
It should also be prepared to challenge an activity that is no longer serving the business, even if it happens to be the latest trend.
Understanding the difference between activity and impact
One of the greatest advantages of the digital landscape is the amount of information available to us. We can see how people are finding our businesses, which content they engage with, what they search for and how they interact with our websites and digital platforms.
But access to information is not the same as understanding it.
A campaign may generate thousands of impressions, a social media post may attract hundreds of likes and a website may experience a significant increase in traffic. These numbers can be encouraging, but they only become meaningful when we understand what they represent in relation to our objectives.
Are we reaching the right people? Is our content helping them understand the value we offer? Are we attracting genuine interest, building relationships or creating opportunities for the business?
Sometimes the numbers reveal that something is working particularly well and deserves more attention. At other times, they tell us that we need to reconsider our approach, refine our audience or change the way we are communicating.
This is why I believe reporting should be much more than a monthly summary of activity. It should be an opportunity to learn, question and make better decisions.
When marketing has a meaningful role in the business, those insights should inform more than the next social media calendar. They may influence how we position a service, which market we pursue, how we communicate with existing customers or where we invest our resources.
That is when marketing starts contributing to business decisions rather than simply reporting on marketing activity.
As technology advances, our humanity becomes more important
Of course, no discussion about the future of marketing would be complete without considering AI.
I find the possibilities incredibly exciting. We have access to tools that can help us research, analyse information, develop ideas and produce content in ways that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago.
For SMEs in particular, this creates opportunities to work more efficiently and access capabilities that may previously have been beyond their budgets.
But I also think we need to be careful not to confuse the ability to produce something with the ability to produce something meaningful.
AI can generate a beautifully written article, an impressive image or a professional-looking video. What it cannot independently guarantee is that the output reflects the nuances of your business, understands the people you are trying to reach or communicates something that will genuinely resonate with them.
Those things require human insight, judgement and an understanding of the brand.
As more businesses gain access to the same technology and similar tools, the risk is that we begin to sound and look increasingly alike. We may produce more content, more quickly, but without the thinking that gives it purpose or the personality that makes it distinctive.
I believe this makes our human contribution even more valuable.
The relationships we build, the experiences we create, the stories we tell and the way we make people feel cannot simply be reduced to an automated output. Technology can help us bring those things to life, but we still need to understand what makes them worth communicating.
For me, the opportunity lies in finding the right balance. We should absolutely embrace technology and the efficiencies it offers, while remaining intentional about where human creativity, empathy and judgement make the difference.
Giving marketing the role it deserves
Perhaps the biggest shift we need to make is to stop seeing marketing as something that happens after the important business decisions have been made.
Too often, marketing is brought into the conversation once a product has been developed, a service has been launched or a business has decided what it wants to achieve. The expectation is then that marketing will find the right words, platforms and campaigns to generate interest.
But imagine the value of having marketing involved earlier.
What if the insights we gather about customers help shape the services we develop? What if our understanding of the market helps identify opportunities for growth? What if the feedback we receive from our customers influences the way we deliver our services? And what if our marketing objectives are developed alongside our broader business objectives, rather than being treated as a separate exercise?
For an SME, this doesn’t necessarily mean employing a marketing director or building a large internal department. It means ensuring that someone with the right strategic understanding is involved in the conversations that shape the direction of the business.
That may be an internal team member, an external marketing partner or a combination of both. What matters is that marketing is given the opportunity to contribute its perspective, challenge assumptions and help translate business objectives into meaningful action.
Because ultimately, marketing should not simply be responsible for making a business more visible. It should help the business understand where it is going, how it is perceived, what its customers value and how it can continue to remain relevant.
And in a world where the pace of change shows no sign of slowing, I believe that is a contribution no business can afford to overlook.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
As a business owner or leader, how involved is marketing in shaping the direction of your business? Is it part of the strategic conversation, or does it tend to come into play once the decisions have already been made?
And for those working in marketing, do you feel you have the opportunity to contribute beyond the campaigns and communications you’re responsible for?
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