Why Your Marketing Isn’t Working Yet (And Why That’s a Good Sign)

Most business owners don’t actually have a marketing problem, they have a timeline problem. They expect results right now. They think that once they start posting more online and taking it more seriously, that it’s going to turn their business around overnight. 

This happens even if there aren’t any problems with the business – it’s profitable, it’s growing slowly – and they just want something that’s going to take them to the next level right now. But the truth is, it just doesn’t work like that. 

So you post photo carousels for a couple weeks and nothing happens. You try video and it feels horribly awkward – you invest in content, and leads don’t come in right away. From there you assume it isn’t working, and that everyone else you see doing it knows something you don’t – so you pivot your strategy or you give up and stop all together. 

The problem isn’t the strategy though. It isn’t you either. You’re doing everything right by just doing it in the first place. The problem is that you’re severely underestimating how long marketing actually takes to have a positive impact on your business.

Here’s the reality. The best organic marketing strategies aren’t built for immediate returns – that’s what paid ads are for. Organic marketing is built for compound returns that eventually overtake the potency of paid advertising – but most people get frustrated and give up well before any of that compounding has a chance to take effect. 

In marketing, there’s this idea about selling the vacation on the beach, not the plane ride to get there. So as marketers, any time we’re trying to show someone the value of buying something, it isn’t the specs or the small technicalities of the process that get people excited to buy – it’s the end result. It’s the finished kitchen, the body transformation or the new outlook on life. 

And you buy into this too. Any time you’re sold anything, you’re purchasing the vacation on the beach. But you need to remove this expectation from your mind when you’re marketing your business. The truth is that you don’t get to have that vacation on the beach without the plane ride there. And you’re the one who has to manage building the plane, making sure it’s fuelled up, and finding the right pilot to get you there safely. 

Obviously, this will take a very, very long time – especially because you don’t know anything about planes. But because we’ve been conditioned to have these unrealistic expectations, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking our marketing efforts will pay off instantaneously. We post something and we get leads. We run ads and we get clients. We show up and we get results. 

Real marketing just doesn’t work like this. When you’re posting organic content to build your business, you’re doing a number of things. You’re building awareness, trust, proof, familiarity and a collection of research materials for potential customers to absorb when they’re curious. None of these things will convert for you instantly, but all of them stack over time.

So, now that we understand this. Let’s consider where you might be going wrong. You aren’t allowing yourself to accept the predecided timeline – so you never commit yourself to the process long enough for it to work. But, the businesses that win at marketing – they don’t do this. They understand that the longer it takes, the more valuable it becomes. 

Marketing your business is the longest marathon that has ever been run. And while everyone else is sprinting for 3 weeks and then stopping for 3 months, the businesses that win at marketing have been doing it the whole time. Posting every day, looking at their analytics, readjusting and diving back in, posting blogs, updating their Google account, posting videos on YouTube. 

Every. Single. Week.

For these businesses, after a while marketing becomes like drinking water. It’s just something that you do every day. You don’t think about it, you don’t wonder if it’s working. You just do it. Because it keeps you alive. Once these businesses push across that barrier, they stop chasing instant results. 

Instead, they keep their focus on execution. They show up consistently. They document their work. They share real projects and real outcomes. They speak directly to their audiences and build a library of content that works for them long-term.

Operating like this removes the notion of “trying marketing.” Instead, it becomes the process of building an asset. This is the great differentiator. It’s the point in every business endeavour when a post from 3 months ago brings in a lead, a video you almost didn’t upload gets shared 15 times or when someone reaches out and says “I’ve been following you for a while. I want to work with you.”

The important thing to realize is that this doesn’t happen by accident. The businesses who know this and then do it didn’t catch some lucky break or get pushed by the algorithm randomly. It happened because they remained committed to the process for long enough. 

If you’re a business owner and you feel like your marketing isn’t working yet. Good. That means that you’re still early and you’re figuring it out. You’re still finding your voice and your process. The avoidable mistakes start coming when you convince yourself that it isn’t working yet, therefore marketing will never work. So you quit. Then you see a competitor growing faster than you, and you dive back in and try it for another month. Then you stop because “it isn’t working.” 

Why? Why would you do that? I want you to treat your marketing like exercise. If you do resistance training for a month and your gains are happening slowly – and you stop? Well the next time you decide that you want to get back into it, you’re starting from square one. 

This is the biggest waste of time and resources. Your fears about your marketing are not real. You just don’t understand how it works. The sooner you’re able to accept the fact that marketing your business effectively will take a really, really long time - the sooner you actually reach the tipping point and it begins to give you a positive return. 

This isn’t some woo woo gratitude thing or a manifestation hoax, it’s simply letting go of the destination we’ve been trained to look for – and falling into the flow of the process. The very process that’s required to get you to where you want to be.

If you’ve been picking away at your marketing for some time now and you haven’t seen results yet, just stick with it. Do it for the rest of your life, and it will skyrocket the growth of your business far beyond anything you ever expected. I can promise you that.

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To Your Success,

Jay Ashcroft

Ashcroft Media Co.