The annual advertising spend of Facebook vs. LinkedIn is a whopping $84B vs. $3B in 2021.

The shift of marketing to focus on driving growth hasn’t been easy.

In the world of small business - this shift is even more profound.

When every minute of the day counts - decisions about where you spend your time, and how you are investing your marketing dollars matter.

Marketing means fluff, unless it is tied to a strong sales process that has been proven as working for your business.

Marketing also CANNOT compensate for a poor sales process.

“Do not rely on automation” was the advice I once gave to one of our clients as we were honing the campaign process.

Good marketing can deliver leads… it does not necessarily mean those leads turn into sales if your sales process or follow-up is poor.

Or if you rely on automation as an excuse not to reach out.

When your campaigns are not generating the leads, sales or returns you were hoping - the first thing to do is to scrutinise your sales process.

Asking yourself the following questions:

Have you distilled the TRUE front and center pain of your target client, that will trigger them to pay for a solution?

Are you trying to sell too big of a chunk at once, vs. being strategic in your marketing to align to your sales process?

Is your current sales follow up and close process sufficient, and are you being sufficiently diligent in follow through?

In summary, I leave you with a few final points:

• The role of marketing in your business must tie strongly and directly to an ROI through revenue growth (i.e. paying clients).
• Marketing for the sake of branding (loads of blogging, podcasts, social media posting, attending zoom networking events...) when the above has not been achieved or without a strategy, is fluff marketing and a distraction of your time from your core business. You may get loads of nice to know you coffee conversations, but not actual paying clients.
• For your marketing to drive growth, it is important that you first have a clear grasp of and your sales process (channels for leads, number of touch points needed to get someone to a call, pains they respond to, how many calls to convert your average client, etc..).
• And then have this mapped to a campaign or marketing process that can help you scale and automate that process to turn cold individuals to prospects, to paying clients.