“People don’t really understand what we do.”

It’s a surprisingly common problem.

The business has been operating successfully for years. It has customers, employees, products, services and plenty of expertise.

Everyone inside the company knows exactly what it does.

The problem is… nobody else seems to.

In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at why businesses so often struggle to explain themselves clearly, and why the problem may go much deeper than the wording on the homepage.

Ask the Managing Director what the business does and you get one answer. Ask Sales and you get another. Visit the website and you’re greeted with something about delivering innovative solutions through customer-focused excellence.

Excellent.

But what do you actually do?

We look at how familiarity, technical knowledge and corporate language can make businesses unnecessarily difficult to understand, and why phrases such as innovative, leading, trusted, solutions and excellence often make companies sound remarkably similar to everyone else.

There’s a simple test.

Show your website to someone who doesn’t work for the company for five seconds, then ask:

• What does this company do?
• Who is it for?
• Why might someone choose it?

If they can’t answer the first question, you’ve got work to do.

We also explore why trying to say everything can result in customers understanding almost nothing, why businesses should talk about customer problems rather than simply listing capabilities, and why clear almost always beats clever.

But there’s a more uncomfortable possibility.

Perhaps the marketing is confusing because the business itself isn’t entirely clear about what it is.

Companies grow. Services get added. New markets appear. Acquisitions happen. Someone asks whether you can do something slightly different and the answer is, naturally, “Yes, we can do that too.”

Ten years later, the company offers 23 things across 11 markets and nobody can quite explain what connects them.

At that point, you don’t have a copywriting problem.

You have a positioning problem.

And the marketing team can’t create clarity that the leadership team hasn’t created strategically.

So before rewriting the website, ask:

• What business are we actually in?
• Which customers matter most?
• What do we want to be known for?
• Where do we have a genuine advantage?

Because customers don’t owe you 20 minutes of concentration to decode your marketing.

Clarity is your responsibility.

Your customers aren’t stupid.

They’re just not as interested in your business as you are, and expecting them to work hard to understand you is rarely a winning marketing strategy.

Clear beats clever. Almost every time.

Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer positioning, better decisions and considerably less corporate nonsense.

Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand.

Produced in Scotland.

“We’re spending quite a lot on Google Ads.”

How much?

“About £8,000 a month.”

And is it working?

“We think so.”

Ah.

In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin tackles a question many business owners and Managing Directors eventually ask:

Are we spending too much on Google Ads?

The answer might be yes.

But you could also be spending too little.

Because the important question isn’t how much you’re spending. It’s whether you’re spending the right amount, and whether anyone can clearly explain the commercial return you’re getting from it.

Google Ads can be extremely effective. It can put your business in front of potential customers at precisely the moment they’re looking for what you sell.

But clicks aren’t customers. Impressions aren’t revenue. And a cheap lead isn’t necessarily a good lead.

We look at why businesses need to follow leads beyond Google and into the sales pipeline, connecting campaigns with qualified opportunities, customers, revenue and ultimately profitability.

There’s also the awkward question of whether Google Ads is genuinely creating demand or simply taking credit for customers who were already searching for your business.

Then there’s the website.

Because you can target the perfect audience, choose the right keywords and write an excellent advert, only to spend money sending people to a confusing website that immediately makes them wonder whether they’ve come to the right place.

Increasing your advertising budget doesn’t fix a broken customer journey.

It just sends more people through it.

We also explore how Google Ads can gradually become a habit. The campaign runs. The agency manages it. Leads arrive. The invoice gets paid. Another month begins.

Eventually nobody asks:

“If we had this entire budget back today, would we invest all of it in Google Ads again?”

Perhaps you would.

If £15,000 of advertising is reliably generating £120,000 in profitable new business, the size of the budget isn’t necessarily the problem.

The objective isn’t simply to spend less.

It’s to waste less.

So before dramatically increasing your Google Ads budget, or slashing it because the monthly invoice looks frightening, ask:

“What commercial result are we actually getting from this?”

If nobody can answer, start there.

Because the most dangerous marketing spend isn’t necessarily the expensive stuff.

It’s the spending nobody can properly explain.

Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer strategy, better decisions and marketing investment that actually makes commercial sense.

Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand.

Produced in Scotland.

Fractional CMO. or Fractional Marketing Director, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing.

It’s a title that has become considerably more common over the past few years. Unfortunately, the more popular it becomes, the less clear it sometimes seems to be what one actually does.

So let’s clear something up.

A Fractional CMO isn’t someone who does a fraction of your marketing.

They’re not supposed to arrive every Tuesday, write three LinkedIn posts, adjust a Google Ad and disappear again.

In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at what business owners and Managing Directors should genuinely expect when they bring senior fractional marketing leadership into their business.

A good Fractional CMO should start by understanding the business before prescribing the marketing. Where are you trying to go? What’s driving growth? What’s holding it back? Who are your best customers? What’s Sales struggling with? Where is the marketing budget going and is any of it actually working?

From there, you should expect clarity, strategy, leadership, challenge and commercial accountability.

That means connecting marketing with the wider commercial strategy, providing direction to internal teams and agencies, challenging assumptions and being prepared to ask uncomfortable but useful questions such as:

“Why are we spending money on this?”

It also means recognising that more marketing isn’t necessarily better marketing.

Sometimes the first contribution of experienced marketing leadership isn’t launching another campaign or increasing the budget.

It’s stopping things.

Software nobody needs. Agency services that aren’t delivering. Events attended through habit. Underperforming channels. Activity that exists largely because nobody has asked why it’s still happening.

We also look at what you shouldn’t expect.

A Fractional CMO isn’t an entire marketing department. Their job isn’t necessarily to personally write every article, design every advert, manage every social account and update every page of your website.

Senior marketers can and should roll up their sleeves when required, but that isn’t where most of their value lies.

You’re not hiring another pair of hands. You’re hiring another experienced head.

And over time, good fractional leadership should help build capability inside the business, developing people, improving agencies, establishing systems and creating a marketing function that becomes stronger and more self-sufficient.

Because when marketing lacks leadership, the instinct is often to do more.

More campaigns. More channels. More content. More agencies. More software.

When what the business may really need is someone experienced enough to say:

“Here’s what actually matters.”

And then make sure it happens.

Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer strategy, better decisions and marketing that genuinely supports business growth.

Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand.

Produced in Scotland.