As a business becomes established, marketing problems will appear at some point. Systems get outdated, copy needs to be refreshed, and strategy needs to be revisited. The longer a company is in business, the trickier it can be to figure out what isn’t working. Layers, habits and change have been compounding over time.
Marketing issues routinely start to show up around the five and ten-year mark. They can occur at anytime, but they also tend to follow growth patterns. Here, you’re well past the startup phase and now have stable revenue, systems, and a clear understanding of your work and your clients. Decisions now are less about getting enough clients and more about company direction.
You may feel ready for change (or not), whether through a new phase of growth, responding to changing market conditions, new ventures or hiring more employees. When this happens, and you are still operating inside systems and marketing habits built for an earlier version of the business, problems will start appearing.
Why Reactive Fixes Stop Working
When audience engagement drops or inquiries slow down, dips in revenues occur; the human nature instinct is to react. Reaction has you doing what you’ve always done or scrambling to figure it out. You tweak your website, rewrite copy, post more, push harder. Try something new. Things still aren’t working.
For established businesses, marketing problems are rarely about effort or creativity. They’re about misapplied effort. Reacting quickly, especially by changing several things at once, makes it harder to see what’s actually driving results. When too many adjustments happen at the same time, it is very difficult to see what is producing what result.
This is why many well-intentioned marketing fixes fail. Not because they’re wrong, but because they’re applied without understanding where the real issue is.
Three Places Marketing Can Get Jammed Up
Most marketing issues for established service providers usually show up in one of three places:
- Copy — the message
- Structure — the system
- Focus — the direction
You need all three working together, but usually one is doing the most damage. Sometimes, when you work out the problem in one, another issue appears – it is part of the unravelling and rebalancing process. This does not necessarily mean you are fixing the wrong thing.
Before jumping on one of them, be proactive by taking a good, deep look at the symptoms. Figure out the root cause before reactively and anxiously spending time on repairing the copy, structure or focus.
For copy, structure and focus, I will next discuss them in more detail, show you the signs and symptoms of how they appear when they aren’t working, and what to do about it.
1. When the Issue Is Copy
Really good copywriting weaves in brand, language, strategy, creativity, clarity and simplicity. Sometimes business owners can get caught in a loop of fixing phrases, SEO keywords, changing titles, second guessing the words they use. Copy is not about better words. It’s about clearer meaning.
Copy is how clearly your marketing communicates:
- Who you help
- What problem you solve
- The benefits your services provide
- Why it matters now
- What action the audience is supposed to take next, step by step
Signs copy may be the issue
- The right people are seeing your marketing, but there is a low response rate
- Sales conversations stall around understanding or value
- You attract interest, but people don’t buy
- Website visitors leave without taking action (such as downloading a lead magnet, clicking on an offer, checking out your social media, or reading your blog)
What’s usually happening
This is rarely a creativity issue. More often, it’s:
- Your position is unclear
- The value appears weak or generic
- The audience gets confused about what you are talking about (through your copy, inconsistent branding, graphics and layout)
- The audience can’t see how you can solve their problem
- Too much explanation and not enough relevance for how to move forward
Ask yourself:
If the right person landed here (website, social media, sales pages), would they immediately know this is for them, why it matters to them and what to do next?
If visibility exists but conversion does not, the copy is often the source of constraint.
2. When the Issue Is Structure
Structure is the invisible side of marketing, but it becomes glaring when it’s bottlenecked or not functioning as needed.
Structure is how your marketing operates over time. It is your:
- Systems and processes
- Platforms working together
- How people move from awareness to trust, to action
Signs structure may be the issue
- Leads are inconsistent (eg. are there posting and follow-up routines)
- Marketing only works when you’re actively pushing, but audience engagement drops the moment you slow down (do you have systems in place to carry on when you are not there)
- It feels like you’re constantly restarting, trying something new and asking yourself, “How do I do this again?”
What’s usually happening
This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a design problem, and that can be fixed! What a good marketing system will fix is:
- Too much reliance on manual effort
- No reliable path for people to engage and progress
- Activities that don’t compound into leads and sales
Ask yourself:
Does this marketing still work when I’m not actively pushing it?
If effort is high but results don’t sustain themselves, structure is likely where attention is needed.
3. When the Issue Is Focus
Long-term, this is the most costly marketing problem
Marketing your business must align and follow your corporate strategic plan. Where the business goes, your marketing must support. They work together, but marketing must take direction from your business strategic plan. The strategic plan will identify your customer base, budget, services you provide now, new ventures and long-term plan.
If you spend your time, energy and money on marketing that is not in alignment with the business strategy, you will stall growth, limit and possibly lose revenue, and get off track quickly. It becomes a source of frustration and distraction in your business. This is critical to pay attention to in an established company.
Focus problems are often the hardest to see — and the most expensive to ignore.
Focus is about direction:
- Who your marketing is truly for
- Which problems you identify and solve for your clients
- What makes you unique compared to your competitors
- What services you provide and offer now, and plan to offer in the future
- Where you concentrate attention and resources in marketing
Signs focus may be the issue
- Multiple audiences, offers, or messages running at once
- You are doing what you’ve always done and have not reflected on it
- You’re busy, visible, and unsure what’s driving results
- You attract people who aren’t a strong fit
What’s usually happening
This isn’t about doing too little. It’s about spreading effort too thin or in an outdated direction.
- Competing priorities cancel our progress
- No single message gets enough emphasis to compound
Ask yourself:
If you removed 50% of your marketing efforts, would results improve or collapse?
If nothing clearly drives growth, focus is often the underlying issue.
Why Fewer Changes Create Better Results
Marketing works best when treated as a system with limits, not an endless set of options. When you reactively change too many things at once, you don’t improve marketing results and can end up creating more confusion for you, your staff and your customers.
Small, intentional changes applied in the right place outperform big overhauls. Clarity compounds faster than creativity. That is why getting clarity first, through reflection and assessment, then creativity will follow in the design. The design is derived from informed creativity.
Growth doesn’t come from doing more things better.
It comes from doing fewer things on purpose.
Conclusion: Clear Decisions Beat More Effort
Established businesses don’t need quick, random fixes. Instead, they need clear, informed decisions. Understanding whether your issue is copy, structure, or focus makes growth simpler and far less frustrating. It allows you to intervene precisely, preserve what’s working, and stop fixing things that aren’t necessarily broken.
Wanting to grow your business, but getting stuck trying to fix something that just isn’t working? Hop on a call with me, and I will help you find clarity in the next strategic steps for marketing your business.