The Most Valuable Thing I Do for Businesses Has Nothing To Do With Marketing
Two years into life as a consultant, I've realised that the most valuable thing I do for clients has very little to do with marketing.
That's probably a strange thing for a marketer to admit.
Most people come to me because they think they need more social media, email automation, PR or perhaps even a rebrand. They want advice on the tactic.
Sometimes they're right.
But more often than not, they're jumping to solutions before they've properly diagnosed the problem.
Business growth is a bit like managing a vineyard. Stay with me.
If the vines aren't thriving, a good viticulturist doesn't start by looking at the fruit. They look at the conditions that produced it: the soil, the water, the climate and the overall health of the vineyard.
Business growth works much the same way.
I was reminded of this last week during a call with a business owner. They felt they weren't getting the traction they deserved and wanted support with visibility, publicity and launching a new concept. On the surface, it sounded like a marketing brief.
But after an hour of talking, we'd barely discussed marketing.
Instead, we found ourselves talking about staff capability, customer experience, accountability, resource allocation and the challenge of following through on good ideas when you're busy running a business.
By the end of the conversation, it became clear that the business didn't have a marketing problem. It had plenty of opportunities. The challenge was deciding which opportunities mattered most and where to focus limited time, money and energy.
The breakthrough didn't come from me providing answers. It came from asking the right questions.
Promotion and Strategy Are Not the Same Thing
Let’s do some myth-busting, if you’ll indulge me.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see is the belief that promotional activity automatically leads to business growth.
I can tell you first-hand, it doesn’t.
A discount campaign might drive demand, but if the customer experience is poor, that demand won’t return. A PR campaign might generate attention, but if your website isn’t converting visitors, you’ve simply paid to create traffic. A social media campaign might attract a new audience, but if you don’t have the systems or processes to nurture those customers, the opportunity disappears as quickly as it arrived.
Businesses that achieve sustainable growth don’t succeed because of one brilliant campaign. They succeed because strategy, operations, capability, technology and marketing are all working together.
Many of the businesses I work with are already successful. They’re not start-ups and they’re not failing. They’re established businesses with good products, loyal customers and plenty of opportunities in front of them.
What they’re short on isn’t opportunity. It’s time.
Not time to post on Instagram or send another EDM.
Time to think. Time to analyse. Time to prioritise. Time to work on the business rather than simply in it.
And that’s often where the real growth opportunity sits.
Looking Below the Surface
Here are the questions I find myself asking founders:
Do you have a clear position in the market?
Do you understand your customer?
Does your team have the capability to execute?
Are the right systems and technology in place?
Can you accurately measure what's working and what's not?
Are you investing your time and money in the areas that will have the greatest impact?
In my experience, the biggest breakthroughs don't come from me walking into a business with all the answers. They come from creating the time and space to ask better questions.
Questions that challenge assumptions, uncover blind spots and help business owners see opportunities, risks and priorities more clearly. Because you can't solve the right problem until you've identified it.
That's ultimately where the value sits. Not in the marketing plan, the campaign or the tactic itself. The value comes from creating the space to step back, think objectively and ask better questions before deciding what to do next.
Why I Built the Growth Readiness Diagnostic
If you've been reading this article and nodding along, I've got good news.
I've spent the past two years asking these questions with clients and recently I turned them into a tool that you can complete yourself.
The Growth Readiness Diagnostic is designed to help business owners step back, assess their business objectively and identify where their biggest opportunities and constraints might sit.
It explores areas that I consistently see influencing performance across food, wine, hospitality and tourism businesses. Three relate directly to marketing. The others focus on the foundations that enable marketing to succeed, including leadership, capability and commercial.
It takes around 10 minutes to complete and can be done on your phone with a coffee in hand.
I've tested it with a range of businesses and have been pleasantly surprised by how accurately it reflects the challenges many operators are facing. Not because it's magic but because taking the time to answer thoughtful questions often reveals things we already know but haven't made time to acknowledge.
You may uncover a blind spot.
You may identify a quick win.
Or you may discover that the thing you've been trying to fix isn't actually the problem at all.
You can complete the Growth Readiness Diagnostic here:
https://www.hollyformosa.com/diagnostic
Pour yourself a coffee, set aside 10 minutes and give it a go. You might be surprised by what you uncover.