You’ve spent money on marketing. Maybe a lot of it.
Agencies who promised the world. Google Ads campaigns. A website redesign. You did what you were supposed to do.
And it didn’t work.
You’re not alone. Most businesses between £1m and £10m revenue are spending on marketing without a reliable way to turn that spend into customers.
I’ve built three businesses from zero to multimillion revenue. I’ve wasted plenty of my own money on marketing that didn’t work before figuring out what does. Marketing usually fails for one of three reasons. And they’re all fixable.
You’re saying the wrong thing
This is where most businesses go wrong, and it’s the one nobody wants to hear.
Pull up your website. Now pull up two competitors. I’ll bet good money they all say roughly the same thing.
“We’re passionate about…”
“We’re the leading provider of…”
“We offer bespoke solutions for…”
Your customer has seen some version of this message hundreds of times today. They’ve already tuned out.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your customer doesn’t care about you. They care about their problem. They want to know that you understand it better than anyone else. And that you can make it disappear.
I worked with a software company selling an AI chatbot. They were pitching it to everyone: lawyers, accountants, car dealerships. Their marketing was all about features. “AI-powered.” “24/7 availability.” “Natural language processing.”
Sales were mediocre.
When I looked at the data, one sector was quietly outperforming everything else. Care homes were converting one in ten chat conversations into paying customers.
I asked the founder why.
“Families call at all hours of the night asking about room availability and pricing. The chatbot answers instantly. It just… solves the problem.”
We stopped talking about technology. We started talking about the 11pm phone call.
We repositioned the entire product for care homes. Rebuilt the messaging around that specific problem. Even raised the price because the value was so obvious.
Margins improved by 67%. Same product. Different message.
Most businesses never do the work to find their version of the 11pm phone call. They talk about themselves instead of talking about the customer’s problem. That’s why they get ignored.
What to do about it
Talk to your customers. Not a survey. Actual conversations. Ask them:
- What problem were you trying to solve when you found us?
- What were you worried about?
- What outcome were you hoping for?
Write down the exact words they use. Those words are your marketing. Not your mission statement. Not what your agency came up with. The words your actual paying customers use to describe why they chose you.
Get this right and everything else becomes easier. I’ve written about this in more detail in how to fix your messaging.
You’re spending in the wrong places
Once a business has a marketing budget, there’s pressure to spend it. Agencies encourage it. Platforms make it easy. Before long you’re running Google Ads, posting on four social media platforms, sponsoring events, and trying content marketing. All at once.
This is how most marketing budgets get wasted.
I worked with a company helping UK businesses meet their sustainability targets. They’d already tried Google Ads and written it off.
“We’ve already tried Google Ads. Doesn’t work. Wasted thousands.”
But when I looked at their ads, the messaging was all wrong. They cared deeply about the planet, so their ads were full of “climate emergency” and “net zero” language.
Their customers didn’t care nearly that much. They just wanted to tick a compliance box and move on.
We swapped the messaging from “save the planet” to “fast, hassle-free compliance.”
Cost per acquisition dropped 80%. Same channel. Different message.
The channel wasn’t broken. The message was.
This happens constantly. Businesses try a channel, it doesn’t work, and they move on to the next one. Then the next. Then they’re spread across five channels doing none of them well, and the whole thing feels like a money pit.
What to do about it
Stop spreading yourself thin. Pick one channel where your customers are already looking for what you sell. Google Ads, for example, puts you in front of people who are actively searching for a solution. That’s far easier than trying to build demand from nothing with cold outreach or social media.
Test it properly, with the right message this time, and measure what matters. Not impressions. Not clicks. Three numbers:
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): What does it actually cost you to win a customer through this channel?
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): What does it cost to deliver what you’ve sold?
Upfront Cash: How much revenue comes in within the first 30 days?
A channel only deserves more money when each new customer covers both COGS and CAC within 30 days. If it doesn’t, you either fix the offer to get more cash up front, or you find a different channel.
This is maths, not marketing. And once one channel is working profitably, your only job is to scale it as far as it will go before even thinking about adding another.
I break this process down step by step in finding the right channel.
You don’t have a system
Here’s the one that catches even good businesses off guard.
Marketing starts working. Leads come in. Revenue grows. Everyone’s busy.
Then quality drops. Delivery times stretch. Customers complain. Your best people burn out holding it together. You’ve hired three people just to keep up, and your margins have shrunk.
You’re making more money but keeping less of it.
Congratulations. You’ve become a busy idiot.
My homeware business hit this wall in 2024. We were manually creating sales assets for every product. Photography, graphic design, file management. It took a team of eight contracted designers just to launch 100 products in a year.
Every new product cost hundreds in design fees before we’d sold a single unit.
We automated the entire process. Product images, file organisation, copy. All handled by a system I built with AI.
I click a button. Everything generates. What used to take the design team weeks now happens in minutes. It never gets old clicking that button.
We went from eight contractors down to two people. We launched 400 products that year. Four times the output with a quarter of the team.
The businesses that get this wrong don’t fail because of bad marketing. They fail because their operations can’t keep up with the demand their marketing creates. If you can’t handle 100 orders smoothly, you definitely can’t handle 1,000.
What to do about it
Before you scale, fix the bottleneck.
Automate the repetitive work first. Look at what your team does manually every week. Data entry. File management. Report creation. Image generation. These are time sinks that a system can handle.
Start with your best people. Don’t cut staff to save money. Free up your top performers so they can focus on work that moves the business forward. Automation should amplify talent, not replace it.
Build systems that scale before you pour fuel on the fire. Growth means nothing if it kills your margins.
I go deeper on this in building the right systems.
The real problem
Most marketing advice tells you to try harder. Post more. Spend more. Be more consistent. Hire a better agency.
That’s not the problem.
The problem is that most businesses skip the foundations. They start spending before they’ve figured out what to say, who to say it to, and whether the maths actually works.
I’ve seen businesses transform their results without spending a penny more on marketing. A different message. A better channel. A system that doesn’t break under pressure.
That’s it.
It’s not complicated. But it does require honesty about what’s actually going wrong. And a willingness to fix it properly rather than throwing more money at the same broken approach.
What to do next
If any of this sounds familiar, here’s how I’d approach it:
- Fix your messaging. Talk to your customers. Find out why they actually chose you. Use their words.
- Find the right channel. Pick one. Test it with proper messaging. Do the maths.
- Build the right systems. Automate the repetitive work. Fix bottlenecks before you scale.
I work with businesses doing £1m to £10m revenue. If you want help implementing any of this, get in touch.
FAQ
Why is my marketing not generating leads?
Usually one of three things: your messaging doesn’t speak to your customer’s actual problem, you’re using the wrong channel to reach them, or your offer isn’t compelling enough to make someone take action. The fix almost always starts with talking to your existing customers and understanding why they chose you.
How do I know if my marketing agency is delivering results?
Ask them one question: what is the cost to acquire a customer through what you’re doing for me? If they can’t answer that with a specific number, or if they deflect to metrics like impressions, reach, or engagement, you have a problem. Marketing should be measured in customers acquired and revenue generated, not vanity metrics.
How much should a small business spend on marketing UK?
The amount matters less than the return. A business spending £2,000 a month that acquires customers profitably from day one is in a stronger position than one spending £20,000 with no idea whether it’s working. Start small, measure CAC against revenue, and only scale what’s profitable.
Should I hire a marketing agency or do it in-house?
Neither is inherently better. The real question is whether whoever does your marketing understands your customer’s problem, can measure what works, and can prove the unit economics. Most agencies sell activity. What you need is someone accountable for results.
