Craig Barker, managing director at Koobr and Balls2 Marketing, explores why “I’m not sure” might be the most expensive answer a business can give when asked what marketing is contributing to sales.
Most glazing businesses know exactly what would happen if they lost a salesperson tomorrow. They’d be able to tell you what it would cost, where the pressure points would appear, and how quickly they’d need to act.
The same goes for a key supplier, a production line, or one of their biggest customers. Ask the same question about marketing, and things often go a bit quiet.
A lot of the businesses that come to us at Koobr aren’t short of marketing activity. They’re posting on social media, updating their website, running promotions, and investing real money into being seen by the right people.
It’s when we start the commercial conversation that things can quickly become uncomfortable. The sales team around the table just wants more leads, marketing points to increases in traffic and engagement, and leadership needs to see growth that they can actually measure. We sometimes have to remind ourselves that everyone is looking at the same business, just not necessarily through the same lens.
If I had to pick one reason why businesses struggle to understand marketing’s contribution, it’s that the intel stops once an enquiry arrives.
Marketing adds another lead to the monthly report, sales take over the baton, and somewhere between the two the opportunity to learn what worked is lost.
This is usually the point where assumptions and lack of detail do the most damage, and feedback on leads like “not interested” isn’t enough to change the recipe. A lead can be poor quality for dozens of different reasons. It might be outside your target area, for a product you don’t specialise in, or simply not the type of work you want to win more of.
If nobody takes the time to understand the interest your business is generating, marketing is left guessing. When they do, marketing starts to become meaningful.
The most effective companies we work with don’t just count enquiries; they make us part of what happened next. We talk directly to the sales teams, hear the objections that keep coming up, and the gems of information that might just predict the next trend.
We leave the meeting clear on how we can help the business attract the right opportunities, and spend less time on the wrong ones.
Have you got a strategy?
The second challenge we’re seeing is that many businesses have become so busy ‘doing marketing’ they’ve lost sight of what they’re trying to achieve.
Social media is stagnant, so they come up with a post. A product range needs changing on the website, an email goes out just because it always has done. None of those things are wrong in isolation, but when they become the focus, marketing can quickly turn into a never-ending list of tasks.
The danger is when those tasks are being mistaken for progress.
Plenty of marketers can tell you exactly what they’re doing this week, but struggle to explain how it connects back to the wider goals of the business. More enquiries? Larger contracts? Greater market share?
A strategy forces you to focus on what deserves time and money and, just as importantly, what doesn’t. A to-do list just gets longer.
What stops, what stays
So, if your marketing budget was significantly cut tomorrow, would you know what to protect?
This needs to be the stuff that genuinely contributes to enquiries, sales conversations and growth.
And until you know the answer, it’s incredibly difficult to make confident decisions about what needs to stay – because it’s feeding your pipeline – and where you could pause or pull back.
The irony is that most businesses aren’t struggling because they’re doing too little marketing, they’re just finding it harder to understand what it all means. And who could blame them? There has never been more chat, more channels, or more pressure to be everywhere at once.
You’d think that would lead to us telling clients they need more marketing. Mostly, we tell them they need more meaning.
