Join The Marketing Broker, Shelby McFarland, for the Marketing Happy Hour Podcast. With over 13 years of entrepreneurial experience and as the owner of a successful sign shop, Shelby brings a unique perspective to the world of marketing. Each episode, Shelby dives into insightful discussions, practical tips, and expert interviews designed to help entrepreneurs and marketers alike navigate the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, branding, and business growth. Grab your favorite beverage and join us for a lively conversation at the intersection of creativity and strategy. Welcome to the Marketing Happy Hour Podcast with your host, Shelby McFarland. Cheers! 🥂
Marketing can be a punch in the gut when the numbers refuse to move, even when you know you’re doing the work the right way. I’m sharing a story that was hard for me to admit out loud: I landed an exciting out-of-state client, built a full digital marketing plan, and still watched the results fall flat.
You’ll hear what it’s like to market a software product in a competitive niche where the big players have investors and huge monthly budgets for Google ads. I walk through what we tried across SEO, backlink building, social media marketing, content shoots, and paid ads like Meta and geofencing. The analytics looked great on the surface with lots of clicks, but the conversion rate told the real story. When traffic doesn’t turn into subscriptions, it forces you to ask better questions about the offer, the funnel, the website experience, and whether you’re battling a market that’s already dominated.
I also talk about the mindset side: pricing your services with confidence, not racing to the bottom, and how it feels when a client has to pause because the budget runs out. Then we zoom out to the lessons I’m keeping: do deeper competitor analysis and market research early, know what you’re up against, and make smart shifts for a season when the industry demands it. If you’re a marketer who feels responsible for everything, I want you to hear this clearly: we can’t carry product-market fit and execution alone.
Listen now, share this with a friend who needs the reminder, and leave a review if it hits home. What’s a time you felt like you did everything right but the outcome still didn’t follow?
Hey y'all, what's up? Welcome back to your favorite podcast. I'm your host, Shelby McFarland, the marketing boss. And today we're getting real. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't you always get real? You right? Yes, I do. So let's get even more real, y'all. Are you ready for this? I want to dive into something that's going to be hard for me to talk about. But the reason why I'm going to talk about it is because I think you guys would definitely learn a lot from this. And I am not great at sharing the things that I fail at or the things that I've learned from without feeling bad about myself. So that's my goal here is I really want to share this with you guys. So that way you can first off hear more about my experiences as a marketing person, also hear my experiences as a business owner, and also hear about how I had to overcome a couple of awkward situations, right? So I
had this client, and let's back up. Hang on. I get a call from an out of state potential client. And I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. I thought I was doing the real stuff, right? Someone from out of state calls me and they want to do work with me. And I'm like, how did you find me? They said, well, I just Googled and yours came up first. And I was like, ha ha ha, okay, great. That's awesome. I'm so glad that what I'm doing is actually working, right? There's nothing like validation when you're like, I'm working really hard on this. And they were like, Yeah, we found you on Google. Like, that's fantastic, especially in a different state. And timeline-wise, this was uh last year um 2025. So it'd been like summer of 25. And I'm talking to uh them and I uh sent them over the proposal, and it was a lot larger than what I normally send. So I called my best friend and I'm talking about it. I was like, I can't believe it. Maybe I should just lower the price. What do you think? She said, absolutely not. They're asking you to do all this stuff. I mean, it was like full service, everything. And back then, even though that was just a year and a half ago, I really didn't understand the value of my services. I didn't understand my worth. I always thought that I'm over here having to compete with everybody else. I need to be the cheapest one, I need to give more in my services so that way people will actually use me, right? And you may, you may feel that way too, but that's not the truth. But anyways, back to my story. So I sent it over and um they made it very, very clear. Hey, listen, we're, you know, interviewing a few different people. Awesome. Love that. I encourage that when it comes to uh social media or marketing. Like you need to interview multiple people so that way you know exactly what you're getting into. But then also, you know, our personalities may not match, and your personality may match better with somebody else, or your needs may be met better by somebody else, and that's okay. So a couple months went by and I received an email that said, Hey, we're ready to, we're gonna hire you, but it's gonna be a couple of months. Holy shit, okay, great. I just landed this freaking client out of state, which I don't know why that makes it such a bigger deal, but out of state at a price that I was very worrisome about because I thought that it would they were gonna tell me no, you know. But I mean, what I offered them, it was extremely affordable compared to a lot of my competitors, anyways.
And we started, or like once the contract started a couple months later, it was a hard. Let me tell you about the niche. The niche of it was really hard. The industry was really hard. It was a software, and the competitors in this software industry are huge. I'm talking, they've got big investors, they've got tens of thousands of dollars that they're spending on Google ads every single month. And this person had a fantastic product, or they have a fantastic product. They have a really great mindset around it, and it was a cool idea. And I was like, yeah, let's do it. You know, let's tackle it. I don't ever think anything's too big, right? I think we can conquer anything we want to, whatever we set our mind to. So I did all the right things, y'all. Social media. Uh, we did a pre-launch situation where we're laying the groundwork while they were finishing up the app. Um, I did some SEO work on the back end of their website while also working with the developer of the website to make sure that it's all set up correctly. Um, I did a bunch of backlink work. I did um videos and content shoots and all of that, or set that stuff up. And they finally launch it.
We do this whole launch situation, and um it was just like crickets. Every every month we would we would have a meeting and it'd be like, so how many, how many new subscriptions do you have? Uh none. Okay. So what about this, you know, and every single month it was just like we don't have any, we don't have any. And then someone from a different country uh paid for a subscription, which is fantastic. Love that for them, but I knew how much money he had invested into it, and I knew how much money he was spending with me, so I knew this isn't gonna last much longer if he isn't making any money. So I would stay up late at night. Um, about four months after the launch, I would be like, okay, what are your ideas that I can come up with? Like, how can we make this better, you know? And the impossibility of it was always we were up against people that were spending tens of thousands of dollars, and their budget didn't allow for this. So our
our Google ads would be like a thousand dollars, meta ads would be about five hundred, geofencing ads would be about five hundred, and you know, I'm just trying all the different things, testing everything out, what's being you know, clicked on. And let me tell you, these ads got clicks like crazy. I don't like Google. We only did that one time to pretty much prove that it wasn't gonna work. But anyways, the meta ads and geo ads, like they all did really well if you look at the analytics, but they were not converting on the other side. So after I noticed they weren't converting the first couple months, I was like, hey, let's change up some stuff on the website, right? So I'd start changing some stuff up on the website. And you know, what was really defeating about this was that it just wasn't working. I knew all the things to do. I called on other colleagues in my business or in my industry around here that, you know, they've been in the game 20 plus years longer than me. And I'm like, this is what I'm doing. And they're like, you're doing all the right things. And I'm like, okay, are you sure? You know, like, do you have any ideas? Like, can I pay for your time? Like, I just need to be consulted about this because I feel like I'm ethically failing at it. And
then uh at one night I was in bed thinking about all this, and I came up with this idea. I was like, well, we need a character, like we need a mascot. Like, what could we do that could be a mascot? And it was a construction software, so who is our main target? Men. So I come up with this an entire, which of course, with the help of AI, come up with this AI mascot. It was a girl, and um, she had all this construction gear, and like she, I would make videos of her walking in um like on the job sites and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I was very excited about it. And when I presented it the next day, it was kind of shot down a little. And I was kind of sad about that because I was like, I don't know what else to do. Like, this is literally my Hail Mary to this account because I have no idea what else I could do outside of this because it's not a person-in-person business, it's not a service, it's a software, which the marketing for software is completely different than all my other clients that I do. So,
anyways, we continue to do our services as always, and then, you know, eventually he says, Hey, listen, I just don't have the budget to pay you anymore. Absolutely, totally understand. I knew it was coming, anyways. But, you know, I still felt as if I wasn't doing my job, even though I did my job, right? I'm sure you feel that way too. You're like, I have asked people, I have tried so hard to get this up and running and off the ground. And, you know, when I work with my clients, their business becomes my business. I want them to be successful. I want them to go and brag about, oh, my books are filled. Oh, I can't fit any more clients in. Oh, I'm I'm booked out for six months. Like, I love those stories. And I love to see my business or my my uh clients actually succeed in their business. And so with this, I felt as if like I had failed his business, and that business was mine too, right? And I see them trucking along on social, like I'll watch it every now and then, and you know, they're doing it themselves now. But, you know, I can only hope that maybe because it's been oh probably six months or so since we've worked together. I can only hope that they are more successful. Like I'll check in every now and then, like, hey, how's things going? Like, you know, just thinking about you. And it's in a way of like, I'm not trying to earn their business back. I feel like I did what I could do for them. It's in the way of like, I still care about you. Just because we're not working together doesn't mean I don't wish you success. Like, I want you to be successful. And
I think that, you know, sometimes when we're in business, we need to think about who our competitors are, right? That's a lesson I learned in this. Do better market research on who's our competitor. Yes, you can have a great concept, you can have a great idea for a business, but who's already out there doing that? How much money are they spending? Where are they located? How are they reaching their their their clientele? And does your service or your product actually is it better than theirs? Is it something that's comparable? I'll give
you an example of my content studio. There were only a couple of us here. Excuse me. There were only a couple of us here in central Arkansas, and I would only use one of them. And I just the things that I didn't like about it, I decided, you know what? I'm gonna open up my own content studio. So I opened it up. $99 an hour is what I was gonna charge because it's a very nice space, lots of room, and it's always changing. I mean, we've got things, you know, furniture in and out. I'm changing the walls, changing the scenery, all the things. And I knew that $99 was gonna be a great value for what they get here. But guess what I had to do? I had to lower my prices to $77 an hour. Eesh. Why did I have to do that? Because no one was renting it for $99. And I had two other content studios open up just a month after me here. And they charge $75 an hour. So, yes, I may lose a couple of people to these other studios that are $2 an hour cheaper than me, but it is very important that I know my value and that I had to shift, right? I had to shift. Maybe my studio will be so packed out one day that it's like, hey, I've got to go up to $99 an hour because it's literally worth it now. Or it's so like people want to get in here so bad, like that's whenever it becomes like one of those factors of I'm gonna raise my price because the value of it is even more now. So if you're in business and maybe you're on both sides of that coin, maybe you're on the side of my business isn't really taking off, my service isn't taking off, my product's not being sold. Well, what does your competitors look like? What does the industry look like? How do you need a shift even for a season? How do you need a shift for a season to make sure that what you are offering or selling is gonna actually be successful? And if
you're on the side that I'm on and you're like, God, I have a couple of clients like that. You're right. I do have clients that can't sell their services. I do have clients that can't sell their products, and I feel like I'm just failing them. Well, guess what? You're not failing them, you're doing what you need to do. You're doing the best that you can for them, and you can't take on that responsibility that they have competitors that spend more money, or that maybe they're not the nicest people out there. I've had that too. It's like maybe they don't give great customer service, maybe they don't have a great product. I don't know. We as marketers cannot take it take sole responsibility for that. All we can do is continue to offer our expertise and do what we do best, and that's market their business. So I hope this is encouraging. And I hope that, you know, if you have stories, I want you to share them with me. Check
out the marketing boss on Instagram or TikTok, and you can share those stories with me because I would love to see what you're going through as a marketer or what you're going through as a business owner, because I'm going to shape this podcast into even more things like that. So that way you guys are hearing what you want to hear from an experienced marketer and business professional. All right, guys. See you on the next one.
