5 Hidden Marketing Gaps That Are Quietly Draining Your Revenue

In this episode, I talk about why marketing can feel busy while sales stay flat. I break down five quiet gaps that drain momentum without you realizing it, from unclear messaging to missing tracking. This is about spotting leaks, not working harder.

I walk through how to sharpen who your offer is for, align one clear message across platforms, and match your content to where buyers actually are in their decision process. I share practical examples you can apply right away, including how to simplify your pitch and track what’s truly driving revenue. If you want your marketing to compound instead of scatter, this episode will help you reset with clarity.

Modern Marketing Mastery

Chapters

• 0:36 The Hidden Leaks Draining Results
• 2:07 Gap 1: Too-Broad Ideal Customer
• 5:24 Gap 2: Mixed Messaging Across Platforms
• 9:17 Gap 3: Weak Awareness Strategy
• 11:54 Gap 4: No Simple Elevator Pitch
• 14:20 Gap 5: No Tracking System

Transcript

Janice Hostager: 0:04

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business, and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing. Hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of My Weekly Marketing. If there's one thing I know, it's that marketing can be a complicated thing. When we have a lot of tactics going on at once, like social media and email marketing, SEO, ads, it's hard to tell what's not pulling its weight without a deep dive. If your marketing feels busy, like you're doing all the things, but your revenue feels maybe flat or stuck, this episode's for you. Because most small business owners don't have a motivation problem or consistency problem or even a talent problem. As we run our business, there's always like hundred plate spinning. We set up our marketing funnels and we keep everything rolling along like it should. But what's harder to spot are the gaps, the leaks where people slip away and we either don't notice, or if we do notice, we aren't sure why they've slipped. Quiet gaps in our marketing can be sneaky. These are the things that don't scream something's wrong, but slowly, quietly drain your energy and your marketing efforts and your confidence, and then ultimately your bank account. These are the things like ads that seem to be doing okay but could convert better, or landing pages that are converting but could be improved, or maybe emails not quite hitting your ICA or your Ideal Customer Avatar the way they should be. So today I want to walk you through five of the most common ones I see, especially with smart, capable business owners like you who are doing all the things. As you listen, I want you to notice which ones make you think, oh yeah, I could see that happening to me. Because awareness is step one. So let's go and get some clarity. Gap number one, no clear ideal customer avatar, or one that's way too broad. Let's start here because this one affects everything. If you can't clearly answer who your offer's for or what they're struggling with right now, or why your solution should matter to them, then your marketing probably feels fuzzy to them, or vague, just not specific enough to get the attention from the ones who have the problem. What I see a lot are business owners who define their ideal customer avatar or their ICA like this. I help women in business, or I help overwhelmed moms, or I help entrepreneurs. If that's your ICA, it's not a niche. It's a group of people and it's way too broad. When your ICA is too broad, your messaging gets watered down. Your content doesn't have an edge and is kind of polite instead of persuasive. And if that happens, your audience will not feel seen or heard. So they won't click, they won't opt in, and they won't buy. Here's the sneaky part. Most people think a broader ICA means more opportunities because they won't leave people out. But in reality, it just creates more guessing. You start wondering, what should I say in this email? Which pain point should I lead with? Is this too niche to convert? What if I spend all this time building something and it doesn't sell? So you hedge your bets, soften up the language, and leave things at a higher level. My favorite way of thinking about this is when I try and cook for my family. My husband's on a special diet as a cancer survivor of many years, so he can't have anything with fiber. He also hates anything with mayonnaise. My adult kids both hate nuts, and my son dislikes most vegetables. But they both love hot and spicy foods. Well, I'm allergic to garlic and I can't handle spicy foods. So what happens when we have a family meal or a holiday meal? I cook a lot of bland foods that nobody really loves, and some of us even go away hungry. That's what happens when your ICA is too broad. You end up trying to create content that is good with everyone and it ends up making nobody happy. A clear ICA doesn't limit you, it gives your marketing something to lock on to. Because when somebody reads your content and thinks, oh wow, that's me, you don't need louder marketing. They hear you just fine. And that only happens when your ideal customer avatar is specific enough to feel seen and safe enough to say yes. Here's an example. You could say, I help overwhelmed moms get organized. And that might feel narrow. But here's the thing, which moms? Lots of moms are overwhelmed. And then organized how? They might see themselves in that description, but they won't stop scrolling long enough to read it. Instead, you could say, I help overwhelmed working moms who run a business from home create simple routines so they're not constantly reacting, forgetting things, or feeling behind every day. Now we're talking. That person feels called out in a good way, understood, and relieved that somebody gets their situation. They don't have to ask, is this for me? Their brain automatically knows it is, and they see themselves in it. This is why we spend a lot of time getting specific inside my modern marketing mastery course, not with tactics or platforms, but getting crystal clear on who you're building this for so it resonates with your intended customer. It's also where I recommend all my clients start when I'm starting with a new client. Gap number two, mix messaging across platforms. This one's pretty sneaky. On Instagram, you're talking about a mindset issue. Maybe on your website you're talking about strategy, or in your emails, you're offering something totally different. None of this is wrong, but it's disconnected. And disconnected messaging makes your audience work way too hard to understand what you're trying to do and what you actually do. And it confuses them. And let me tell you, a confused mind doesn't buy. They'll start wondering, wait, what do you actually help with? Or is this the same person that I follow on Instagram? So instead of moving forward, they hesitate. This is important to know. They click away. They scroll, they might save the post, not necessarily because they're interested, but because the story never fully comes together. Marketing works best when it feels like one clear story told in different places. Not being a mindset coach on Instagram or a strategist on your website or a totally different offer in your emails. In all honesty, I've struggled with this one myself. Being a marketing strategist, I pull in information from across marketing in all different niches. That includes social media, SEO, email marketing, content marketing, and more. So it's easy for me to go off and start talking about tangents. But I've learned that that confuses people. It can be hard to stay focused on just what you sell. And sometimes it feels like you're repeating yourself over and over again. But that's okay. Nobody is seeing 100% of your content. And if they are, that's okay because that's something they need to know and it defines you, it sets you apart. One of my early jobs was with a retailer in the Midwest that had multiple locations in several states, Dayton's, Marshall Fields, and Hudson's. One of the things that they would publish and send out to all the stores is something called a planogram. These planograms were sketches of what displays would look like for key products in their stores. Their goal was if a customer walked into a Marshall Fields in Chicago or in a Hudson's in Detroit, they would see the same display, the same message, and it would feel consistent. The same is true for you. Be one guide with one message and one promise. Then your messaging is aligned. Your content warms them up, your website confirms they're in the right place, your emails continue that same conversation, and your offer feels like the obvious next step. This is easy to talk about, but it's challenging to do. But here's what you need to know. Trust is built through repetition and clarity, not reinvention. Most people think they need more content to fix this gap, but they don't. They need a core message and a clear offer narrative that shows up everywhere. Same message, no matter if they're on a different format. Okay, gap number three, a weak awareness strategy. This is a big one. A lot of people are creating consideration content. They'll make lead magnets or offers or calls to action, but their audience isn't aware of them yet. They're asking for the sale before the relationship exists. They're still asking themselves, who are you and why should I care about you? Awareness content is about being visible and helpful and relevant. Consideration content is about building trust, showing your approach, and helping people self-identify where they are. When these things get mixed up, your marketing can feel pushy or ineffective, or both. It can look like a call to action, like book a strategy call when someone just found you five minutes ago. Or it can look like a beautifully written offer that answers buying questions that your customer really isn't even answering yet. You know the analogy about asking for the marriage proposal on the first date? This is kind of like that. Nothing is wrong, it's just out of order. They're not ready yet. On my trail to the sale framework inside Modern Marketing Mastery, we break down what content should be awareness, consider, compare, and evaluate all before asking the sale. Not one shift alone changes everything. Okay, moving on to gap number four, no simple elevator pitch. If someone asks you, so what do you actually do for a living? Could you answer it in a clear one or two sentence statement? Honestly, most people don't do this very well. Not because they don't know what they do, but because their offer lives in their head, not in a clean, simple story. You might say something vague like, I help women with mindset, strategy, and systems so they can grow, or I support small business owners who are feeling stuck. Or I help people show up more authentically online. These are all super vague. What's happening is that your audience has to do too much work to understand you, and when people have to think about it, they bounce. Or we might overcomplicate our narrative and say, I'm a fractional CFO who's partners with service-based brands to architect omnichannel growth strategies by aligning positioning and data-driven performance metrics across multiple touch points. I don't know about you, but I checked out before I got to the word omni-channel. Or for a wellness coach, it might be, I help clients achieve opinion wellness outcomes through personalized lifestyle interventions that integrate nutrition, mindset work, habit formation, and holistic behavior change. All true, but also overwhelming. This might work for LinkedIn, but maybe not even there. What a simple, clear offer narrative sounds like is this one problem, one outcome, one type of person. That's a sweet spot. For the CFO, it might be I help business owners understand their numbers so they can make confident decisions and grow without financial stress. Or for the wellness coach, it might be I help busy women feel better in their bodies by building simple, sustainable health habits that fit real life. Notice what's missing? The jargon. The vagueness. It's just really clear, simple to understand, and easy to process. When your offer narrative is messy, conversations can feel awkward and you miss that opportunity to connect with new customers. Okay, gap number five, no tracking system. When you don't have a tracking system, you have no idea what's actually working for your business. This one quietly drains money because you don't know what's driving traffic or creating leads or converting them into sales. So you end up guessing. And guessing leads to burnout, random acts of marketing, and throwing time and money at things that feel productive or you think are working, but they don't actually work. So the nice thing is you don't need fancy software for this, just a spreadsheet. And you need to follow the right numbers. You need the right numbers tied to the right stage of your marketing. A few simple numbers to track are where and how are people finding you. It might be Instagram profile visits or organic traffic from Google Analytics or Google Business Profile clicks. And how are they moving to the consideration stage? You can see this by lead magnet downloads or email subscribers added, or conversion rate on your opt-in page. And finally, how do you know they're buying? You can see this by looking at your sales per offer, conversion rate from email or sales pages, and revenue generated. When those numbers are clear, you stop overworking on things that aren't really pulling their weight and you double down on what is. Marketing stops feeling a lot like a black hole or a time and money suck. Again, we learn to track all your important numbers in modern marketing mastery. We make it simple and doable so that you can make informed decisions about what's working. Okay, so I know we went through these pretty fast, but the gaps are number one, no clear ideal customer avatar, one that's way too broad. Two, mixed messaging across platforms. Number three, a weak awareness strategy. Number four, no simple elevator pitch. And number five, no tracking system. If you recognize yourself even in one of these gaps, I want you to hear this. You're not behind and your marketing is not broken, and you're not even doing marketing wrong. You're just missing a system. And that's why I created Modern Marketing Mastery to help you close these gaps step by step with clarity. It'll open up soon if you're listening to this in real time, or we'll have a wait list for when it opens up again. Thanks so much for joining me today. For links and information about anything we talked about today, visit myweeklymarketing.com forward slash 142. See you next time. Bye for now.