Episode 58: The Real Reason Your Marketing Isn't Working

What if the reason your business feels stalled has nothing to do with needing more marketing?
Not more Reels. Not more ads. Not more content.
Today, Jennifer uncovers the surprising truth about what actually grows small businesses and why fixing this one thing transforms everything.

In this episode, Jennifer breaks down one of her favorite pillars inside the 9-Pillar Earn More…Stress Less™ Framework: Marketing, but not the kind you think.

Most small business owners default to “more marketing, more posting, more hustle,” believing they simply need to do more to get clients. But Jennifer reveals why this approach leads to burnout, wasted money, and stalled growth.

Instead, she explains a powerful approach she teaches inside every 90-day plan she builds with clients: Priming Your Audience the three-part foundation that makes every marketing action more effective.

You’ll learn:

✨ 1. Why more marketing does NOT always equal more clients.
✨ 2. The three-step Priming Your Audience framework
✨ 3. The two buckets of marketing: Passive vs. Active
✨ 4. Why ads don't fix unclear messages
✨ 5. The truth behind “You’re everywhere!”

If you’re tired of building your business alone…
If you want clarity, focus, momentum, and accountability…
If you want support from women who get it — women who become collaborators, partners, and friends…

👉 Enrollment is officially open for the Earn More, Stress Less Business Accelerator Group.

Inside, Jennifer will help you clarify your marketing messaging, build 90-day plans, strengthen all 9 pillars of a profitable business, and finally take the guesswork out of growth.

✨ Learn more and see if it’s the right fit →https://nextwavebusinesscoaching.com/emsl-business-accelerator

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Share it with a fellow small business owner who needs clarity on marketing  not more content on their to-do list.

About the Host: 

Jennifer Kok has been a business owner for over 25 years and is now a Small Business Growth Advisor. She turned her first business into a franchise and successfully sold it 20 years later.  She was passionate about building a business and a family at the same time.

I support women entrepreneurs in their second year and beyond as they build businesses and families, helping them achieve Clarity, Confidence, and Consistent Profits.  The reality is, you’ve built a Business You’re Proud Of— but it’s time for it to work for you.

You’re stil

My name is Jennifer Kok, and I’m a profit and growth advisor for service-based women entrepreneurs. I help women business owners make smarter, more strategic decisions so they can grow profitably, pay themselves consistently, and avoid burnout.

Because the truth is, business owners make decisions all day long, but the ones that really matter are often the hardest ones. Should I hire? Raise my prices? Invest in marketing? Let go of a draining client? Expand, or simplify?

Those decisions carry weight, and they can impact your time, your profit, your energy, and your long-term growth.

That’s why I created the Focused Growth Collective, a virtual mastermind for women business owners who want support making the kinds of decisions that move a business forward. Yes, we talk strategy, but we also look at the bigger picture like mental load, health, profit, and long-term sustainability.

My goal is to help women build businesses that pay them well, support their lives, and still feel worth leading 10 years from now.

Connect with me:
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Transcript

Jennifer Kok (00:00)

Before you post one more reel, create another piece of content, or pay for that Facebook or Google ad, I want to ask you something. What if the reason your business might be stalled right now has nothing to do with you're not doing enough marketing? Today, we're going to dive into one of my favorite pillars, pillar number four, marketing of the nine pillar system to build a profitable and sustainable business. And today, I'm going to take you on a little bit different journey of what I believe

marketing is and how you should be marketing your small business.

Jennifer Kok (00:31)

Welcome to Main Street Success Stories. I'm your host, Jennifer Kok entrepreneur, business coach, and founder of Next Wave Business Coaching.

Jennifer Kok (00:39)

My first business I opened two days before giving birth to my second daughter. But then I grew it for 20 years. I grew it from a local bakery into a national brand and eventually sold it for a profit. I know firsthand how tough the odds can be. Only one out of two small businesses make it to year five.

That's why I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs change those statistics through coaching, mentoring, and this podcast where I share real stories of others, their success, their struggle, their mindset shifts, their fears, and lots and lots of wins along the way. Because none of us are alone in this journey of entrepreneurship. And I want to make sure that you have the support you need. My goal is simple to inspire you, motivate you, and show you there's a path to building a profitable business.

So let's dive in to the next episode of Main Street Success Stories.

Jennifer Kok (01:27)

All what is marketing a small business? You could say it's everything from the products that you create or the services that you provide to promoting, to pricing it. A true definition is the strategies and activities a company uses to build interest in its products or services, attract customers and foster long-term relationships with them. Okay, for small business owners, I believe we spend way too much time focused on

the promotion piece of marketing. And here's why. You know, I had a client come to me and she said, you know, business has just stalled. And I asked her, said, well, what do you think is the block? What do you think is blocking your growth right now? And her immediate response was, I know I need to do more marketing. I just don't have the time. You know what? I hear this a lot. Almost every small business just thinks more marketing, more reels, more ads, more emails, the more, more, more hustle mentality.

But you know what I've learned is that more marketing doesn't always equal more clients. It's the messaging behind the marketing. This is the part that most business owners want to gloss over, rush through, but I'm here to tell you it changes everything. So what do I do when I work with a client and we talk about a 90-day marketing plan? I start with what I created. It's called priming your audience.

This is the difference between promoting to an audience and getting your audience ready to buy from you. I break it down into three points. The first one is identifying the end result. What transformation are you really selling? The second one is clarifying the beliefs that have to happen with your ideal client. What do they have to believe before they're willing to give you some of their hard-earned money? And then we have to define why you're the choice, why you're the only choice.

What makes you unique? What is your perspective, your philosophy, your process? So let me give you an example. I've been working with a brand photographer out of Chicago for the last few months. She wanted to attract more corporate clients, and she came to me to have me help her do that. She's in a saturated market. There's hundreds of brand photographers offering the same things she does. So instead of focusing on promoting her portfolio shots or selling her skills, we went deeper.

We went, I took her through the three step priming your audience process, and we discovered what her ideal client really cares about. They care about telling a story through imagery. They care about capturing emotion that builds connection. They care about being seen as relatable to their ideal consumer, customer. They want to humanize who they are. And they want to use photos to help them sell.

that instead of just a script and sending their salespeople out in the field, they want to use photos. So we stopped marketing her services, stopped promoting her business, and we started messaging the transformation that she provides. And what does this do? It attracts more people into your world. It attracts more potential leads. So once your messaging is clear, the next step is then choosing the right type of marketing. And this is where...

A lot of business owners accidentally sabotage their own visibility without even realizing it. So I believe there are two buckets of marketing. One that I call the passive marketing bucket. This is the long game. This is the hope and wait. Sometimes you'll hear it referred to as the post and pray game. So some platforms that would support passive marketing would be social media, blogging,

Podcasting, either your own podcast or being a guest on someone else's podcast, maybe doing some billboards. So what this is doing for your business is this is building brand awareness. This is important. I'm not saying it's not important, but what it doesn't do, it doesn't create immediate action. It's like waving at strangers on the freeway, hoping that one pulls over and they're going to hire you. Okay, so what's the second bucket? If the first bucket is passive, the second bucket is

Active. Active is more focused on momentum, results, action, money, such as email marketing, strategic follow-up with people that you've met or talked to, warm outreach with people that you've met, conversations, some type of networking rhythm, showing up in the right rooms in the right places. These are actions that actually move people towards buying.

They build momentum, they create results. It's kind of like you're driving the car instead of waving at people hoping someone picks you up. And this is where inquiries and revenue can start to happen. And what I have found is that most overwhelmed business owners, which we're all overwhelmed, we're very busy, we're wearing all the hats, we are comfortable in the passive actions, right? We're comfortable in social media. We're comfortable writing a blog.

We are not comfortable reaching out to someone we've met. We are not comfortable following up until we hear no. And a lot of times we avoid email marketing because we don't want to bother people. Well, I will tell you that the passive outcomes, passive actions are important. However, they can be exhausting trying to be visible. And passive without active can lead to frustration. It can lead to confusion. And it also can, you can waste a lot of time and marketing dollars.

So let me share story. So one of my clients owns a painting and wallpapering business. She was really good with the passive actions. She was spending a lot of money on Google Ads. She was showing up on social. But she had zero follow-up system. She was networking, but not really doing anything with the warm outreach. And she was not sending emails. So we had to flip the script. We had to add some active activities into her marketing plan.

So we put a simple follow-up process in place. We talked about, you're not bothering people, you're adding value. We talked about the mindset behind it. We started emailing monthly and then increased the cadence once we got comfortable and built some confidence behind it. We built a local networking rhythm where she's showing up at places that make sense for her, not just everywhere. But more importantly, that follow-up system is in place.

You know, so she's starting to get more leads. She's starting to get more opportunities to quote her business, to turn them into paying customers. So I want you to think about your own marketing plan right now. Is your marketing plan as 80 % passive activities and only 20 %? If you're in this comfort zone, I'm just going to keep showing up and hope it works. It might be time for a shift. OK, so we talked about the most important thing, I think, in marketing is that you're clear messaging.

The second most important piece is having a right balance of passive and active actions so that we can get some momentum going. And then there's one more mistake I see business owners make that can drain your bank account really quickly. And that is jumping in. I get that we want quick results. We want quick actions. So when things aren't feeling great, if we haven't had a client in a while, we're just going to do more ads. Well, ads are not going to fix unclear offers.

We're just going to maybe show up at more networking. Well, that might not fix a confusing messaging. All it does is amplify what exists. And if your messaging isn't aligned, guess what you're amplifying? Your cash spend and your time spend. So here's something about me. I am a quick start by nature. I once launched an entire funnel before mapping the strategy.

I am one of those, I'm gonna fly the plane and learn how to fly as I go. Well, I will tell you, jumping into a funnel because I was anxious, I was excited, I needed some revenue, it cost me months and thousands of dollars. At one point, I was working so many hours creating content, I felt like that's all I was doing and that content was going nowhere. I was starting to get really frustrated.

I started second guessing everything I was doing. I even wondered at one point, is my business gonna survive? And then I had a very painful realization. I wasn't following my own advice. I was the teacher, but not a very good student. So I stopped, I got back to the basics. I paid attention to priming my audience. I paid attention to my offers. I paid attention to my messaging.

I clarified my ideal client. I did the groundwork. I did the foundation that's going to carry me for years to come. And guess what I hear now? Every time I go somewhere or talk to somebody, I hear this very frequently. You're everywhere. I see your stuff all the time. OK, well, here's a spoiler alert. I'm not everywhere. Most days, I'm in my bamboo pajamas with my coffee, working in my home office.

But my marketing is now doing the heavy lifting for me. So I want you to think about your own marketing. More marketing doesn't always equate to more clients. Messaging is the foundation. Even if it feels heavy and awkward and slow, sometimes slowing down is going to help you accelerate faster in the future. Priming your audience is the key to getting your voice heard. And passive alone is not going to grow business.

So if you're tired of building your business alone, if you want to help stay focused on the right action steps, if you want a community of women in business who become friends, collaborators, accountability partners, and if you want to take the guesswork out of what to do next, especially with your marketing messaging and any of the eight, the other eight pillars of building a sustainable, profitable business,

I want to personally invite you to explore the Earn More, Stress Less Business Accelerator Group. Enrollment is officially open. In this group, you're going to find help in every aspect of your business, including your marketing messaging. You're going to focus on 90-day plans so you know exactly where you're going at all times. You're going to have clarity. You're going to have focus. You're going to have momentum. You're going to have accountability. You're going to have help getting over the mindset blocks that might be stopping you from pushing forward.

And you're going to have systems. And plus, more importantly, the community support. You don't have to figure this out alone, and you shouldn't. So if you're feeling that nudge, you're ready to scale your business, trust it. Just learn more about the Business Accelerator Group. See if it's the right fit for you. And you can do that by following the link below. So I want to thank you for listening once again. want you to remind you, marketing is one of my favorite subjects.

went to college for sales and marketing. And marketing gets easier when the messaging gets clear. It's so easy for us to focus on the platforms that we're using. should I be on LinkedIn? Should I be on Instagram? Should I do Reels? But we really have to start with the messaging first. Clients come faster when you prime your audience. And your business is going to grow stronger when you're not doing it alone. So until next time, cheering you on always. Please support our local businesses.

And if you found this helpful, would you please share it with a business friend of yours who might just also need to hear my take on marketing. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.