What worked in your marketing 3+ years ago isn't anymore and here is why

If you’ve been showing up consistently and your results still feel unpredictable, it’s not because you’re lazy or behind. The market changed, and “visibility fixes everything” stopped being true. Buyers are more informed, more skeptical, and more cautious with their money, especially after years of overhyped offers and bad customer experiences. That shift means your marketing has to do more than get attention. It has to earn trust, reduce doubt, and make the buying decision feel obvious.

We walk through why volume won’t save you when your messaging is unclear or your positioning is weak. More posts, more emails, and more networking only creates more noise if the words aren’t resonating. You’ll hear how we think about building a systematic marketing ecosystem: start with the primary offer you’re actually selling, define a target market that goes beyond a broad niche, and map the customer journey step by step so you can spot friction and simplify the path to purchase.

Then we get practical with your strategic presence. We break platforms into two buckets, awareness platforms for getting in front of new people and nurture platforms for building confidence and moving leads toward “yes.” We also talk content roles, why not every post has the same job, and why ongoing market research (weekly, not yearly) is the fastest way to sharpen your marketing message using your audience’s real language. Finally, we connect it all to bold expert positioning, because today’s buyers often decide before they ever reach out.

If you’re ready for predictable lead generation and a smarter small business marketing strategy, subscribe to Think Like a CMO, share this with a founder friend, and leave a review so more entrepreneurs can stop doing random acts of marketing and start leading like the CMO their business needs.

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Transcript

Why Marketing Changed After 2022

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Think Like a CMO, the podcast for entrepreneurs who are ready to stop doing random acts of marketing and to start thinking like the chief marketing officer your business actually needs. I'm your host, Sarah Gemmel, marketing strategist and consultant, helping small business owners just like you to build a marketing ecosystem that actually creates predictable and reliable results. Around here we talk about what it really looks like to step into your role as a CMO, to start seeing the big picture, to lead your marketing with strategy, and to stop wasting time on productive busy work that isn't actually getting you anywhere. This is all about no fluff, honest conversations, potent strategies, and practical insights that you can use right now to start making your marketing work smarter. I know for a fact, if you're here, you're someone who's not new to the game, you're true to the game, you've been in it for a little while. What worked for you three, five, maybe even over five years ago in your marketing is no longer cutting it. You are seeing a huge shift in how you have to show up, right? The things that were really easy before are no longer feeling easy or they're just plain not working. We saw this huge shift in the market somewhere around the end of 2022, 2023, where the buyer behavior shifted, how you needed to show up in your marketing changed, how you were selling needed to change. In 2024, a lot of entrepreneurs were no longer entrepreneurs, right? 2025 was like the build back from the chaos or the dumpster fire that 2024 was. And now 2026 is like really figuring out the systems and really figuring out what this new season of your marketing looks like. We can't just rely on showing up anymore, right? The saying is showing up is half the battle. Not anymore. What happened back in like 20, anywhere up until like 2022, visibility was enough in your marketing. All you really had to do was be visible. In today's market, that's no longer the case, right? In today's market, you have to get visible, and then you also have to understand your buyer psychology so clearly and so confidently that you know exactly what they need to see and hear from you in order to make a buying decision. Buyers in today's world are more informed and they're being a little bit more cautious. It's not to say that they're not buying, that's a limiting belief that is simply not accurate. People are still spending money, but they are careful about how they're spending their money and who they're spending their money with. Between 2020 and like 2022, entrepreneurship went crazy, right? The coaching world went crazy. People went crazy buying things, the economy was booming. Think about all the trades, right? Like all the construction guys, we were out of wood for like how many months or years or whatever, right? People were just buying. And what happened was a lot of people bought from people that were not experts at what they claimed to be experts at. They had a poor customer experience. And unfortunately, in that poor customer experience, you become a little jaded almost, but that makes you more cautious, rightfully so. And we've all been there. I've been there, I've made plenty of poor investment decisions in service providers. That makes me really uh cautious is the word we keep going back to, but it's like you're more careful and you want to ask more questions and you want to make sure you're making a better buying decision.

Volume Cannot Fix Bad Messaging

SPEAKER_00 3:30

And the problem is, right, in today's world, as entrepreneurs, as small business owners, we feel like if we just do more, it'll fix the marketing problem. The problem is that no amount of volume is going to fix a messaging or positioning problem. Putting out more content that's not landing or resonating the way that you want it to or the way that it needs to with your buyers in order to move them into a buying decision is just gonna create noise and it's gonna completely overwhelm you. It's not about volume, it's not about consistency. You're consistently showing up on social media, networking, emailing. You are consistently putting marketing out into the world. The problem is that the messaging is off, the positioning is off, the stuff that you're doing in your marketing is random. You are now moving into the season of your business where you have to be more systematic in your marketing. When you first start in business, just showing up and doing random shit works, right? Just throwing spaghetti at the wall works. But what's happening now is you're feeling this pull to really step into the next season. The marketing that got you here is not the marketing that's gonna keep you going. So, in order to move into the next season of your business, of your sales, of your impact, right? We have to have different marketing that is far more systematic and doesn't rely solely on, well, I showed up and I got visible. The other thing I want you to consider is that word of mouth and referrals on its own is not a reliable marketing plan or a reliable marketing strategy. This is not to knock word of mouth or referrals. You know, I'm the queen of networking. I built a very successful five-figure month fitness business, mostly on referrals and word of mouth, but what I found nearly 10 years ago was that it was very unpredictable and unreliable because it's not within your control. You can't really control the amount of referrals that other people make. So moving into this next season in your marketing, we cannot be relying solely on word of mouth and referrals. We need for your other marketing efforts to pull their weight, like word of mouth and referrals. If I took away word of mouth and referrals, where would most of your visibility or inquiries be coming from? Where would you be attracting new clients? Chances are you show up on at least one social media platform, maybe more, pretty consistently. But is it consistently bringing you leads? Is it consistently feeding the pipeline? I recently talked to a business owner who's doing a lot of really great content. All of their vanity metrics are increasing. So things like followers and views and engagement. But what's not increasing is the amount of website traffic or sales coming from the website. She's a product-based business. So we're not seeing an increase in people who are actually visiting the website, we're actually buying the product. That's a problem because at the end of the day, the engagement, the likes, the views, the followers on social media don't pay the bills.

Referrals Are Not A Plan

SPEAKER_00 6:40

So, what does it look like to really step into this season? One, it's the mindset shift, right? Of really thinking about your marketing in a different way. We talked about making it more systematic, but I'm gonna break that down for you in exactly what that looks like and how to make it more systematic. We need to understand in your business exactly how you are getting visible to new people, how you're nurturing those people, and how you're moving them into a buying decision and actually getting them to say, Yes, I'm interested in this, which is your lead generation. The first thing I always walk my clients through is really going back to like what is the primary offer we want to focus on, what is the funnel for that offer, who is the audience for that offer? Now, those are that's a bit of a bigger conversation that we'll have to make another podcast episode on. But once you have that, okay, and I mean like in-depth, crystal clear, super specific, this is actually a piece that a hundred percent of the entrepreneurs who come to me are stuck on. Even the most experienced entrepreneurs that come to work with me struggle to explain who their target market is, anything past the niche. A great example of this is a fitness coach who works with moms. Moms is a niche, but it's not a well-defined target market. Okay? Or if you're a copywriter that works with e-commerce-based product-based businesses, that's a niche, but it's not a well-defined market. You need to take your niche, break it down into multiple segments, and get so so specific. Demographics sometimes matter, so that's like your age, gender, location, income, family status. More importantly, it is the psychographics. What are their challenges, their

Define The Offer And Target Market

SPEAKER_00 8:25

problems? What do they want? What do they not want? When you think about a fitness coach who works with moms, there's a lot of different types of moms. So each type of mom is a segment because what they want and don't want is very different. A copywriter working with an e-commerce business, what type of products, right? What phase of business are they in? Why do they need copy? Where do they need copy? Same thing goes for your funnel or your customer journey. A lot of people are like, yeah, Sarah, my customer journey is they find me, they go to Instagram, and then they buy, right? I need you to map out every single step from the time they discover you to the time they become a client, every single click, every single page they visit, every single interaction they have. What is that customer journey and where is the friction and how can we simplify it for the customer? So once you have that, the first thing I work with entrepreneurs and small business owners on is where are you showing up? How can we create a strategic presence that does not rely solely on one lead source, right? We want to make sure that you're not putting all of your marketing eggs in one basket. But that's now also not to say that you need to be in all the places all the time. Strategic presence is understanding where are you going to best reach your target market and also making sure that you have a variety or diversification in the platforms that you choose to

Map The Real Customer Journey

SPEAKER_00 9:52

market on, right? Some platforms are designed mostly for visibility, some are designed for nurturing and making a buying decision, right? Different types of content. If you haven't grabbed a pen by now, you're probably gonna want to do that. But I want you to think about your marketing platforms under two buckets. You have your awareness platforms and you have your nurture platforms. As a general rule of thumb, starting out, you should have anywhere between one to three platforms under each category. So examples of a visibility platform would be things like TikTok, Reddit, Facebook groups, threads, paid advertising would be good for visibility. Where are you getting in front of new eyeballs, right? Instagram trial reels is a great one right now for that. Under your nurture platforms is things like your email marketing, text marketing, your blog, your podcast, your own Facebook group, right? Your regular Instagram feed. These are non-exhaustive lists, but it's a good way to kind of get your brain turning. How can we create a more strategic presence of where you're showing up so that you have a clear way to get visible and to nurture and actually generate the lead? So now that you have figured out what your primary offer is that you want to drive traffic to, right? You've looked at your strategic presence. Where are we getting in front of new eyeballs? Where are we actually getting them to say, yes, I need this, yes, I'm interested. Now we look at what needs to happen on those platforms. Specifically the platforms that rely on content. So something like SEO, you don't really need to show up on a consistent basis creating content for something like SEO that requires more just maintenance, right? Or like a Google profile. But places where you are actively creating content, social media, LinkedIn, Pinterest, blog, podcast, etc. How can you create a system around those platforms so that you can show up consistently? Once you have a system and understanding how much volume you need to actually put out, right? Two LinkedIn posts a week, one blog post a week, two podcasts

Awareness Platforms Vs Nurture Platforms

SPEAKER_00 11:57

a month, whatever it is, then you can look at what actually gets created. And remember that every platform gets a different type of content from time to time. The visibility platforms are going to be a lot of the colder messaging, right? Focused on top of funnel. The ones that are more nurture platforms for people who have been in your world, you use way different messaging, talking about ideas in more depth and introducing offers and sharing more testimonials and deliverables and direct calls to action and all the things, right? So we have to understand that not every piece of content is meant to serve the same job. Then that's when you can figure out what actually needs to get created. What are you gonna talk about, right? What's the actual content? Now, the most important thing in all of this is the messaging and the positioning. The messaging and the positioning is the number one thing that if your marketing is struggling, I can guarantee the messaging and the positioning are off. Okay? So we really need to revisit. Once we figure out what type of content we're creating, where we're creating it, all the things. You can download all of the templates and fill in the blank hook ideas as many as you want. But if you're filling them in with the wrong messaging, they're never gonna work. We need to figure out what messaging resonates with your audience right now. If you haven't done market research in the last three months, you need to do more market research and more constantly. I do market research every single week. Every single week. Every single conversation, sales call, client call, networking call. That is all market research. Keeping my finger on the pulse of what my audience is struggling with, what they need, what they've tried that they like, that they tried that they don't like, right? What they're complaining about, what they're happy about. It's important that you also keep your finger on the pulse of your people. Make sure that your messaging is taken directly from their mouth. 100% of the times when I see entrepreneurs struggling with their messaging and their positioning, it's because you're saying what you want to say versus what they need to hear. It's not about what you think the problem is or what you think they need to hear. We need to take that information directly from them, not change the wording very much at all. Now I want you to keep this in mind too, as you rediscover your key messaging, you are also going to discover the messaging you don't want to use. There's certain keywords, there's certain language, certain messaging that is going to attract the wrong type of audience or the wrong type of buyer. And it's important that you also know that. So I'll give you an example from my own business. We work with entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners who are more established and are not new to the game. They're not beginners, they're not looking for rudimentary marketing 101. So we don't use messaging around consistency or accountability. We don't use messaging that relates to new business problems. So that's the messaging piece. The positioning piece is a little bit different,

Market Research That Sharpens Messaging

SPEAKER_00 15:05

but it works hand in hand. Now, by definition, positioning is the strategic process of creating a distinct image or perception of a brand, product, or service in the minds of the target customers, right? It's really differentiating you from your competitors. So the purpose traditionally of positioning or more formally is to establish that unique mental space for your product or your service in your customer's mind. When we talk about positioning, I want you to think about expert positioning if you're a service provider, right? Talking about value positioning, it is important that your front-end marketing consistently and constantly positions your offer, your service, your product in the right way. We constantly want to be looking at is this positioning me as the expert? Is this positioning the value of whatever it is that I'm talking about? Without clear and strong positioning, your marketing will tend to blend in with the noise online, with the noise of your competitors. When I work with small business owners in their marketing and I look at their positioning, it's usually very weak or very unclear on what the positioning is. In today's market, you have to be really bold with your positioning. It has to be like in your face all the time, reminding people why you're the expert, why your product is unique, how it's different, why it's valuable. And there's ways that you can work that in with the messaging, but this is such an important part. When you talk about marketing that's no longer working the way that it was a few years ago, a lot of it is the positioning that comes into play here, right? We know that consumers are more informed, they're a bit more cautious, like we talked about a minute ago. So your messaging is what informs them. Your positioning is what makes them feel more confident in their buying decision as they move forward. Most buyers in today's world have actually made a decision before they ever talk to you. And it's really important that you understand that as a salesperson, as a business owner, that they've done their research, right? They've gone to your website, they've looked at your Instagram, they listened to your podcast, they have looked you up and consumed some volume of your marketing content to make a decision before they contact you. That was not the case a few years ago. A few years ago, right, people would get on a call just to get on a call, see if it's a good fit. They're not doing that anymore. I want you to think about when you're scrolling like on Google or something, say you look up, um, let's just use the example of like credit. I know this

Bold Positioning For Cautious Buyers

SPEAKER_00 17:58

is a really big one with credit. You look up something to do with your credit report on Google. And it says, you know, insert your information, we'll give you a free credit report. Think about how hesitant you are to sign up and give your information for like a free quote, a free report, because you know exactly what's coming on the back end. What's coming on the back end is they're gonna sell the shit out of you. They're gonna call you and they're gonna email you and they're gonna text you. Consumers know this, right? Consumers are not stupid. So before they even submit an inquiry form, they are making some level of a decision because they know that you're gonna be contacting them. Okay, so let's break it down. Okay, let's wrap it up with a pretty little bow here. The reason why your marketing is no longer working the way that it was before is because you can no longer rely on marketing that got you here in order to keep you going. So that's a that's number one, right? But we really need to revisit the systems around your marketing. No more random acts of marketing, no more relying on word of mouth solely as your lead generator, right? No more just throwing spaghetti at the wall. You're moving into a season where you're moving past that. Throwing spaghetti at the wall is really, really great for beginners who are just starting. That's not you anymore. So you need to create the systems and really understand what is the primary offer that I'm working on promoting. What is every single step from getting someone to discover me to getting them into that offer? Right? Who is my target market and how can I get more clear and more specific on who they are, what they want, what they don't want, what their challenges are, what their goals are. And really revisit your messaging and your positioning and your strategic presence. Where are you showing up? What type of messaging are you using? What type of positioning are you using? Chances are I can pretty much guarantee this, and you can take me to the bank on this, okay? You can reach out to me, you can email me, you can DM DM me on Instagram and tell me what you think about this. But I can pretty much guarantee that your messaging is unclear to your target audience,

Systems, Metrics, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 20:00

and your positioning is either unclear or just weak. And the good thing is, is those are relatively simple things to change. You're already showing up, you're already being consistent, creating content, networking, emailing, all the things in your marketing. Now we just need to tighten up the systems, the customer journey, the flow, the messaging, and the positioning. You know what I didn't even talk about either is the metrics, okay? Really looking at your metrics and looking at how all of your marketing is performing. As you move into this next season, it's really, really important that you track your performance of your marketing way closer. We'll make a whole nother podcast uh episode on that. I think there's one actually recorded, all about like what metrics matter, what metrics don't. But we really want to be able to make data-based decisions on what's working, what's not, what do we want to lean into, and what do we want to change. And I'm not kidding, reach out to me, shoot me an email, or message me on Instagram at Sarah Gemmel and tell me what you thought about today's episode and tell me what you think is kind of like the most glaring issue in your marketing right now. But thank you so much for tuning in to Think Like a CMO. If this episode helped you think about your marketing in a different or a new way, go ahead and follow the show. Make sure you don't miss any future episodes. And if you're ready to tighten up your marketing strategy to implement better messaging, better positioning, and to create a marketing plan that actually works, take your pretty little butt over to the show notes. Check out all the resources I put there for you. I also am gonna link my calendar for you so you can get on a call if you're ready to really explore what marketing support could look like to help you really tighten, identify the gaps that you're missing on your own, and have that strategic partner to rely on. And remember, you're already the CMO of your business. It's just time to start thinking like one.