Soma Brief #26: Before You Spend More on Marketing, Figure Out What’s Actually Broken
I’m changing the direction of the Soma Briefs because I caught myself doing something I tell clients not to do all the time...
More just because you think you’re supposed to.
Another SEO post. Another marketing tip. Another piece of content because the calendar says it’s time to publish something.
I was in panic mode. Then I thought, who actually reads this shit?
There’s already more marketing advice online than any of us have time to read.
What I’d rather do is show you how I actually look at a business. What catches my attention. What I question. What makes me change my mind. And how I decide what’s worth doing next.
I’m not always going to be right on the first pass and, honestly, I don’t really care about being right on the first pass.
I care about getting to the right answer.
Sometimes you’ll disagree with me too.
That’s probably a good thing. Shit, drop a comment. I have thick skin.
1. The question
When your marketing isn’t doing what you want it to do, what do you actually need next?
More traffic? SEO? Google Ads? A new website? Better conversion? Better tracking?
The easiest answer is usually:
Do more.
I don’t trust that answer until I’ve looked at what’s already happening.
2. The answer
Figure out where the opportunity is actually getting lost.
I’m always a little suspicious when someone knows exactly what your business needs before they’ve really looked at the concrete numbers.
You know who I’m talking about...
I’ll usually have a theory pretty quickly. That’s part of experience. You start recognizing patterns.
But a theory is still a theory.
If the numbers tell me I’m wrong, great.
Prove me wrong, please.
3. Why
I’m doing major overhauls or startup work with three very different businesses right now.
One already gets meaningful ecommerce traffic.
More traffic sounds like the obvious next step until you realize people are already getting pretty far into the buying process.
So now I care less about bringing in more people and more about where we’re losing the ones already there.
Another has thousands of products, existing search visibility and years of website decisions layered on top of each other.
Could we publish more SEO content? Absolutely.
But if the structure, tracking and product organization need work first, adding more content isn’t the priority.
And for another local business, paid search genuinely makes sense.
People are actively looking for what they sell. Geography matters. Showing up at the right moment has real value.
Three businesses.
Three different answers.
That’s kind of the whole point.
4. How I approach it
I start with the business. Duh...
What does the owner think is wrong?
What are customers actually doing?
What are the numbers telling me?
And where do those things stop lining up?
Then I use the tools available to me, including AI, to organize all of it, challenge my assumptions, compare possibilities and get through the repetitive stuff faster.
And yes, I use AI to help me write emails too.
Why would I spend ten emails getting to a point I could communicate clearly in one?
I spent enough time in corporate America sitting in meetings about meetings. I have no desire to recreate that for myself or my clients.
Let me be clear: AI doesn’t make the decision for me.
It helps me get to the part where I need to make the decision faster, because wasting time is not my MO.
If you want to see how that thinking shows up in real client work, see how Soma approaches client work.
5. What to do next
Before you spend more on marketing, ask:
Where is the opportunity actually getting lost?
Look at the traffic.
Look at what people do once they get there.
Look at the conversion path.
Look at the tracking.
Look at what the business can realistically support.
Then decide what comes next.
Sometimes you need more marketing.
Sometimes you need to fix what’s already there.
And sometimes you need to admit the thing you were convinced was the problem isn’t actually the problem.
That’s not failure.
That’s the hard truth.
Not sure what’s actually broken?
If you know something in your marketing isn’t working but you’re not sure whether the problem is traffic, SEO, paid search, the website or conversion, start there.
Want to see how I approach real businesses?
You don’t need more marketing. You need a better reason for what you do next.
Do less guessing. Make the next move count.
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