Before you change marketing strategies, consider that they rarely stop working overnight. It is more often a case of effectiveness and relevance changing as a business grows, their customers behaving differently as society and trends move, or competitors developing their own approaches.
For established SMEs, this can be a very frustrating situation, as it can feel ‘easier’ to keep doing the same things than to change marketing strategies!
Whilst their marketing activity may continue, budgets remain committed, and people undertaking the activities all remain busy, the business results don’t necessarily continue at the level required.
There are several common reasons why small businesses decide to change their marketing strategies. Lead volume, quality, and consistency can all decline without a need for change being recognised or acted upon, and as a result, the acquisition cost (how much it costs to buy each customer) can climb to a point where the existing mix of marketing just doesn’t make sense any-more.
In addition new opportunities can also arise from developing existing customer relationships and generating more recommendations.
Between not acting on new opportunities, and allowing the status quo in your marketing to continue while the market shifts, can create painful business results.
At UK Growth Coach, we believe that recognising where your marketing needs to improve is just as important as deciding what to do differently.
That’s why our unique Profit Flow® model separates marketing into three distinct areas: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Marketing.
Each of these types of marketing contribute to business performance in a different way, and understanding those differences can help business owners make much more informed, profitable decisions.
How the three areas of marketing work together
Our Profit Flow® model identifies nine interconnected drivers of business profitability, beginning with three areas of marketing.
Primary marketing focuses on connecting and communicating with new potential customers, including decision makers and decision influencers, to generate awareness, interest, and interaction.
Secondary marketing focuses on existing and previous customers. It involves maintaining relationships, educating customers about your wider offering, encouraging repeat purchases, and reactivating past customers.
Tertiary marketing focuses on reaching prospective customers through the influence of others, including recommendations, professional introducers, strategic alliance partners, and positive customer experiences.
These are important distinctions because the most valuable marketing opportunities aren’t necessarily found by attracting more new customers, and the method and style of communication required within each marketing bracket is quite different.
When your marketing stops delivering the right opportunities
One common frustration for SME owners is investing in marketing without generating sufficient worthwhile enquiries that lead to a return on investment.
As an example, it could be that your website attracts too few relevant visitors, advertising is becoming expensive, or networking activities aren’t producing the opportunities you expected.
Alternatively, you might be receiving plenty of enquiries, but too many of these are unsuitable or highly price-sensitive customers meaning conversion rate or margin are unduly affected.
In either of these situations there are opportunities to improve your primary marketing, although the strategy and tactics applied would differ considerably.
To demonstrate this, imagine a commercial heating company that is targeting facilities managers and commercial property owners.
If it is struggling to reach key decision makers with its value sharing messages, then improving the visibility it achieves in the industry, enhancing its online findability, and undertaking some targeted direct communications may well help.
However, if it’s already attracting enquiries, but mostly from domestic customers, refining its brand positioning or core messaging might be more appropriate.
Within our Profit Flow® approach for primary marketing, we often help business owners explore opportunities to improve findability, visibility and credibility, direct marketing, and to develop relevant alliance relationships.
For others we focus more on secondary or tertiary marketing and apply relevant strategies and tactics from within those areas.
Wherever the marketing focus needs to be, the aim is to generate a more reliable flow of suitable opportunities, with a stronger likelihood of becoming profitable, loyal customers.
When the market changes around you
Think about how your customers research suppliers today compared with five years ago.
Search engines, online reviews, social media, and increasingly AI-powered search tools influence how people discover businesses, compare options, and develop confidence.
This means that your competitors are likely evolving their approaches too.
One might introduce a compelling customer guarantee, whilst another could strengthen its online reputation, improve its website, or communicate its expertise more convincingly.
The result of their activity could well be that your previously successful marketing becomes less effective and that leaves you with a choice – adapt and overcome or stay static and risk becoming outcompeted.
This isn’t a case of your services having become inferior.
It may simply be that customer expectations have changed, competitors have become more visible, or your business isn’t communicating its strengths effectively.
Investigating how your target customers currently make purchasing decisions can reveal new opportunities within primary and tertiary marketing.
Understanding where customers seek information, whose opinions influence them, and what reassurances they need nowadays can also help you make more informed decisions.
As an example, whilst improving website content might help customers discover you in the first place, stronger testimonials and relevant case studies could increase their confidence in making a favourable buying decision.
The priority when you change marketing strategies is responding to genuine and current customer behaviour rather than following every new marketing trend or relying on “what has worked up to now”.
When you’re missing opportunities closer to home
Many established SMEs concentrate heavily on attracting new customers while investing relatively little in maintaining existing relationships.
Yet previous customers are likely to need some of your services again, have additional requirements for the ones they have not yet purchased, and may well be unaware of everything else you provide.
Imagine an accountancy practice offering annual accounts, tax services, management accounting, and cashflow forecasting.
A client who originally engaged the firm for annual accounts may know very little about its other capabilities.
Helpful educational updates, relevant service information, and periodic review conversations could create valuable additional opportunities.
After all, there is nothing worse than hearing from a client that they have bought a service you provide from someone else simply because they didn’t know you offer it!
This focus is called secondary marketing – where you work on maintaining both recognition and relevance, as well as strengthening relationships, and helping customers understand how your business can continue supporting them.
It also involves reconnecting with previous customers who may have stopped purchasing, despite remaining well suited to your services.
For some businesses, encouraging repeat purchasing or reactivating previous customers could offer greater potential than spending more on attracting new ones. It’s all about developing lifetime value and loyalty.
Sometimes your greatest opportunity is already within reach, and it’s certainly easier to sell to someone who already knows, likes and trusts you than to convince a stranger to buy for the very first time!
When your new business depends on too few sources
Many SMEs have grown successfully to this point through a relatively narrow range of marketing activities.
Often this is because an owner started with an excellent personal network, or that sufficient enquiries came through online advertising or one productive professional introducer in the early years, but this is now not suitable for the future growth plans.
Equally, advertising costs can rise, referral partners can retire, and search rankings certainly fluctuate.
An overdependence on too few strategies and tactics an creates business vulnerability, whereas developing complementary sources of opportunity can improve both commercial resilience and consistency.
This is where tertiary marketing becomes important.
Satisfied customers, professional introducers, and strategic alliance partners can almost always connect you with prospects who might otherwise remain unaware of your business.
”Birds of a feather flock together”.
What we mean by this is that your best customers commonly know other people who are like them – and with the right approach, will be happy to introduce or refer you.
However, effective referral marketing involves more than just asking people to recommend you.
It begins with understanding current customer experiences, identifying where you’re delivering genuine value that matters to them, and capturing credible and easy to communicate evidence of those successes.
Customer stories, testimonials, and relevant case studies can strengthen your reputation and make seeking recommendations much easier.
A positive customer experience can contribute to marketing performance long after the original purchase. In our experience, for years afterwards if those relationships are maintained and nurtured intentionally.
When your marketing no longer matches your ambitions
Sometimes your marketing strategy just needs to evolve because your business is moving forward.
Perhaps you’re introducing new services, entering different markets, targeting larger or different customers, or prioritising profitability over turnover growth.
The marketing that helped you reach your current position may be unsuitable for your next stage and that is very common indeed.
As an example, let’s take a construction company that wants to strategically shift from domestic extensions into larger commercial projects.
To do so effectively it needs to identify and communicate appropriately to the different target audiences, presenting stronger project case studies, building new professional relationships, and taking a more focused approach that appeals to the more commercially minded decision maker.
Whilst the company’s previous marketing activities could attract plenty of work, it is very likely it would not deliver the type of enquiries to support its future ambitions.
This is why marketing strategy must connect directly to wider business objectives, and this connection should be reviewed as a matter of course on a frequent enough basis (annually at least).
Your marketing should help create the business you’re trying to build, not just reflect who you used to be.
Should you really change marketing strategies?
One important lesson from working with SME owners is that apparent marketing problems don’t always originate within marketing.
Whilst a business might generate plenty of enquiries it may also struggle to convert them into customers (a sales issue).
Another might achieve strong sales growth but disappointing profitability because of weak pricing, insufficient gross margins, or rising operating costs.
Increasing marketing expenditure won’t necessarily solve either problem.
Our Profit Flow® model examines nine interconnected profitability drivers: the three marketing areas, lead progression, prospect conversion, average order rate, average order value, gross margin, and fixed costs.
This broader perspective helps distinguish symptoms from underlying causes and identify improvements with the greatest commercial potential.
For example, improving prospect conversion could generate more sales from existing enquiries without additional marketing expenditure.
Equally, strengthening secondary marketing could increase purchasing frequency among existing customers.
Choosing the right strategy depends on understanding how different aspects of business performance influence one another.
How should you decide what to change?
Before investing in new marketing activities, consider the performance within each of the identified areas:
Primary marketing: Are you connecting with enough of the right new prospects and generating worthwhile interest?
Secondary marketing: Are you maintaining customer relationships, communicating your wider offering, and encouraging further purchasing?
Tertiary marketing: Are you effectively using your reputation, customer experiences, and relationships to generate recommendations, referrals and ratings?
Then examine how successfully those opportunities become profitable sales.
For many established SMEs, reviewing marketing strategy every six to twelve months is sensible, supported by regular performance monitoring. Reviewing the tactical mix applied likely needs more frequent review to stay on top.
The priority is understanding your opportunities (what you want to achieve e.g. increase leads from new customers) before selecting strategies (the different approaches e.g. improve our findability) and tactics (the sets of activities e.g. SEO, paid advertising, or direct emails).
Making your marketing work harder
Changing your marketing approach can be an important step towards improving wider business performance, but the most effective change starts with understanding your business objectives, identifying what’s preventing progress, and choosing improvements with genuine potential.
At UK Growth Coach, we support established business owners in assessing performance, identifying opportunities, and developing practical strategies and action plans using our unique Profit Flow® methodology – both within the marketing elements and beyond them.
If you’d like to discover where your marketing and wider business performance could improve, book a complimentary “90-minute Business Review and Opportunity Finding Session” with one of our team.
Frequently asked questions
Why do small businesses change their marketing strategies?
Common reasons include declining enquiry volume, receiving too many unsuitable leads, increasing acquisition costs, changing customer behaviour, stronger competition, and deciding upon new or different business objectives.
What are the three types of marketing in Profit Flow®?
Primary marketing attracts new leads from the new (yet unserved) market.
Secondary marketing develops existing and previous customer relationships.
Tertiary marketing generates referrals, recommendations, and third-party influence.
How can I tell which part of my marketing needs improvement?
Assess how effectively you’re attracting new prospects, developing existing customer relationships, and generating recommendations.
Then review conversion rates and profitability to check if marketing is the real issue.
Should I change my marketing strategy or increase my budget?
Review performance first.
Better targeting, customer relationships, referral generation, or sales conversion may improve results without increasing expenditure.
