The Marketing Advice That Works… Just Not for Your Business

[00:00:00] Are you ready to grow? From solopreneur to CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host Rachel Cook, and I've spent the last decade helping women entrepreneurs start and scale service-based businesses. If you're serious about building a sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy, systems and support in place to make it happen.
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I want to say something that might sound controversial at first. A lot of marketing advice. It actually does work. It just doesn't work for your business, and forcing it is what's making everything feel heavier and harder than it really needs to be. Let's get into it.
Hey there, CEOs, Rachel Cook here, founder of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast, and we are back for the second installment of the Uncomplicate Your Marketing series. If you missed the first one. We talked about the big challenge that a lot of us are struggling with in our businesses, and that is your marketing not only feels hard, it's just not sustainable, and it continues to be this laundry list of actions you have to take.
But the minute you lose capacity because something happens in your life, you have to take a little bit of time off to take care of a kid or somebody gets sick, or you have to help your parent. Everything just grinds to a halt. And I shared in the last episode how even though 2025 was the hardest year ever in my entire life, I lost my mom at a really, really hard year of caregiving where I had to basically make that my full-time job.
My business continued to run, not just run, but sustain us, pay for our lifestyle, pay for the team, and it even grew. I was able to put it on cruise control, and the reason I was able to put it on cruise control was because I have a strategy that actually aligns with my life and my business, and that is what I want for you.
That is what I want for every woman entrepreneur out there, and as we are talking about. Marketing. You know, the reality is there's a ton of marketing advice out there. You can't get away from it. If you are in business for yourself, there's a million people who want to tell you that this is a tip or trick or tactic that changed everything, and if only you can post 10 times a day on this platform, then everything will be magical and work itself out.
The problem is most of this advice is not designed for our businesses, right? It's just not designed for high trust, highly relational, regular, everyday, small businesses. It doesn't make sense for us. We do not have high volume businesses. We don't need to have thousands and thousands and thousands of followers.
We don't need to have thousands. And thousands and thousands of clients in order to achieve our goals. And so I wanna talk about why this advice is so awful so that we can all just be a little bit more critical in discerning what actually works for ourselves. Okay, so the first thing I wanna talk about here is the online business and online marketing world.
Oh, this is such a tricky world, and technically I guess I'm a part of it. I don't know. I always feel weird about people who assume the online business space is somehow separate from just your regular, everyday small business. I mean, I guess the only difference for me was always that I could work wherever I wanted and I could have clients from wherever.
It wasn't dependent on. Having a brick and mortar store or physical location, it wasn't dependent on me having to see my clients in person, and that used to be like a real differentiator because when I started my business in 2008, that was really unusual. It was really unusual for a lot of folks to work with somebody who, you know, they couldn't just walk into their office.
But I really feel like this separation doesn't make any sense anymore because for most regular, everyday small business owners, we're [00:05:00] all leveraging online to grow our business. Right? It's 2026, like we're all using the internet in some way to grow our business, but this industry has somehow. In a very strange way, um, decided that it's separate.
That it's separate, and they're somehow, you know, what works for the rest of the world doesn't apply to them. And so it's become this kind of weird online business, online marketing markets to itself. And you probably see this if you get into some specific. You know, corners of the internet where everybody's talking about making money online, everybody's focused on only online offers.
There's such a huge push for everybody to have automated, scalable, online courses, info products, et cetera, et cetera. Um. And they've just kind of lost the plot, I feel like, in a lot of ways. But they're all marketing to each other, right? They're all marketing to each other. Um, they're marketing to other people who only wanna have an online business and want to create some sort of, usually some sort of info product that is infinitely scalable.
And it creates this really weird echo chamber where they're all kind of doing the same thing. And telling each other to do the same strategies. It's just everywhere. It's just everywhere. And so there's a lot of people who have made this really confusing because they've lost touch with regular everyday businesses.
Right. I see this so often because I will have clients who come to me and they're a local business serving local clients. They actually have a physical location where they're servicing. You know, whether it's a chiropractor or an acupuncturist or a massage therapist or a yoga studio, like they actually have a brick and mortar physical location.
Or even a lot of people who maybe don't have a physical location, um, they might not have a physical office that people come to, but they're still doing services for people in their local community. Right. And when they get wrapped up in this online marketing space. It starts to be really confusing. It just starts to be incredibly confusing, especially because a lot of the online marketing advice out there is really about working with other online marketing businesses or online entrepreneurs, and it's not so much about working with the general public, which is what a lot of my clients do.
A lot of my clients are consumer facing. They're working with the general public. They're not trying to. You know, coach coaches to coach coaches or teach everybody how to make money online. So those tend to be the little rabbit holes that you can easily go down. And if you're not really thinking about, you know, does this really apply to me and my community and my clients and who I'm trying to get in front of?
It can be really insidious 'cause it can pull you out of what does work and start sending you down these rabbit holes of. You know, everything needs to be automated and scalable. The coaching, coaching coaches, uh, coaches, coaching coaches thing is another, you know, chaotic world. That is, again, one that I feel like I kind of straddle, but I really try to avoid it because I found it to be very incestuous.
I found it to be very like MLM, like, um, and not. Connected to real everyday small businesses. I found myself kind of along the side of this industry, 'cause technically I am a coach and consultant, but I found that so many of them depended on continuing to sell coaches to other coaching, to other coaches, and then developing a program about coaching.
And again, it became very MLM like. And not a fit. Uh, a lot of that advice just doesn't pass the sniff test when you are trying to apply it to the majority of everyday small businesses. We're also finding this huge volume of people wanting to be influencers and they're everywhere and suddenly everyone wants to be an influencer.
Right, and they've taken over. They've taken over so many channels you can't get away from them, I swear, on social media, on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube, all of these influencer business models, [00:10:00] which are really based on, maybe it's not thousands of clients, like the online business, online marketing, online coaching world.
Those are all high volume, right? They only get to the millions of dollars if they have tens of thousands of clients and have highly transactional relationships. Influencers are slightly different only because they don't sell their own products. They're usually selling other products. So influencers are constantly growing their audiences because their audience is what makes them money from purchasing.
The things they talk about, right? So all of these spaces create a lot of visibility, bias, and that's why it's everywhere. You actually have to work a little harder to find advice that fits for like regular, every day small businesses. You have to look kind of hard because they don't have to post a million times a day.
They don't have to be on every platform and every channel, in fact. I know a lot of people who say no to social media altogether and continue to grow their small business. So it's really confusing when what is super visible is all of these echo chambers of online business, online marketing coaches, coaching coaches, influencers that are all based on extreme visibility, growing massive platforms.
And that's what we start to see 'cause it dominates, right? What we don't see is as many super successful regular. Every day small businesses. So these are the myths that come out of those echo chambers that especially hurt high trust businesses. These are the things that I have to kind of deprogram people.
Um, when they come to me and they first start talking to me and I'm like, why are you doing this? It's clearly not working. And they feel like, oh, well. Paid all this money for this other program and this program and this program, and everyone told me this is what I was supposed to do. What are the things that you might be hearing that might actually be hurting you?
You need to post constantly and you need to be everywhere. This drives me insane. You do not need to be on every single channel. You don't need to be on every social media platform. You don't need to have every single type of content out there. You might even not need to depend on content. Um, that might not be the right strategy for your specific business, but I hear so many people who come out of, especially if they've paid for online courses or coaching from people in those worlds, again, you have to really think about like, consider the source.
Who are they really trying to talk to? If you're getting advice from online business and online marketing experts who only wanna work with other online business and online marketing experts, they're going to be teaching you high volume tactics, which is why you're hearing, well, if I post five times a day or 10 times a day, et cetera, then I'll get where I wanna go.
That is high volume. You really have to ask yourself, is that aligned for me and my business? It makes sense if you're trying to build an influencer business, right? Your job is to post all the time if you are an influencer, but if you have a high trust, highly relational, lower volume business doesn't make sense.
Another myth that is out there is you just need to go viral. If you just have one viral video, that's all you need, and so you end up spending all, you know, gonna hit that virality. The reality is, the truth is, um, trying to chase virality is it's like an impossible quest. Honestly, most of us will never have something that truly goes viral.
And you don't need it. In fact, if you were to go look on my social content, I really haven't posted a lot in the recent years. Um, and so I'll use myself as an example. I mean, I've got a multiple six figure business. I work with dozens of clients, not thousands of clients. I actually know all my clients' names and most of my content might get a few hundred views.
On social media, if I go and look at my TikTok channel, which I haven't posted to in like a year, um, or on my Instagram, I might get a few hundred views on things. Um, and that's enough because it's getting in front of the [00:15:00] right people. So the whole, you need to go viral is built on this high transaction, high volume business model.
I also wanna say that high transaction, high volume really depends on you being mass market, not being something that is for a very specific type of client. And I don't know about you, but I'm not for everybody. I don't wanna be for everybody. I wanna be for the clients who I absolutely adore working with and who deeply resonate with what I'm talking about.
I don't want to try to serve everybody because that turns into trying to please everybody, and that is exhausting. Another huge myth that I hear is that automation is the secret. If only you can automate everything, then your marketing will work, right? If you can automate absolutely everything that you're doing, if you can have this really complicated 37 step funnel.
I'm teasing about the 37 step, but I've kind of been saying that one a lot in episodes because it's so complicated. Automation is great in some ways, and I use automation in a lot of places, but I feel like they make it so complicated and the reality is when you have really complicated systems, even if they're automated, the more complicated the more opportunities.
The more pressure points for something to break and then something breaks, and because it's so complicated, you're having a harder time trying to figure out and troubleshoot, well, what is the thing that broke? It is a layer of complication that a lot of us just do not need. So I'm always hesitant when people are talking about these super complicated automated systems.
With all of these bells and whistles, I find it's not necessary for a lot of our businesses. And the final myth that really hurts high trust businesses is that if it's good, if you're good at what you do, then people will find it, which is kind of the opposite myth out there, right? Um, the others we're all about if you do all the marketing activity, this is like the opposite of, well, you don't have to do any marketing activity.
Um, people will just find you because clearly you're the best. That doesn't work either. So why these tactics actually do work elsewhere is because they work for high volume, high transaction business models, right? So remember what we talked about in the last episode and these high volume, highly transactional businesses, they are built around needing to acquire thousands of clients.
A year, sometimes even thousands of clients a month, right? So when we're talking high volume, we're talking thousands, tens of thousands more. And these are business models that do not really build relationships with their clients unless you happen to be thinking into like the coaches, coaching coaches world, a lot of them.
Their entry level products or programs, you're never gonna talk to the face of the business. You're never gonna actually have access to that person. You have to ascend up until you're now paying tens of thousands or sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars to be in their highest level inner circle.
That's so culty. It makes me crazy. But those tactics work because they're like, let's just acquire as many clients as possible. And then they work them up, you know, to pay higher and higher, to get higher and higher levels of access. That is not realistic for most other businesses unless you're a coaching business that does, that model doesn't really work.
So a lot of these are built on, they need to get as many first time buyers as possible, and this is really important because even if they have that ascension model where at some point they do have a really high price point. Service or, you know, access to that person. Um, the only way they can get to the point where they get people who will pay that much is if they have thousands of people buying from them the first time.
Those first time buyers and those people are coming in on the $7. Ebook or the automated on demand program, et cetera. And I'm not saying that those programs are bad. I mean, I have lower price point programs as well, but it's the whole model where they need such a massive volume of people. They need a massive audience to make it work.
Right. And if you [00:20:00] think about, I'm not gonna name any of these people, but it's pretty easy to see people who have. Hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. They probably have email lists with hundreds of thousands of people on them. Um, they're focused on attracting first time buyers. They're also usually focused on attracting very beginner people in whatever, you know, area of expertise they have.
And that's because the, the beginners are the biggest audience size. People who are just getting started in whatever it is. It could be, you know, again, if online business, online marketing tends to only market to other online business, online marketing coaches only tend to market to other coaches, um, if they're in that coaching coaches model.
But a lot of them are focused on people who are very, very beginners. So just getting started with their online business or just getting started with their health and wellness journey, or just getting started with. F fill in the blank. What other, whatever other topic. So they have to hit that beginner market really hard.
'cause it's the biggest market there is. It's super transactional, right? And it doesn't make sense for most of us to use those types of strategies. They work for them, but they don't really work for highly relational. Businesses. And again, when we're talking about highly relational businesses, we're talking about high trust, boutique style businesses where you know who your clients are, you know their names, right?
You've actually had communication and conversation with them, with relational businesses. Now, you can still be a coach or a consultant as I am, but in these types of business models, it's all about trust. That is built over time in our businesses. Clients come to work with us because they are no longer beginners or they want to go into much deeper work, right?
Their problems aren't gonna be solved by, um, some quick impulse buy. They're needing to work with us for a longer period of time. If you're a coach, a consultant, a service provider. A creative entrepreneur, our clients are buying from us because, not just 'cause they know, like, and trust us, but I mean, that's the baseline.
But because of our reputation, because of our ability to walk alongside them and get the results that they're looking for. They're not looking for hype. They're not looking to be one in, you know, thousands of people in a program where their question cannot get answered. They are looking for real support.
They are looking for a higher level of experience, and that is a very different expectation from our clients, right? And it's a very different marketing model that helps get those clients. They don't need hype, right? They don't need us to be out there shouting from the rooftops how awesome we are. They need to know our reputation.
They need to know that we can get them the results they're looking for and they need to trust us. And once we find those clients and they come into work with us, for a lot of us, those clients will stay around for a very long time. And that is another massive difference between a highly transactional.
Business model and a relational business model. I talk a lot about building a client's for life business, where your clients continue to work with you again and again because you become their go-to gal, right? You're their go-to person. And I think about this even, again, coming back to regular, everyday small businesses.
I think about this with businesses like I have a friend who's a hair and makeup artist. And she shared with me that she was getting so frustrated because all the advice out there was way too complicated. And she was like, you know, I just need like 150 to 200 clients who come back and see me every three months.
That's what I need. I don't need new people all the time. I need clients who trust me and I'm their go-to person. They're not gonna let anyone else touch their hair. And that is how. You build a sustainable business is those relationships, right? And same thing, even in my business. I have clients who come back to me again and again and again, clients who worked with me in the collective and stick around for years, clients who worked with me even [00:25:00] 10 years ago.
And whenever they're going through a shift in their business or they need to review their strategy or they need support. They immediately go, I need to talk to Rach again. Everything that we did before worked for me. I need to get in her orbit again. And that is honestly a major shift for a lot of us because a lot of the advice out there is about getting people in the door the first time.
It's not about how do we keep clients, how do we build experiences where they wanna stick around for a long time? How do we get them the results that make them go, okay, you're my person. I only wanna work with you. That is a shift, a huge shift in the way that we think about our business. So the hidden cost of forcing these highly transactional approaches on our highly relational businesses.
Burnout, hands down, one of the biggest things. You know, that's probably the, the fastest thing that comes up for a lot of people is they just get exhausted because it requires so much of your time and energy to be spent on marketing and sales. And I don't know about you, but I didn't get into business to spend all day long doing marketing and sales activities.
And unless you have the capacity to do that long term. You know, it be, it really does become a big challenge for a lot of small business owners, especially once your client docket gets full, right? Once you're full with clients and you have the number of clients you want, suddenly you're trying to keep up with clients and keep up with this high volume of marketing, and that becomes really tricky.
So burnout is a massive, hidden cost of forcing these highly transactional strategies on your business. The fragmented strategy is another hidden cost, and this one's a little harder to see if you are so in the weeds with it that you can't like really take a step back and asking like, does this make sense?
Does this client journey that I'm. Creating makes sense. Am I making it easy for people to know how to work with me and what the next step is? Am I making it easy for people to find me and know the next step? All of these fragmented tips, tricks and tactics, they don't always work smoothly together. They don't create a really smooth path for people.
In fact, it might cause a lot of friction and confusion. And that's usually because we've been so in the weeds with the tips, tricks and tactics and constantly trying new things that we don't, you know, pull back and really look at the bigger picture. I also see a ton of small business owners who. Find themselves freezing up instead of implementing.
And this is something I asked in an email a couple weeks ago. I said, Hey, let me know what your biggest challenge is when it comes to marketing your business sustainably. And multiple people came back and they said, I know so much that I need to be doing again, should be doing. But when it's time to do it, I just freeze.
I don't know what to talk about. I don't know what to post. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just get frozen because it's just so much. Again, there's no strategy, there's no clear game plan. It's just a list of things to do, and a list of things to do is not a strategy, and all of this starts to feel like something's wrong with you.
Why can't I figure this out? Why is this so hard? Is there something wrong with me that I just can't get over myself and figure this out? I want you to know that just because something works for someone else doesn't mean it works for your business. There's so much advice out there and it became advice 'cause it worked for someone, but part of being the CEO of your business is to really.
Be able to step back, see the big picture, think strategically, and make sure everything is aligned and everything actually makes sense that you were incredibly thoughtful and intentional about this client journey, this client experience. From the first time they get to know you, they find out about you, your business, and your brand.
So just because something works for someone else. Doesn't mean it works for your business. The goal isn't that we just [00:30:00] stop doing marketing, right? We have to, all of us have to. There's no real way around that. We all have to have some way of getting in front of new potential clients. The goal is that we are doing more aligned marketing and that we're doing more strategic.
Marketing where we're not having to make so many decisions all the time and effort so hard, where instead it is so clear what we know works for our businesses and instead of freezing up, 'cause you don't know what to talk about, you just never run out of inspiration or you never run out of ideas 'cause you have a real strategy behind it.
Right? You don't have to guess anymore. So my question for you today is, what marketing advice have you been following that technically works, technically works, but it feels wrong or misaligned with how your clients actually buy. What marketing advice have you been following that actually works, but feels wrong or misaligned with how your clients actually buy?
I think this is really an important one. Um, and one way to know what advice you've been following that technically works but feels wrong, is to do the 10 clients exercise. I give this exercise out a lot. Literally go back and look at who are the last 10 people who bought from you, who. Paid you for a product, a program, a service, and figure out how did they hear about you Actually go through, you know, whatever you need to go through, whether it's their intake form or the conversation you had with them, or your checking, you know, maybe your email marketing tags or whatever, and figure out like, okay, where did this person actually come from?
I often give this exercise to clients and. They tell me, oh, wow. I did that exercise and I realized out of my last 10 clients, six or seven of them came from referrals, and here I am, you know, having a conversation with them and they're saying they're stressed because they feel like they have to constantly be posting on social media.
I'm like, no, no, no. That's a huge disconnect from how your clients are actually finding and deciding to buy from you. I have clients who will do this last 10 clients exercise, and they'll say. Oh, a lot of them actually came because I have been doing these collaborations. I've been doing workshops for other people's audiences, and then they come and work with me and I'm like, great, why are we on this content hamster wheel?
So I want you to really think about this and get clear around what works for your business, what actually drives results for your business. All right, in the next episode of the Uncomplicate Your Marketing series, I'm gonna break down some of the most common mistakes that I'm seeing smart business owners make when they're trying to grow a high trust, highly relational business.
Even when they're doing quote unquote everything, right, everything they should be doing, everything they were told that they had to do. We're gonna really dig into this even more. And you know, my goal with this whole series is to really help you think more strategically about the choices you're making, because when you think more strategically, things become massively easier, and you can stop trying to force the square peg in the round hole.
If you love this episode, make sure you are subscribed. Make sure you leave a review and come on over and continue the conversation on Instagram at Rachel dot Cook. Would love, love, love to hear from you.