Why Your Marketing Probably Isn’t Working (And How to Fix It)
I was sitting in a coffee shop in Bulimba last month with a bloke who runs a decent-sized landscaping business. Let’s call him Dave. Dave was frustrated. He’d spent five grand on a new website and another two grand a month on ads, but his phone wasn't ringing any more than it was a year ago.
“The leads I do get are tyre-kickers,” Dave told me. “They just want the cheapest price. I’m out here competing with kids with a mower and a ute who don't have my overheads. Why aren't people seeing the value in what I do?”
I asked Dave a simple question: “When you signed up with that marketing crowd, what did they ask you about your business?”
He thought for a second. “They asked for my logo, my credit card details, and what suburbs I wanted to target.”
That right there is why Dave was wasting his money.
Most marketing agencies treat small businesses like a vending machine. You put money in, they tweak some settings on a computer, and hope customers come out. But if you haven't done the groundwork to figure out why someone should choose you over the guy down the road, you’re just paying to tell the world you’re exactly the same as everyone else.
At Local Marketing Group, we do things differently. We use a specific onboarding checklist that forces our clients to dig deep into their business before we spend a single cent on ads. It’s about moving away from being a commodity in your market and becoming the obvious choice for your customers.
Here is the exact checklist we use. You can steal this for your own business to figure out why you aren't winning the jobs you want.
1. Who is your 'Dream Customer' (and who is a nightmare?)
Most business owners tell me, “Anyone with a house and a credit card is my customer.”
That’s rubbish. If you try to talk to everyone, you end up talking to no one.
We worked with a plumber in Morningside who was sick of doing $100 tap washer jobs. They took up all his time, required driving all over Brisbane, and the profit was tiny. When we sat down, we realised his best jobs—the ones where he made real money and the customers were actually pleasant—were full bathroom renovations for families in the inner-east.
The Checklist Question: If you could only do one type of job for the rest of the year, what would it be? Who is the person paying for that job?
Once you know who you want, you can stop wasting money talking to the people you don't want.
2. What is the 'One Big Problem' you solve?
People don't buy a service; they buy a solution to a problem.
If I have a leak in my roof during a Brisbane summer storm, my problem isn't "I need a roofer." My problem is "My expensive furniture is getting ruined and I'm stressed about the insurance claim."
If your marketing just says "Roofing Services Brisbane," you're just another name on a list. If your marketing says "We stop leaks in under 2 hours or we pay your insurance excess," you’ve solved my specific stress.
The Checklist Question: What is the underlying fear or frustration your customer has? How do you make that go away?
3. Why should they pick you instead of the other guy?
This is the hardest part. Most owners say “Quality service,” “Family owned,” or “Great prices.”
I’ve got news for you: your competitors are saying the exact same thing. If everyone says they have the best quality, then “quality” becomes meaningless.
To get results, you need to be the only choice in your customer's mind. Maybe you’re the only electrician in the Northside who cleans up with a vacuum after every job. Maybe you’re the only accountant who explains things in plain English without the suit and tie.
The Checklist Question: What is the one thing you do that your competitors are too lazy or too disorganized to do? That is your gold mine.
4. What does the 'Customer Journey' actually look like?
I see this all the time with Brisbane tradies. They spend money on a website, a customer finds them, calls them... and then no one picks up the phone. Or the quote takes two weeks to arrive.
Your brand isn't just your logo; it's how it feels to deal with you. If your website looks professional but your quote is a scribbled note on a piece of carbon paper, you’ve lost the trust you built.
The Checklist Question: Trace the path from the first click on Google to the final invoice. Where are the spots where you look messy or slow? Fix those before you buy more ads.
5. The Visual 'Sniff Test'
Let’s be honest. People judge books by their covers. If your website looks like it was built in 2005 and your work shirts are faded and torn, you can't charge premium prices.
If you want to charge more for your work, you have to look the part. You don't need to spend $50,000 on a rebrand, but you do need to look like a business that is successful and cares about details.
The Checklist Question: Look at your top three competitors. If a customer saw your website and theirs side-by-side, who would they think is more expensive? If it’s not you, you have work to do.
6. Real Proof (Not Just Stock Photos)
Stop using photos of smiling people in hard hats that clearly live in America. Brisbane locals can spot a stock photo a mile away. It looks fake, and fake looks untrustworthy.
We had a builder in Coorparoo who replaced all his stock photos with actual phone photos of his team on-site and his finished kitchen renovations. His enquiries doubled in a month. Why? Because people could see he actually did the work in houses that looked like theirs.
The Checklist Question: Do you have at least 10 high-quality photos of your actual work and your actual team? If not, get your phone out today.
7. The 'What's Next' Step
Don't make people work to give you money. If your website has a 20-field contact form, people will leave. If they have to find your email address and write a message from scratch, they’ll go to the next guy.
The Checklist Question: Is there a clear, big button on your site that says "Get a Quote" or "Call Now"? Does it work on a mobile phone while someone is standing in their kitchen?
How Long Does This Take to Work?
If you fix these seven things, you won't see a change overnight. Marketing isn't a light switch. However, usually within 30 to 60 days of getting your "story" right, you’ll notice two things:
1. The quality of people calling you gets better. You’ll get fewer people asking "How much?" and more people asking "When can you start?" 2. Your marketing spend goes further. Because your website actually works to convince people, you don't need as many visitors to get a sale.
What Should You Do First?
Don't try to fix everything at once. You're busy running a business.
Start with Question 1. Figure out who your best customers are. Then, go through your website and marketing materials. If you find yourself sounding like every other business in Brisbane, stop.
Most of what you read about "SEO" or "algorithms" is a distraction for small business owners. What actually makes you money is being the most trusted, most obvious solution to a local person's problem.
If you’re tired of the "spray and pray" approach to marketing and want a strategy that actually brings in the right kind of jobs, we can help. We don't just run ads; we help you build a business that people actually want to hire.
Want to stop being a secret and start getting more calls? Contact Local Marketing Group today.