When Nothing Works: the Truth No One Talks About

Ever tried everything to grow your business, only to feel hopeless about your marketing and sales?

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Mark Drager shares a story about a business owner who, despite 10+ years of experience and an established team, found nothing generated new business. Despite trying SEO, paid ads, social media, content marketing, networking, and cold calling - nothing moved leads through the sales process.

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This sparked a crucial insight: Marketing is an amplification tool. Mark illustrates this using movies - audiences don't blame theaters for bad films, they blame Hollywood. Similarly, businesses must examine what they're amplifying before focusing on distribution.

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What matters is saying the right message to the right people at the right time. When multiple approaches fail, the issue often isn't the marketing channel - it's what you're trying to communicate and to whom.

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Marketing is just an amplification tool. That's it. That's all it is. Saying the right message to the right people at the right time, said in the right way. -- Mark Drager

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

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Cost Savings: Save thousands in marketing spend by identifying why your current efforts aren't delivering results

Revenue Growth: Break through revenue plateaus by understanding when to adjust your business model versus your marketing.

‍Strategic Reset: Stop wasting time on tactics that won't work until you fix your foundational message.

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Key Takeaways

• Fix the Foundation - Marketing amplifies what exists. Start by strengthening your core message and offer before increasing promotion spend.

• Check Market Fit - When multiple tactics fail, examine how your business model aligns with current market needs.

• Study Signals - Track how competitors and customers respond to your message. Their reactions reveal if you need tactical tweaks or transformation.

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A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager: Hopeless. That was the word that a business owner I was speaking to the other day used to describe how he felt about his advertising, his marketing, and ultimately his sales.

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You see, over the last few years, it seems he's really tried everything. And when I say everything, I actually mean everything. SEO? Check. Paid ads? Done that. Social media? Yep. Content marketing? Mhm. Networking? He's hired an outbound salesperson. He's done cold calling.

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And yet, despite all of this—despite the fact that he's been in business for well over 10 years and has a team—it’s not like this is a startup. This is someone who knows business, who has grown a business, and knows what it takes to keep a business going.

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And yet, nothing has seemed to generate a lot of new business. Nothing seems to be getting the leads that he wants. Nothing seems to be able to capture the leads, drive them forward through the sales process. Nothing seems to close.

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And so now I'm sitting here, listening to him, and I'm hearing him describe his situation as hopeless.

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I really understand that. If you are a business owner listening to this, you understand that, because we have found ourselves at times feeling hopeless. The hair on my arms is getting raised right now because I realize that I'm saying things aloud that, frankly, we as business owners aren't supposed to talk about unless we're in a mastermind or around a table.

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But if you're a business owner, you know what I'm talking about. No matter how much you've accomplished and no matter how much you've done, there are still times where you feel like you cannot figure this out. You just—you can't figure it out.

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Because we're trying. It's not like we're not trying, right? We're trying and trying and trying. And as an entrepreneur and as a leader, as someone who's trying to figure out how we are going to grow, or how we are going to take market share, or how we are going to become the leader—or if we are the leaders, how are we gonna hold on to our market share? How are we gonna hold the competition at bay?

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The truth is, as we do this, we know that most things simply don't work. And they're never going to work. But that is the job that we signed up for. We signed up for the job of figuring out—and then continuing to figure out, over and over and over again—until we crack the code.

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Whatever that perfect combination of things is that leads to growth, aligns what we do with our clients’ values, and figures out how to bring them along for the ride. We scope a project, sell a project, deliver the project, and continue to make every step of that process—from the moment someone meets us or sees us for the very first time to, hopefully, years of ongoing service and client relationships—better and better.

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We are constantly looking for ways to improve that system and process. And we know that the vast majority of things we do will not work out, will not be sure things, and will probably fail. But that's the job we signed up for.

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Now, here’s a bit of the problem. If you've been in business for 10 or 15 or 20 years—or even longer—you’ve seen more than me. I started my agency in 2006. And the problem with being in business that long is that the longer we're in business, the less patience we have for figuring things out, the less tolerance we have for risk if there’s a series of losses.

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And frankly, the less money, time, and resources we’re willing to commit to trying to figure this out. That, in itself, creates a bit of a negative situation, right? It becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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So, this business owner I’m talking to—he's feeling hopeless, he's frustrated. But not fully, not truthfully. He’s saying this because it’s how he feels, but he’s talking to me, and he’s talking to others, because he’s trying to figure it out. He’s trying to figure this out.

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And that makes me—that actually makes me pretty happy. I say that because I’m sitting on the other side. Now I’m sitting on the other side of the Zoom call. I’m the brand strategist. I’m looking in. I’m not emotionally tied to his business.

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But to me, it’s crystal clear. And it’s something I’ve seen time and time again. You see, the problem with trying many things over and over and over again—hoping they’re going to work, counting on them to work, and continually counting on them to work—is that it’s a bit like dating.

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You know, if you've dated for long enough, if you've dated enough people, if you’ve had relationships that all seem to end at a certain time or in a certain way, I think the advice that’s typically given is that you walk to a mirror, look at that mirror, and realize that the problem is probably you.

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And so the same thing is true with the way that we sell, the way that we market, the language we use, the people we talk to, our comfort zone for how we position our products and services. Everything about the way that we have grown the business.

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You know the great book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There? The idea that everything we’ve used to get to where we are won’t necessarily take us to a higher level.

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So here’s an example. You’ve grown through networking. You have a great network. You’ve gone to all the events, you’ve built all the relationships. But frankly, it’s starting to wear on you. It’s really time-consuming, it’s organic, and when it rains, it pours. It’s hard to predict what’s going on. So, you’d like something that’s a little less demanding of your time, something more scalable, something that’s just going to work.

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I’ve spoken to business owners in some of the groups I’m a part of, and they’ve grown their business through live events across the nation where they sell from the stage. They bring people into coaching programs or education programs. And then COVID hits.

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Suddenly, they have multimillion-dollar businesses that have to face the fact that they can’t travel across the nation. What are they going to do? How are they going to pivot? What’s next for them?

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So, getting back to this business owner I was speaking to the other day— for him, for you, for me, for all of us—it’s not a question of whether SEO works or doesn’t work.

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It’s not a question of whether social media works or doesn’t. Content marketing or advertising, sales funnels, webinars, networking, wining and dining, flying people in for fancy events, going to trade shows, being on podcasts, hiring a direct sales team, or affiliate marketing.

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There are hundreds of different ways to generate business. It’s not a question of whether they work or don’t work. Everything works in the right situation, and nothing works in the wrong situation.

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And here’s the thing though, that nobody tells us—nobody tells you, nobody tells them. Nobody told me. It took me a very long time to actually figure this out by banging my own head against the wall.

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Is that marketing? Marketing is just an amplification tool. That’s it. That’s all it is. It’s an amplification tool.

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Think about it this way. If you and your family decide to go out—Christmas is coming up—you decide to go see Wicked with your kids. That’s what me and my wife are planning to do. And we go there, and you know what? It’s a terrible movie. A terrible movie. We complain. We want our money back. That’s how bad of a movie this is.

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So, I guess the movie didn’t work. But here’s the thing—we don’t blame the theaters. When the movie industry is doing well or doing poorly, none of us blame the theaters. Who do we blame? Hollywood. The people who make the movies, produce the movies, write the movies.

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What do we get upset about? We get upset with the content. The content isn’t working. We don’t get mad at the tactics—the movie theater. Right? Do you see what I’m saying here?

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When we look at the fact that amplification—the movie theaters, the thousands of theaters that exist—is amplifying the movie produced by a studio, that’s what our marketing is. It’s amplifying our services, our products, our message, the challenges that we solve, and how to work with us. It’s getting everything out there. It’s amplifying everything.

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But you don’t get mad at the theaters if there’s just a whole season of bad movies. You don’t blame the theaters. The theaters have no control over this. Who do you blame? Not distribution. And yet, when it comes to marketing and sales and advertising and all these things, we focus on the distribution more than on what I think truly matters.

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Because the truth is that successful branding, strategic branding, marketing, communications, sales, onboarding, and customer service—especially customer service—comes down to a few things. And that’s the right message. Saying the right thing. Being clear, being compelling, being true, being on tone, and being context-specific.

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Making whoever it is that you’re speaking to—or whoever’s reading it, or whoever’s coming across your content—feel like this was for them. This is why I say, especially customer service, this is for them.

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So, the right message to the right people—these are the people who actually need and want our solutions and our services—at the right time. Saying the right message to the right people at the right time, said in the right way.

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Whether it’s your brand, your marketing, your experience, communications, advertising, or sales—no matter what it is, anything communication-driven—the right message to the right people at the right time in the right way.

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Now, if we get that correct—the amplification, the tactics for getting everything out—it's going to have a much higher likelihood of succeeding. And so, for this business owner that I've connected with, I am so excited. I’m so excited for the opportunity that's in front of him because we now know what doesn't work.

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And I know that sounds really strange, but when you're in marketing as long as I have been, when you're in branding, when we're thinking about these types of messages all day, every day, a lot of what we do is, in fact, trying to eliminate the things that don’t work. So, the fact that they have been working so hard and so long at this actually helps.

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Because I can kind of come in—or if he's working with me, or someone else is working with him—the work to be done is to be able to come in and look at what’s working, look at what isn’t working, look at what we can do, what we have control over. Who are we targeting? What are the paths to get in front of them? What are the competitive situations? What are the consideration points and the barriers?

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What are the things we can use to differentiate ourselves? How can we stand out? How can we appeal greater? How can we add clarity, trust, and credibility? Whatever it is, there’s something that is a roadblock.

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Because if this was just SEO, okay. If this was just outbound, direct cold calling, okay. Yeah, okay. But if you’re in a situation where you feel like you’ve been trying everything, and gosh, nothing seems to work, then we can look at the price point. We can look at the targeting. We can look at the messaging. We can look at the services—how they’re packaged, how they’re positioned, whether they need to be productized or more customized for consultative selling techniques.

We have so many levers we can pull to be able to fix this, especially in service-based businesses. Especially in B2B, which is the area I love to play in the most—B2B specialized services. There’s a lot of room for us to be able to work in.

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Ultimately though, if we get to a position where we really realize—though I don’t think this has happened yet. This happened with one business, in fact. Gosh, back in 2018, we had this one business case. But aside from that one business—if we get to the end of this process and we realize that we cannot right-size, we can’t find market fit...

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Meaning what used to work five, 10, or 15 years ago just no longer works. There’s new competition that has commoditized the market. There are people driving costs down. The businesses we used to sell to have shifted. They’ve come way down in the market and in needs. You know, the medium-sized package that used to be our bread and butter no longer exists. That actually means that for our business’s survival, for our business to go on, we have to pivot, and we have to change.

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And so, I’m really excited about the future for this business owner that I’m talking to. Whether they work with us or with someone else, what I’m excited about is that before they ever spend another dollar on ads, they’re going to take a step back and look at the foundational elements.

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What are they? What are you really amplifying? What is your message? What is your unique selling proposition? Who are you speaking to? What’s the path to the prospect? How are you going to get that message in front of your prospects—the right people at the right times?

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What are the things that are working really well? How can we amplify them and do them more? I think it’s important that we always remember that the problem isn’t always the tactic, the channel, the marketing strategy, or even the vendor, team member, or staff member—whatever it might be.

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Sometimes, it may simply be that the market has shifted, or the way we were hoping to position ourselves to advertise, market, and sell just doesn’t work anymore.

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And so, we have a few options. We either go hunting for the people who will fit perfectly into our box—we go looking and spend all that time and effort to find the perfect person, the perfect customer, who aligns in the perfect way—or we adapt. We change, and we decide, you know what? It’s time for us to make some changes to respond to the competition, respond to the market, and make adjustments so that we can show up more competitively.

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And so, there we have it. This was a bit of a different type of How to Sell More podcast episode. I’ve actually wanted to get back to doing solo episodes to share more solutions to some of the most common challenges and problems I see companies facing when it comes to strategic branding.

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So, if there was anything in this episode that particularly jumped out at you or that you liked and found helpful, it would mean the world to me if you’d be willing to—and I know everyone says this—but if you’re willing to rate and review the podcast, that would be really helpful.

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It helps get the word out and works with the algorithm, whether it’s on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If you’re able to leave a review, a five-star rating, whatever it might be, it does help out a lot.

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And if you want to connect with me one-on-one, I do most of my connections over on LinkedIn. That’s actually where it’s easiest. If you just want to DM me, drop me a message. I spend most of my time on that platform, and I would love to connect with you. And so, with that, I want to thank you for listening. We’re going to wrap up this episode. I’m , and I will catch you in the next one.

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