marketing's doing exactly what you told it to

Brought to you by The Art Of Positioning Podcast

Marketing does what it's told. It takes your message and puts it in front of more people. If that message sounds like every other firm in your space, more reach just means more noise.

Why does it seem to work in the beginning?

In the beginning, YOU are the marketing.

Your relationships, your reputation, showing up in the right rooms. That's what builds the first few years. The website and the posts aren't doing the heavy lifting. You are.

And it works. Until it doesn't.

I’ve seen it appear somewhere around the $2M–$3M mark. The business is growing, but you're the one holding it all together. Every significant deal still needs you in the room. Every referral converts because of your name, not the firm's.

Marketing works, but it's attached to you like a ball and chain. You can't hand it to someone else, because it was never built on the firm's position.

It was built on yours.

Even warm referrals look you up first 👇

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Most business owners think they'll just clean things up when they're ready to sell.

Well, as great as that would be, it doesn’t work that way.

In this episode of The Art of Positioning, M&A attorney Alexandria Seydel, J.D. and financial advisor Allie Beckmann, RFC® join Beatrice to break down why 75% of businesses that go to market never actually sell.

And it's not market conditions, it's deal killers hiding in plain sight.

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Nobody really talks about how referrals don't just call anymore. They look you up first.

They've been told you're great by someone they trust. So they go find your website, your LinkedIn, maybe a couple of posts.

And if what they find looks the same as the other firms they've checked alongside you, that warm referral still has to do all the convincing. Many follow through. Some don't.

So you do what makes sense.

You hire someone, bring in an agency, rebuild the website. And they do what good marketers do: research the industry, follow what's working, and make it look 'professional'. inner shudder

The result is a polished version of what every other firm is already saying.

And most of the time we’re gonna think it’s because they we’re good enough, so we try another marketing tactic.

But actually, it’s because it’s the same brief as everyone else.

A firm I spoke to last week had spent $70,000 on marketing in a single year. LinkedIn outreach, content, Google ads, website updates. Almost nothing converted.

Another accountant paid an agency for a full rebrand and watched traffic drop after launch. A year later they still haven’t recovered.

Neither was a marketing failure.

Both got exactly what they paid for.

The marketing worked.

There just wasn't anything different underneath it.

How do I know if this is actually my problem?👇

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😎 Often, I see businesses hit a wall when their offerings and brands don't complement or build on each other, so I built a tool to find the best solution for your mix and goals.

It's honed in, where you get direction right up front as needed.

Align your offers and brands today.

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Pull up your website, or your last few LinkedIn posts. Now look at two or three competitors.

Find one sentence. Just one. That they couldn't post tomorrow without changing anything real.

If that's harder than it should be, that's not a marketing problem. That's the marketing doing its job - reflecting what it’s been given.

Isn't this just "know your niche" advice?

Knowing your niche tells you who to talk to.

This is about what to say once you're there.

"We specialize in accounting for small businesses" is a niche. It points you in a direction. It doesn't get you remembered.

What good positioning does is find the specific moment in a client's journey, where the way you work is exactly what they need.

Bonus points if it's before they've hired anyone and before they've even framed it as a problem yet.

Most marketing stops at the niche. The part that actually separates you is finding the specific moment.

What does that actually look like?

An accountant I spoke with handles both tax planning and tax resolution together. Two things most firms split apart.

Their marketing had been saying, "We help save you money on taxes."

Every other firm says something similar.

The moment where both of those things matter at once is more specific than that. A business owner who's owed more than expected for the third year running. Where they need to fix the past and change how things run going forward, without working with multiple firms.

Narrow. Painful. And theirs alone.

That changes who finds them, what they say when they call, and whether they need to convince clients of anything at all.

🏏 Badass Tip: Find your moment. Rewrite one thing.

45 minutes. Not a full overhaul. One rewrite.

Step 1 (10 mins): Take your current core message. The one-liner on your homepage or how you describe what you do on a call.

Step 2 (15 mins): Ask: at what specific moment in a client's life is this most urgently true? Not "when they need help." What has just happened? What are they staring at? What have they just realized they can't keep ignoring?

Step 3 (5 mins): Would a competitor describe this exact same moment? If yes, you haven't found the right one yet. Go back.

Step 4 (15 mins): Rewrite one piece of content speaking only to that moment. Not the solution. Not the services. The moment itself. Let them feel seen before you offer anything.

If you haven't found your moment yet, the positioning work comes first.

The cost of skipping this

Next month the posts go out. The ads run. The website sits there looking professional.

And the right person finds you, looks around for 90 seconds, sees nothing that speaks to them specifically, and calls the firm that did.

They weren’t better. They just spoke to them where they’re at.

- B