What if the reason your marketing isn’t working has almost nothing to do with how hard you’re trying?

Because more often than not, it doesn’t. You’re just running a plan that was built for somebody else’s business.

It’s a small distinction, and it changes everything. One of those is a you problem. The other one is fixable. And the fix isn’t more effort, friend.

Let me tell you about a client of mine. Brilliant at what she makes, and at one point she was getting marketing advice from four different people at the same time.

A family member thought she should launch three more product lines. A mentor was telling her to outsource everything and go chase wholesale accounts. A Pinterest specialist who was telling her to spend more money in Pinterest ads (shocking, I know 😏). And a coach she’d worked with a while back, whose completely different plan was still rattling around in her head.

Every piece of that advice came from a genuine place of wanting to help. But not one of them made sense for her business.

She wasn’t stuck because she isn’t smart. She was stuck because she was trying to run a plan that didn’t fit.

And here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough. A plan built for someone else doesn’t just underperform. It starts a cycle.

You don’t see results, so you get inconsistent, because it’s hard to keep showing up for something that isn’t giving you anything back. The inconsistency makes the results worse. And somewhere in there, you start blaming yourself.

Six years and fifty-some businesses in, I’ve yet to meet an owner who was actually bad at marketing. What I meet, over and over, is someone trying to run a small business marketing plan designed for a company ten times her size.

So before you commit to another thing, run it through four questions. I call them the 4 Bs: brand, buyer, budget, and bandwidth.

Pass all four and you’ve got a marketing plan that fits your business. Fail even one and you’ll find out the expensive way.

Wands at the ready.  Let’s get to work!

B #1: Brand. Does this actually sound like YOU?

I’m not talking about your logo. Or your color palette. Or whether your grid is giving cohesive vibes.

I’m talking about your actual business. The way you actually sell. The reason people buy from you instead of the big name sitting three tabs over.

This one wrecks makers and artists the hardest. You’ve built something on craft and story and the fact that people buy YOU. Then somebody hands you a plan running on countdown timers, fake scarcity, and “only 3 spots left!!!” energy.

Could that plan work somewhere? Sure. Will it work for you? Nope. Because you’ll hate every second of running it, and the people who already trust you will smell it from a mile off.

A plan you have to talk yourself into every single week Will. Not. Work.  It’ll just drain your energy and wreak havoc on your motivation. 

Here’s your test: could you run this for six months without cringing? If the answer’s no, it needs a reno. I don’t care how well it worked for the person who recommended it.

B #2: Buyer. Is your person even there?

Buyer is the B most marketers completely skip, which is exactly why so much advice shows up channel-first instead of people-first. Somebody read a case study, and now absolutely positively need to be on TikTok.

And I need to just say a thing about my “be everywhere” marketing gurus.

“Be everywhere” is the single worst piece of advice you can hand a business owner with limited time and zero team. Full stop.

It doesn’t make you visible. It makes you THIN. Five platforms, five formats, five algorithms to babysit, and nowhere near enough of you to do any of it well. What it actually builds is stress, overwhelm, and that swirly feeling where you’re busy every single day and somehow going nowhere.

Meanwhile? Your actual buyer is probably doing exactly one thing. Searching Pinterest at 10pm with a glass of wine. Or opening the one email a week she genuinely looks forward to.

Here’s your test: name where YOUR buyer actually is. Not where someone else said the money is. If something’s sitting on your plan and you can’t explain why YOUR person is there, cut it.

B #3: Budget. Can you fund it long enough to matter?

Not “can I afford to start.” Can you afford to stay in long enough to learn something?

This is where paid ads eat small businesses for lunch. You throw $600 at it over three weeks, it doesn’t convert, you decide ads don’t work, and you never touch them again.

Ads work fine. You just bought a test you couldn’t afford to finish.

It’s like playing Oregon Trail in 3rd grade computer class circa 1996. You didn’t lose because you were bad at the game, you lost because you set out across the plains with three barrels of flour and a little too much optimism.

Here’s your test: take the cost and multiply it by at least 3 months, because that’s honestly how long you’d need to start seeing any kind of meaningful results. Can you fund THAT? If not, the tactic isn’t wrong. It’s just not for right now, and “not right now” is a completely respectable answer.

One more thing while we’re in here. Every single line item on your plan should be able to answer one question: how does this move somebody closer to buying? If it can’t answer that, it doesn’t make the plan. Period, end of story.

B #4: Bandwidth. Could you run this on your worst week?

Bandwidth is the B literally everybody skips. It’s also the one that decides whether any of this survives contact with a real week.

Here’s what I mean. Your plan looks extremely reasonable on a Sunday afternoon. You’ve got coffee, you’ve got a fresh notebook, you are FEELING it.

Then Tuesday happens.

Kid comes home with a fever. A wholesale order lands. Your supplier goes dark. Your checkout page starts doing that weird thing again.

If your plan only runs on *good* weeks, it’s never going to survive a regular week.  And you and I both know it’s the regular weeks that make up 90% of our year.

If you hate making Reels, you’re gonna stop making Reels. That’s not a discipline problem, friend. That’s a strategy problem, and it got baked in the day somebody put Reels on your plan without asking whether you’d rather do literally anything else. 

(I went deeper on this in why the simple version of your marketing is the one that actually works, because it’s the failure I run into more than any other.)

Here’s your test: picture your worst week from the last three months. Could this plan have survived it? If not, shrink it until it could.

Okay, but what if my plan fails one?

First, don’t torch the whole thing. That’s the overcorrection, and it’s how people end up starting from scratch every month.

Failing ONE B usually means one of two moves.

Shrink it. The twelve-email nurture sequence fails bandwidth. One welcome email in a workflow that actually goes live this month? Passes with flying colors. KISS, friend. Keep it simple and sustainable. You can always build on to it later.

Swap the channel, keep the goal. “Get found by new people” is a great goal. Daily Reels might fail brand, buyer, AND bandwidth all at once. But one blog post a month answering a question your people are already typing into Google? That might pass all four.

Think of it as the Ross-with-the-couch move. You’re not throwing out the couch. You’re just hollering PIVOT until it goes through the door.

Failing two or more? That one’s not for you. Let it go and don’t spend another second feeling bad about it.

How to build a marketing plan that fits your business (in about 20 minutes)

Roll up your sleeves. Grab whatever you’re currently calling your plan.

1. List every marketing thing you’re doing or planning. All of it. Instagram, email, the podcast you keep meaning to pitch, the newsletter you started in March and abandoned in March.
2. Run each one through all four Bs. Brand, buyer, budget, bandwidth. Write pass or fail next to each.
3. Cut anything that fails two or more. Not next month. Now.
4. For anything that fails exactly one, write the smaller version that would pass.
5. What’s left is your plan.

It’s gonna be shorter than what you walked in with, and that’s not a downgrade, that’s the entire point.

And if it feels uncomfortably small? You’re probably doing it exactly right. Small-and-running beats ambitious-and-abandoned every single time. Thems the facts.

tl;dr

Your marketing isn’t underperforming because everybody else got a manual you somehow missed.

It’s underperforming because you’re running somebody else’s plan.

Brand → does it jive with how you actually sell?

Buyer → is your person genuinely there?

Budget → can you fund it long enough to learn something?

Bandwidth → could you run it on your worst week?

You’re not bad at marketing. You’re running a plan that was never built for your business. Four questions, and you’ll know exactly which B is the problem.

Let’s build the one that actually fits

I packed this whole filter, plus the structure to build the plan around it, into The 1-Hour Marketing Strategy Playbook. One hour. One plan. Built for your business instead of somebody else’s.

👉 Grab the 1-Hour Marketing Strategy Playbook and walk out with a plan that passes all four Bs. Not someday. Today.