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Small businesses often operate with limited resources, tight budgets and an urgent need to generate revenue quickly while keeping costs under control. In this environment, marketing can become reactive rather than strategic — a scattergun approach where campaigns are launched sporadically, messages are inconsistent and efforts lack cohesion. While it may feel like any marketing activity is better than none, a fragmented, ad hoc approach can actually do more harm than good.
One of the most significant issues with an uncoordinated marketing strategy is inconsistent brand messaging. Customers today are bombarded by brands from all angles across multiple touchpoints: various social media channels, websites, email notifications, search engines or in-store. If a business sends inconsistent or conflicting messages — different tones, values or offers across platforms — it can confuse potential customers, sow seeds of doubt and gradually erode trust. For a small business, trust is a crucial currency. Confusion at the first interaction may mean a lost customer for life.
Fragmented marketing also leads to wasted resources. Small businesses usually have limited marketing budgets, so every euro really has to count. Running disjointed campaigns without clear objectives or measurable outcomes often results in duplicated efforts, misaligned spending and missed opportunities. This scattergun approach makes it hard to decipher what actually works.
One major consequence of this is a lack of long-term growth. Ad hoc marketing tends to focus on short-term wins — posting content sporadically or running occasional promotions —without building a sustainable foundation. Effective marketing requires strategy, consistency and reinforcement over time. By neglecting this, small businesses may see temporary spikes in attention but fail to create a loyal customer base or a recognisable brand. Results can be misleading also — a sudden spike in attention can easily be mistaken for having a positive/negative causal effect on business performance.
Over time, this slows growth and makes it harder to compete with more strategic competitors who nurture their audience with a consistent narrative.
Fragmented approaches also hurt the ability to measure success. Without a coordinated strategy, it becomes nearly impossible to track what’s working and what’s not. Businesses may struggle to analyse ROI, optimise campaigns or understand their customers’ journeys. This can lead to repeated mistakes, inefficient processes and frustration for business owners who feel like marketing is “guesswork” rather than a tool for growth.
The solution lies in adopting a strategic, integrated marketing approach. Even small businesses can benefit from a simple, cohesive plan: defining clear goals, understanding the target audience, crafting consistent messaging, and selecting a few key channels to focus on. Regular evaluation of performance ensures resources are used effectively, while consistent messaging builds trust and recognition.
For small businesses, ad hoc marketing may be unavoidable if you have time and resource constraints. You end up doing marketing in whatever time is available. But it can still follow a structured plan. Here are four practical remedies to the scattergun approach to marketing:
You don’t need a 50-page marketing strategy document.
Write down the following:
Who your ideal customers are (and a ballpark range of what they are likely to spend)
What problem you solve for them
The 2–3 channels you’ll focus on to get their attention (e.g., Instagram + email + local networking)
What success looks like for your business (e.g. more leads, more sales, more repeat business)
This clarity keeps your efforts consistent and stops you from chasing every shiny new marketing idea or fad that comes along.
Instead of posting whenever inspiration strikes or time allows, try to set aside one afternoon a month to create and schedule your posts, emails or updates. Use free or affordable tools like Buffer, Later, or Canva’s scheduler to schedule when posts are published. This gives you consistent visibility without daily stress and ensures your messaging aligns across platforms.
Reinventing the wheel is a huge time drain. Build or borrow templates for things like:
Social media posts
Email newsletters
Customer follow-up messages
This not only saves time but also ensures your tone and visuals stay consistent. Even a basic Canva template or Google Slides template for your graphics can make your brand feel polished and professional.
Measurability is critical to success. Too often, small business owners are guilty of knee-jerking to the latest fad in marketing. They see something ‘go viral’ on social media and think “that’s the silver bullet I need“. In reality it rarely works out like that.
Working towards targets consistently and gradually improving 1-2 key metrics over a few months can dramatically impact business performance.
For example, if you currently have an open rate of 8% on emails and a click-through rate of 2% of contacts in a database of 1000 newsletter subscribers each month, you will get:
80 newsletter opens > 20 newsletter clicks
You might currently convert 1 in 4 website visitors (from email marketing). That’s five new customers each month. Look to improve this performance by focusing your efforts over 3 months on improving the conversion rate of your email marketing.
In this simple example, you might incentivise new subscribers with a one-off discount to grow the database numbers; change your subject line to increase open rates and try new messaging and calls-to-action (CTAs) styles to increase click-through rates (CTRs).
If you set a target to grow the database by just 5% each month and get your email open rate to improve from 10-12-15% over 3 months and simultaneously get 2.4 – 2.7 – 3% to click your CTA.
Assuming the same 1 in 4 conversion rate, after 3 months you will have:
173 newsletter opens > 34 newsletter clicks > 8 new customers
That’s a 60% increase in new business from the email channel, no magic involved, just a little bit of focused attention.
Ad hoc marketing may seem like a practical solution in the short term but it undermines brand credibility, wastes resources, stunts growth and obscures meaningful, actionable business insights.
For small businesses, investing time in a coherent marketing strategy isn’t optional — it’s essential. Putting it on the long finger is likely to lead to underperformance. Strategic marketing doesn’t need to be expensive; it just needs to be thoughtful, consistent and aligned with the business’s goals. Ad hoc tactics that are planned and that knit together over time are far more effective than random promotions and reactive posts. In the competitive landscape, cohesion is the difference between a business that struggles to survive and one that thrives.
If you’d like to book a free session with a digital marketing expert, please get in touch or send me a WhatsApp message.
