You can offer a better product, deliver better service, care more about your customers, and have more experience than the competition. But none of that guarantees people will find you or choose you.
Business coach Darren Hardy, former publisher of SUCCESS magazine, best known for his influential personal-development book The Compound Effect, recently shared a simple idea that gets to the heart of this problem:
Every business really has two jobs.
The first is doing the work itself. The second is marketing that work so the right people know it exists.
Hardy describes the relationship in dramatic terms: 10% is the product or service and 90% is the marketing, communication, and promotion around it. The point is not that quality does not matter. You absolutely need to be good at what you do. The point is that an excellent business can still struggle when too few people know about it.
Being Great Is Not Enough If Nobody Knows It
Think about how customers choose businesses today. They search Google, ask AI tools for recommendations, read reviews, visit websites, see ads, open emails, watch videos, and notice which companies consistently show up.
If your competitor is easier to find, communicates more clearly, stays more visible, and follows up more consistently, they may win the customer even if you believe you provide the better product or service.
That is why marketing is more than advertising. SEO helps customers find you. Your website helps them understand you. Reviews build trust. Email keeps the conversation going. Social media and video keep you visible. Advertising puts you in front of the right audience. Automation and AI help those efforts happen more consistently.
Different tools, one purpose: making sure the right people know who you are and why they should choose you.
When Business Slows Down, Visibility Matters More
When revenue gets tighter, cutting expenses is understandable. Every business should look carefully at where its money is going.
But marketing deserves a different conversation because its job is to help create future business.
If fewer customers are coming through the door, becoming even harder to find may not be the answer. Research on previous downturns supports that concern. Harvard Business Review has advised companies against automatically cutting marketing during recessions, while research compiled by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has found that companies maintaining or increasing marketing investment during difficult periods can be better positioned to gain market share and recover faster.
That does not mean spending money blindly. Ineffective marketing should be improved or replaced. The goal is to make your marketing smarter, more measurable, and more focused on reaching the customers most likely to need you.
Are You Doing Both Jobs?
You already spend enormous time and energy being good at what you do. The question is whether you are giving enough attention to the other part of the business.
- Can customers find you?
- Do they understand why you are different?
- Are you giving them reasons to trust you?
- Do you stay visible after their first interaction?
- Are you following up?
- And are all of your marketing efforts working together instead of operating as disconnected pieces?
If your business is not where you want it to be, the answer may not be another round of cuts.
It may be making sure more of the right people know just how good your business really is.