Why You Think You Have a Marketing Problem (But You Don’t)

Let me ask you something.
How many times have you said this phrase in the last year?
We just need better marketing.
Maybe you haven’t said those exact words, but maybe you’ve said something like we need more leads, we need better ads, we need to post more, we need a new funnel, we need to be on LinkedIn, or maybe we need to fix our messaging.
And then every time sales slow down, the immediate reaction is it’s a marketing problem.
We need to sort it out.
So let me ask you something else.
What if it’s not a marketing problem?
What if the reason your marketing feels hard is because you’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem entirely?
Now I’m going to delve into a topic that’s so incredibly important that I have literally changed my entire business model to evolve around it as I’ve noticed that the majority of people come to me or fall into this bullshit trap.
So stick with me and I will let you in on the secret that can radically improve your sales overnight without spending a single penny on marketing.
Hello and welcome to Sniffing at the Bullshit, a podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs who want help wading their way through the bullshit jungle of entrepreneurship and then the tools, skills, and mindsets that are actually required for success.
I’m your host, Sabrina Chevannes-Denman, the no bullshit entrepreneur.
It’s always the same old story in business.
If sales are slow, it’s a marketing problem because it has to be right, because who else’s fault is it going to be?
Marketing is responsible for getting sales.
Well, perhaps sort of.
But if marketing are not working with the right things in the 1st place, they’re kind of set up to fail.

And this is the problem that I want to address because now I get why people associate slow sales and marketing, because marketing is visible, it’s tactical, it feels productive.
You can point to tangible results when it comes to marketing.
You can measure clicks, e-mail replies or social media engagement.
You can tweak headlines and then AB test them to see which get the best results.
And then you can run ads and instantly see how many people it reaches and get new eyeballs on your brand.
Plus you can hire an agency and then they can have a whole team of people working for you, making you feel super productive.
So it feels like action, momentum and therefore progress, even if it’s all futile.
And agencies love this narrative, platforms love this narrative, and even marketing gurus love this narrative.
Because if the problem is always marketing, you can always buy another solution and there’s always someone there to sell you another solution for sure.
And so the possibilities are endless when it comes to marketing.
But the reality is marketing is an amplifier.
All it does is amplifies what already exists.
So that’s why brands with bad products will still always fail, no matter how good their marketing is.
And that’s why we come to the point of my episode, right?
If what exists is unclear, was weak or confused, all you’re doing with marketing is amplifying that confusion.

So this is what people don’t realize, and there’s actually some science behind why we misdiagnosis so often.
In psychology there’s something called surface level problem solving.
It’s where we basically fix the first thing we can see.
So if you’ve got low leads, it’s a marketing problem.
If you’ve got low conversions for those leads, then that’s a funnel problem.
And if you’ve got low engagement, well, that’s the algos problem.
As we know, we love to blame the algorithm.
So I was reading this book the other day by Peter Senge.
It’s called the 5th Discipline and it was talking about systems thinking and in it Peter was saying that most problems in organizations aren’t actually event problems, they’re structural problems.
Now what I mean by this is that an event problem is something that just happened.
Say for example, sales dropped this month, an ad didn’t convert or a campaign just flopped.
So we then react to this event.
But a structural problem is very different.
It’s the pattern underneath that event.
It’s the way the whole system is set up that keeps producing the same outcome over and over again.
So if every single time you launch sales are inconsistent, and if every single time you earn ads they attract the wrong people, and then every time you post it feels like you’re pushing water uphill, that’s probably likely not actually a campaign issue.
It’s not an event issue, it’s going to be a structural 1.
And the key thing is, is that marketing problems are usually event level just as ones I’ve just talked about.
But it’s the positioning problems that are structural.
So marketing is the visible output, but positioning is the invisible architecture underneath it.
So when you say we need better marketing, what you’re often doing is just reacting to an event.
But the real issue is the system your business is sitting inside.
And if that system is misaligned, then no amount of tactical tweaking is going to fix that.
You just keep chasing the symptoms, but you need to get to the underlying cause.
So let me explain why this is even relevant to your business and why, if you really understand it, it can be really quite powerful.
So most entrepreneurs are doers, right?
We just love to take action.
We’re like constantly looking at what we can do to improve something, to go forward with a project, to start something new, to just get out there and do something.
That is just who we are.
It’s in our nature.
We love action.
And so event problems feel actionable, whereas structural problems feel somewhat uncomfortable because they feel like they require a stepping back.
And that is literally the opposite of what we feel is progress.
See these structural problems, they they require questioning.
They require questioning your model, your market, your differentiation, your pricing, your category that you fit in like it’s, it’s a lot.
And so it becomes so much easier to change a headline than it is to completely rethink your position in the market.
You know, often people don’t want to even question these things because it means they’ve got something wrong in the 1st place.
And no one wants to admit that they got things wrong in the 1st place, right?
So that’s why we always end up defaulting into marketing, not because it’s the right thing to do, but simply because it’s easier.

And I’ve been researching this topic a lot and I found so many interested things on this and I just thought I’d share some of them for with you.
So, for example, indecision science buyers don’t evaluate you rationally.
We, we totally like to think they do, right.
We, we probably visualize what I know.
I do visualize people sitting there with like spreadsheets or some mad notion board, like logically weighing at the pros and cons and like comparing features and, and I was in pricing before they purchase anything like, oh man, I really wish people did this, but of course they don’t.
And Alvis and Jack Trout wrote in their book decades ago, right, That book, Positioning the Battle for Your Mind.
It’s a great book on positioning.
Again, something lots of people skip.
It’s often not recommended because it’s a stuff that’s not really doing.
But these guys, they knew this stuff and they said that the human mind is like an overcrowded filing cabinet, right?
There is just too much information in that has too many brands to remember and too many messages to like, decipher.
And So what does the brain do when they’ve obviously got this massive, overcrowded filing cabinet?
Well, the brain then simplifies, categorizes and labels everything that it sees.
So when it comes to brands, it just places you somewhere, anywhere it sees fit.
It doesn’t do it in detail or doesn’t think about it too deeply because it just wants to do it quickly.
And we all know how things work out if you just want things done quickly.
So the brain basically labels brands like you’re the cheap one or you’re the premium one.
Or for example, usually when it comes to us, you’re the risky one versus you’re the safe one, you know, so it’s those sort of comparison things like you’re like X band or you’re just not for me.
And all of these comparisons happen in seconds, right before they’ve read your Backpage, before they even analyze your offer and way before they’ve even checked out or entered your funnel anywhere you’ve been placed, whether you like it or not.
And so now this is where positioning comes in and is so incredibly important because if your brain just puts brands in categories just like that, then you need to be so crystal clear with which category your business is supposed to go in.
And if your business doesn’t clearly occupy a mental category, then the brain is going to struggle.
And when the brain struggles, it does essentially one of two things.
It either defaults to the known option or it just simply walks away.
It’s too much.
It’s not going to sit there and calculate it.
Your brain is already doing too much.
And there’s a book called How Brands Grow by Brian Sharp.
I think it is.
And I remember him reinforcing this in his book, right?
He states that brands grow not because they convince people logically, but because they are easy to recognize, they’re easy to recall and they’re easy to mentally process.
So if your positioning makes people think too hard, then cognitive load theory, which is a scientific concept that I’ve talked about many times before, it’s going to tell us something very, very simple.
Basically, the brain avoids effort.
It’s lazy.
I mean, it’s got enough to do already, right?
So if it’s got a simple option, it’s going to often take it.
So therefore, when founders say we just need better marketing, I haven’t think, no, you actually just need to make it easier for people’s brains to understand you because unfortunately, no amount of marketing is going to fix confusion.
In fact, it’s just going to spread that confusion further, right?

So now we like know all the science behind that, why our brains do this.
I want to bring you back to the real diagnosis because I see the same thing over and over again.
A founder comes and says we need more leads.
So they run ads and then the leads come in, right, right.
Right.
No, sadly not, because then they say those leads are the wrong people or those leads don’t convert and that they’re just price shoppers or that they ghost you.
There’s usually a problem.
So then usually comes, we need better quality leads.
So they then go back and they change the targeting.
They then change all their copy to ensure they’re speaking to the right people.
And then they feel that their entire brand is not giving out the right vibes.
So they just drop 40K on a full rebrand because, you know, why not?
If it’s not speaking to like people, then a rebrand is must be what we need.
And of course there’s going to be some agency that’s going to encourage a rebrand because because, well, they’ve got a 40K incentive to encourage a rebrand.
So they’re not going to say actually you need something else.
So they go through this rebrand and you know, they have this shiny rebrand and a copy is talking to the right people.
But then they realize their target audience aren’t actually hanging out where they are.
So they then pivot platforms and they have to create a whole new content strategy for the new platform.
But their competitors still seem to just be winning all the work and it’s just not fair.
And their competitors like, you know, are offering such great deals.
And when you go back to them, they say, oh, actually they were cheaper.
So then you’re like, oh, I need to go lower my prices, right?
You can see that this is basically an absolute recipe for disaster, right?
Because it’s like a it’s like a one way ticket.
It’s a business failure.
And you may think I’m being dramatic here, but I swear to you this is legitimately the actual boot that so many business owners I know have taken.
And this is often had businesses die because let’s face it, it’s kind of all quite demobilizing, right?
That mad cycle of just trying to fix your business so that customers will buy from you.
Poof.
So these founders who are constantly saying that marketing doesn’t work, they just don’t realize that the issue was never really marketing in the 1st place, it was that their business just doesn’t hold a strong position in the mind of the market.
And like I said before, no amount of tactical activity fixes that structural weakness.
But the problem is that’s a really tough pill to swallow, right?
And it’s almost like admitting that you got everything wrong right from the beginning, and now you have to go backwards to sort all of it out.
And that’s why most people don’t do it, because that’s really, really difficult.
So instead they keep pushing forward and feeling like they’re progressing even though with their positional weakness they will never, ever survive.

So as you want to talk about something for a second, because most of you are aware that I’m not just an entrepreneur, but I’m also an international chess master and that if you’re not aware, then where have you been?
Well, actually flipping it back in context of the episode, if you’re not aware that I’ve probably not been doing my own positioning correctly and in fact, this is actually, you know, what I’m doing at the moment, I’m trying to also work on my own positioning and make it much clearer going forward because when I do so many things, it can get confusing.
And so while I’m no longer playing chess professionally, I still teach chess, both kids and adults.
And I run workshops in corporates in the workplace, and I help businesses solve their business problems on a chess board because there’s actually an insane crossover between chess and business.
And have a guess what most people’s weakness is in chess?
Yeah, you guessed it.
It’s positional understanding because most amateurs absolutely love learning tactics, right?
Because they’re flashy, they feel cool, so they learn traps in the opening like sacrifices, combinations and checkmates and all these different fancy things.
And you know, these all work fairly well against an inexperienced opponent.
But then even then, when against those guys, they, these people finally get aware of your tricks and they won’t work more than once usually.
But The thing is, if you really want to get good at chess, like truly good at chess, you have to understand positional play.
So things like where your pieces belong, the pawn structures, how to create space and the most important, getting your king safe.
But you know, all of that stuff.
I just said that stuff’s boring.
Well, according to many people anyway, so they don’t want to study this part.
Therefore they just do the flashy stuff.
And in a game they may smoke, actually pay off by they may actually get ahead with all these flashy leaves.
But when there are no more tricks left in the position, their position just crumbles and they end up losing because they don’t know how to handle positional stuff.
And I work really hard with my students to help them understand that positional understanding of the game is more important than anything else as it will as like, like, that’s what will make you a true chess master.
So I believe that most entrepreneurs are actually playing tactical chess with their business, right?
Think ads, funnels, the content, hacks, trends, real hooks, like all these viral ideas, these are tactics.
But what they’ve done is they’ve ignored their position because that stuff wasn’t fun.
So they just skipped that part and then wondered why everything felt like harder than it should be.

So I guess the question you should probably be asking yourself right now is, have I been trying to fix the wrong thing?
Well, I’m telling you that most entrepreneurs have a positioning problem, most of them, but they just don’t realize it.
So I’m going to walk you through some classic signs and I want to see if any of it resonates with you.
For example, you’re busy, but you’re not growing.
You keep changing marketing channels.
You’ve rebranded more than once.
You blame the algorithm pretty regularly.
You’re visible, very visible, but not actually profitable, and you feel like you’re constantly pushing.
How do they sound?
Because you’ve got to ask yourself if marketing always feels hard.
It’s ironically probably not a marketing problem.
Now look, if that did sound like you, then please don’t feel bad.
Like I said, pretty much every entrepreneur I know suffers from this, or at least has done at some point in their career.
Because we’re taught to optimize activity like we, we are encouraged More marketing, more content, more ads, more funnels, right?
This is what we’re taught to do, but nobody teaches founders how to think about position.
And I said at the beginning of this episode that I literally centered my entire business model around this now because I see it so much.
And that’s exactly what I’ve done now.
I’ve created a framework called the Positional Advantage because both in business and in chess, people are prioritizing tactics before they secure their position.
And that’s kind of backwards because in chess, if your position is weak, for example, your key is exposed, or your structure is messy and your pieces are just like all over the place and uncoordinated.
You can throw all the clever tactics you want at the board, but you’re probably still just going to struggle.
But if your position is solid, then you don’t have to force anything.
Opportunities just appear, pressure builds naturally, and your opponent often starts making mistakes because they’re trying to force their way through to make some weaknesses.
So just by having a good position, the game becomes a whole lot easier.
And business works in the same way.
The position of advantage is not about branding, it’s not about picking a niche, and it’s not about some clever tagline.
It’s definitely not a marketing hack.
It’s about how your business sits in the market.
It’s about how it’s perceived, how it’s valued, how it differentiates, how it aligns commercially and how it structurally supports growth.
Because what you may not even realize is that your business doesn’t just have one position, it actually has multiple positions that interact with each other.
And even if one of them is weak or misaligned, you’ll feel friction everywhere.
So then your marketing will feel harder, your sales will feel impossible, your pricing will feel kind of awkward, and growth will feel totally forced.
But when those positions are all aligned, your marketing becomes simpler, sales become cleaner, and decisions will become so much clearer.
And what happens then?
Profitability improves.
And none of that is because you worked harder or threw more money at marketing.
It’s because the structure was right.
And I always say this to my clients and my chess students that you don’t need more effort, you just need a better position.

So I want you to have a think about how you show up in your business currently.
I want you to think about how your customers perceive you because you may be struggling with sales at the moment.
It seems like so many people are.
And then you’re sitting there and trying to re jiggle your marketing strategy for like the third time this year already.
And we’re only halfway through February.
So I want you to please stop assuming that it’s a marketing problem and stop throwing tactics at structural issues, and please just stop amplifying that confusion.
Instead, I want you to try asking yourself the following questions.
Where does my business sit?
How is it perceived?
Is it easy to categorize?
Is it easy to value?
Is it easy to choose?
Because remember, marketing is not the engine to all this.
It’s like the megaphone.
And if you’re shouting something unclear down that megaphone, you can’t be blaming that microphone, honestly.
So I really hope that today’s episode has helped you, even if it has made you feel slightly uncomfortable and maybe even lacking in a bit of confidence about your marketing.
But please do remember that this is actually a good thing.
Because if you’ve been struggling in marketing a sale all this time, maybe you haven’t been doing too much wrong.
Maybe you don’t even need to put in more effort or invest more money.
Maybe all you need is just better positioning.
Because until that’s fixed, everything will feel like an uphill battle.
But if you have any questions at all about what we’ve discussed here today, please do reach out to me.
I would do my best to help you.
Otherwise, until next week, please do keep sniffing out the bullshit.