Marketing Audit

Most small business owners expect to spend more on marketing this year, and more time on it too. Recent research puts it at roughly two-thirds expecting bigger budgets and around three-quarters expecting to spend more hours on it. Marketing has stopped being the thing squeezed in around the real work. For most small businesses now, it is the real work. More spend and more time don't automatically mean better results. They mean more opportunity to either get it right or waste

Two numbers from the same quarter, moving in opposite directions. UK marketing budgets grew by a net 6.9% in Q2 2026, according to the IPA Bellwether. Almost a quarter of firms raised their spend. Over the same three months, the share of those firms expecting better financial prospects at their own business fell from +0.6% to -9.6%. So companies put more money into marketing while feeling worse about their own year. That is not as odd as it first sounds, and it matters more t

If your website sessions have been sliding for a year while your enquiries have held roughly steady, nothing is broken. The behaviour changed. Between January and April 2026, 68% of US Google searches ended without a click, according to SparkToro reading Similarweb clickstream data. In 2024 that figure was 60%. AI Overviews now appear on more than a fifth of searches, and where they show, click through rates fall by close to 60%. One caveat before you take those numbers to yo

75% of UK consumers say the marketing they receive is irrelevant to them. That comes from Optimizely's Marketer's Survival Guide, published at the start of August, which surveyed 1,000 UK consumers alongside 100 UK marketers. Alongside that headline figure: 69% receive duplicate or generic messages, 61% feel overwhelmed by the volume, and 35% unsubscribe after a single poor experience. One caveat worth stating up front. Optimizely sells personalisation software, so read the d

Two numbers from the same survey, pulling in opposite directions. Simply Business asked 1,842 UK small business owners to name their three biggest barriers. Almost half, 48%, put an unpredictable economy on the list. A year ago that figure was 16%. Uncertain consumer demand came next on 41%, and high running costs after that on 35%. But the share expecting the economy to get worse over the next twelve months went down, from 50% to 43%. So owners are not more pessimistic than

If your brand feels invisible in a crowded market, the problem might not be your product. It could be your positioning. Brand positioning isn't about what you sell. It's about how your customers perceive you and why they choose you over everyone else. Get it right, and you build loyalty, justify premium pricing, and make marketing a whole lot easier. Get it wrong, and you're just another option in a sea of sameness. Here's how to fix it. What Brand Positioning Actually Means

Most SME founders I meet are doing something with their marketing. Posting on social media, sending the occasional email, maybe running some ads. But when I ask what's working, I usually get a shrug. Sound familiar? The problem is that you're busy creating content and ticking boxes, but without a clear strategy you're hoping something sticks. That's exhausting, expensive, and it rarely delivers the growth you need. After 25 years working with SMEs across toys, consumer brands

Why a marketing audit is usually the smartest first move Nikki Jeffery conducting a marketing audit What a marketing audit is If you've caught yourself wondering whether any of this marketing is working, you're in good company. Most small business owners I meet are posting regularly, paying for ads, or outsourcing content, and still can't say which of it brings in enquiries. A marketing audit answers that question. It's a clear-eyed review of what's working, what isn't, and w

You'll have heard the advice: post more, show up everywhere, ride the trends. More content, more channels, more tools, more campaigns. And when it doesn't work, the advice is usually to double down. But more marketing isn't better marketing. What most growing businesses need isn't another task list. They need clarity. Why you might be feeling stuck I work with founders and teams who are trying to grow but feel their marketing is chaotic, reactive or simply not working. It isn