Did you hire a web designer, a copywriter, a social media manager, maybe even the whole damn Avengers lineup this year…and still didn’t see the ROI you were hoping for? Before you blame the marketing or start panic-hiring for round two, let’s talk about what might actually be going on.
Because sometimes it’s not that the marketing was bad. Sometimes your brand just wasn’t ready for the marketing to work yet.
In this episode, I’m breaking down the three biggest reasons your marketing flopped, what’s actually working right now in Q4, and the questions you need to ask yourself before you hire anyone else to “fix” your marketing in 2026.
🎧 Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
When Marketing Can’t Save You
Marketing doesn’t magically create momentum. It only amplifies what’s already there.
If your message is wonky, if your brand doesn’t build trust, if your offer positioning is off by even 15 degrees, your content is just gonna expose all of that faster. The more you push it out into the world, the more you’re gonna see the cracks in your foundation.
So let’s talk about the three biggest culprits I see time and time again when marketing “doesn’t work.”
1. The Brand Trust Gap
This is when people want what you do, but they don’t fully trust that you’re the one who can deliver it.
Maybe your visuals scream amateur while your work is expert-level. Or maybe you’re constantly selling, selling, selling without ever showing proof that what you offer is worth their time and that other people actually trust and love your work.
According to Google’s 2025 holiday study, 83% of holiday purchases in early October were researched before being made. That’s up from 77% last year.
What does that mean for you? It means people are checking your reviews. They’re looking for receipts. They’re watching your stories, creeping your old posts, reading your about page. They’re playing detective before they ever think about handing over their credit card.
And if your digital footprint doesn’t build confidence, they’re bouncing!
We’re not in the world of “eh, I’ll fuck around and find out” anymore. People are cautious with their money. They want to make confident purchasing decisions, not gamble on whether you can actually deliver what you’re promising.
2. Hiring Execution Before Strategy
This one’s huge, and I see it constantly.
You bring on a content creator expecting them to magically give you brand clarity. Or you hire a social media manager expecting instant conversions. But that’s like asking your plumber to rewire the electrical in your house. Sure, they might technically be able to figure it out, but that’s not what you hired them for.
If a marketer comes in and you say “hey, make me content,” they can absolutely make you content. But that doesn’t magically fix your business’s backend problems.
If you’re posting and people are enjoying the content, but then they click over to your website and it’s a mess? That’s a problem the social media manager can’t fix.
Or let’s say you hire a designer and ask them to make you a flyer, but you don’t provide them with any actual information to put on the flyer. They might create something that looks pretty, but is it communicating the right message? Probably not, because you never gave them the strategy to work from.
I spent most of my early career as a graphic designer, and I cannot tell you how many times someone would come to me and say, “We need a post about XYZ,” and then not give me any information about XYZ. They’d just say “figure it out.” But I was the designer. My job was to make information look pretty, not to decide what information needed to be communicated in the first place.
You need to build the bones before you can flesh them out with muscle. You need strategy before you can execute.
3. Never Actually Testing Your Marketing
The third culprit: You never actually tested anything. You just…guessed at what would work and kept doing the same thing over and over.
Maybe you posted content every day for three weeks, but you posted the same exact thing, expecting different results. You didn’t test different content formats or visuals or messaging. And then when it didn’t work, you decided all your efforts were a flop and wanted to stop.
Let me give you an example using Instagram, since it’s always a great differentiator because of how many different content formats exist.
Let’s say you have a message you want to communicate. You post it over and over on static graphics. Cool. But if it’s not working the first time, doing it ten more times isn’t gonna change anything.
So instead, take that same message and test it across static graphics, carousels, and reels. If the message still isn’t hitting across all three formats, then you know it’s clearly not the content format — it’s probably the message itself.
Now you can A/B test the message. Try a different angle, different framing, different language. And if you change the message and realize it’s performing well on reels but not on carousels, now you’ve learned something valuable. Your audience is leaning towards video content.
Lean harder into that. And if you start to see that fall off, take the same message that’s still resonating and adapt it back to carousels to see if it works there now.
See the difference? You’re testing, learning, and refining. You’re not just flying by the seat of your pants and hoping for the best.
Marketing can’t carry what a brand hasn’t built yet. And when those foundational pieces aren’t in place, no amount of content is gonna save you.
Why Q4 Is Different (And Why Your August Strategy Isn’t Working Right Now)
Let’s bring this to right now, because we’re halfway through Q4 and I need you to understand something critical: Your audience is in a completely different headspace than they were a few months ago.
Everyone’s tired. You’re tired. Your audience is tired. We’re all basically flirting with burnout while eating our weight in cheese and pretending to care about content!
And mentally, most people are already in 2026. They’re thinking about how to do better next year because right now feels like a shit show.
That changes everything about how your marketing is gonna land.
Here’s what’s happening in your audience’s brain right now:
Cognitive overload. They’re maxed out on logistics — holiday plans, last-minute deadlines, all of it. Which means on the content side, they’re scrolling fast and engaging less.
Decision fatigue. If you ask me what I want for dinner right now, that question feels like too much. I literally cannot think about dinner when I have seventeen other things on my plate. So if dinner feels like too much to figure out, your CTAs better feel like the easiest yes they’ll say all day. If you’re making them jump through hoops or click seventeen different links to get where you want them to go, they’re not going.
Future fixation. Most people are mentally planning for next year, but they don’t have the bandwidth to act right now. They’re mentally checked out, but their brain is still seeing your content.
Financial friction. Look at the state of the world right now. Spending feels harder for a lot of people. According to that same Google 2025 holiday insight report, 61% of US shoppers say they’re more choosy with how they spend their money because they’re worried about the future. Makes sense, right? People aren’t spending willy-nilly. They’re doing their due diligence to make confident purchasing decisions.
And here’s another wild stat: 50% of consumers do just as much research during the holidays as they do the rest of the year, and 38% are doing MORE research during the holidays.
So just because it’s Black Friday or just because there are holiday sales happening doesn’t mean people are gonna add to cart without thinking.
Which means the messaging you’re putting out right now shouldn’t be “buy now, buy now, buy now.” It should be showing proof. Sharing case studies. Telling stories about how your clients transformed from point A to point B because of your work.
A lot of you are posting the same sales messages you were using back in August when everyone was chilling on a beach without a care in the world!
What’s Actually Working Right Now in Q4
You don’t have to wait until 2026 to make a change. You can start right now, with the Q4 audience mindset in mind.
Here’s what’s working:
Clarity over cleverness. Say what you do, who it’s for, and why it matters right now. Get real clear on what you’re offering and then communicate that to your audience.
Confidence-building content. Show the proof. Show the testimonials, the case studies, the results, the origin stories, the backstories. Your audience wants to believe in you, but you have to give them a reason to.
Future-frame messaging. Speak to the version of your buyer who’s already in 2026. Help them see that booking now gets them a head start toward that future vision of themselves. Help them realize what it’s gonna look like if they take action now versus later. Don’t scare them, but help coax them into seeing what will get them where they wanna be.
Low-lift CTAs. No one wants to click seventeen links and fill out mile-long forms to get where they need to go. Keep it simple and frictionless. “Tap this link” or “DM me to get started” or “Click here to chat.” Keep it frictionless.
And here’s what’s NOT gonna work in your favor during Q4:
Ghosting your audience all year and then panic-posting Black Friday deals. Please, if you haven’t been nurturing your audience, building trust, and doing the work all year long, don’t just shove Black Friday campaigns down everyone’s throat — it’s not gonna give you the ROI you think it will.
Urgency without real value attached. Your sales emergency is not their emergency. You can’t make people buy when you’re ready for the sale. You have to make them ready to buy. Get their attention. Make them care about what you have to say.
The Questions You Need to Ask Before You Hire Anyone Else
If you’re in the “I need help” phase right now — either for a holiday campaign or to set yourself up for 2026 — I love that for you, but I need you to pause and ask better questions than “who should I hire?”
Here are the three questions you actually need to answer:
1. Do I need strategy or execution?
Do you need bones or muscle? Do you need structure or do you just need someone to do the work? That’s the difference between a social media strategist and a social media manager. That’s the difference between a copywriter and a brand messaging specialist. Figure out what you actually need before you start hiring.
2. Do I know what I want my content to say, or am I hoping someone else will figure that out for me?
This relates right back to question one. If you don’t know what you want your content to say, you probably need strategy first. If you know exactly what you want to communicate but don’t have time to create it all, you need execution.
3. Am I building for right now, or am I building for the future version of my business?
Are you in panic mode? Is everything on fire and you need to put out the flames immediately? Or are you thinking strategically about where you want your business to be in six months, a year, three years?
Because if you’re currently building from a place of “I need money right now, I needed money yesterday,” that reactive energy could be the reason you’re not happy with your ROI. You’re not giving yourself a chance to breathe and grow and do things from a place of purpose. You’re just trying to survive.
So if you’ve had some marketing flops this year, or some bad marketing hires in your past, I just want you to consider this: Maybe it wasn’t the marketing that was bad. Maybe your brand just wasn’t built for the marketing to work yet.
And the good news is you can fix that. You can build those foundations. You can create a brand that’s actually ready for marketing to amplify it.
You just have to be willing to do the work first.
🎧 Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
