Marketing, Properly!

Makin Media
Makin Media
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The podcast for business owners, founders and managing directors who want marketing to make a little more sense. In each episode, we’ll tackle one of the questions business leaders should be asking about marketing, brand and growth, without the jargon, hype or miraculous five-step formulas. Just practical thinking, straight answers and occasionally the uncomfortable question nobody else wants to ask. Produced in Scotland.

  1. 1d ago

    14: Do We Need More Marketing or Better Marketing?

    “We need to do more marketing.” Sales are slow? More marketing. The pipeline looks thin? More marketing. Competitors seem to be everywhere? Definitely more marketing. More campaigns. More content. More advertising. More emails. More events. More leads. More budget. But before increasing everything, there’s a question worth asking: Do you actually need more marketing or do you need the marketing you’re already doing to work considerably better? In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at why increasing marketing activity isn’t always the answer to a growth problem and why doing more of something that isn’t working can simply allow you to waste money at greater speed. The first step is understanding where the real problem lies. Are too few people aware of you? That could be an awareness problem. Are people visiting the website but not enquiring? Perhaps it’s conversion. Are you generating plenty of enquiries, but they’re the wrong ones? Look at targeting and positioning. Are you generating good opportunities but failing to win them? The problem might be Sales, pricing, proposition, trust or customer experience. Yet remarkably often, the answer to all of these problems is: “We need more leads.” We look at why more website traffic won’t fix a weak website, why filling the CRM with hundreds of unsuitable prospects doesn’t necessarily help Sales, and why producing more content simply because the content calendar has empty spaces isn’t much of a strategy. Before increasing the budget, there’s another useful exercise: Find the waste. Google Ads. Agency retainers. Software. Events. Sponsorship. Content. PR. SEO. CRM. Freelancers. Why are you spending that money? Who is it supposed to influence? What outcome are you trying to create? And what evidence suggests it’s working? You may discover that the business doesn’t need another £50,000 of marketing budget. It might simply need to stop wasting 20% of the budget it already has. Better marketing can also mean doing less. Fewer audiences. Fewer messages. Fewer priorities. Fewer channels. But doing the right ones properly. Of course, sometimes the answer genuinely is more. If your proposition is strong, the website converts, Sales is performing, customers stay, and marketing is reliably producing profitable opportunities, then scale it. If the machine works, turn it up. If smoke is coming out of the machine, don’t make it run faster. So before launching another campaign, adding another channel or increasing the budget, ask: “What’s preventing what we’re already doing from working harder?” Solve that first. Because good marketing scales. Bad marketing scales too. It just scales the waste. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer strategy, better decisions and considerably less wasted marketing. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    14: Do We Need More Marketing or Better Marketing?

  2. Oct 22

    13: Why Doesn't Anyone Understand What Our Business Does?

    “People don’t really understand what we do.” It’s a surprisingly common problem. The business has been operating successfully for years. It has customers, employees, products, services and plenty of expertise. Everyone inside the company knows exactly what it does. The problem is… nobody else seems to. In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at why businesses so often struggle to explain themselves clearly, and why the problem may go much deeper than the wording on the homepage. Ask the Managing Director what the business does and you get one answer. Ask Sales and you get another. Visit the website and you’re greeted with something about delivering innovative solutions through customer-focused excellence. Excellent. But what do you actually do? We look at how familiarity, technical knowledge and corporate language can make businesses unnecessarily difficult to understand, and why phrases such as innovative, leading, trusted, solutions and excellence often make companies sound remarkably similar to everyone else. There’s a simple test. Show your website to someone who doesn’t work for the company for five seconds, then ask: What does this company do?Who is it for?Why might someone choose it? If they can’t answer the first question, you’ve got work to do. We also explore why trying to say everything can result in customers understanding almost nothing, why businesses should talk about customer problems rather than simply listing capabilities, and why clear almost always beats clever. But there’s a more uncomfortable possibility. Perhaps the marketing is confusing because the business itself isn’t entirely clear about what it is. Companies grow. Services get added. New markets appear. Acquisitions happen. Someone asks whether you can do something slightly different and the answer is, naturally, “Yes, we can do that too.” Ten years later, the company offers 23 things across 11 markets and nobody can quite explain what connects them. At that point, you don’t have a copywriting problem. You have a positioning problem. And the marketing team can’t create clarity that the leadership team hasn’t created strategically. So before rewriting the website, ask: What business are we actually in?Which customers matter most?What do we want to be known for?Where do we have a genuine advantage? Because customers don’t owe you 20 minutes of concentration to decode your marketing. Clarity is your responsibility. Your customers aren’t stupid. They’re just not as interested in your business as you are, and expecting them to work hard to understand you is rarely a winning marketing strategy. Clear beats clever. Almost every time. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer positioning, better decisions and considerably less corporate nonsense. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    13: Why Doesn't Anyone Understand What Our Business Does?

  3. Oct 14

    12: Are We Spending Too Much on Google Ads?

    “We’re spending quite a lot on Google Ads.” How much? “About £8,000 a month.” And is it working? “We think so.” Ah. In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin tackles a question many business owners and Managing Directors eventually ask: Are we spending too much on Google Ads? The answer might be yes. But you could also be spending too little. Because the important question isn’t how much you’re spending. It’s whether you’re spending the right amount, and whether anyone can clearly explain the commercial return you’re getting from it. Google Ads can be extremely effective. It can put your business in front of potential customers at precisely the moment they’re looking for what you sell. But clicks aren’t customers. Impressions aren’t revenue. And a cheap lead isn’t necessarily a good lead. We look at why businesses need to follow leads beyond Google and into the sales pipeline, connecting campaigns with qualified opportunities, customers, revenue and ultimately profitability. There’s also the awkward question of whether Google Ads is genuinely creating demand or simply taking credit for customers who were already searching for your business. Then there’s the website. Because you can target the perfect audience, choose the right keywords and write an excellent advert, only to spend money sending people to a confusing website that immediately makes them wonder whether they’ve come to the right place. Increasing your advertising budget doesn’t fix a broken customer journey. It just sends more people through it. We also explore how Google Ads can gradually become a habit. The campaign runs. The agency manages it. Leads arrive. The invoice gets paid. Another month begins. Eventually nobody asks: “If we had this entire budget back today, would we invest all of it in Google Ads again?” Perhaps you would. If £15,000 of advertising is reliably generating £120,000 in profitable new business, the size of the budget isn’t necessarily the problem. The objective isn’t simply to spend less. It’s to waste less. So before dramatically increasing your Google Ads budget, or slashing it because the monthly invoice looks frightening, ask: “What commercial result are we actually getting from this?” If nobody can answer, start there. Because the most dangerous marketing spend isn’t necessarily the expensive stuff. It’s the spending nobody can properly explain. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer strategy, better decisions and marketing investment that actually makes commercial sense. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    12: Are We Spending Too Much on Google Ads?

  4. Oct 8

    11: What Should I Actually Expect From a Fractional CMO?

    Fractional CMO. or Fractional Marketing Director, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing. It’s a title that has become considerably more common over the past few years. Unfortunately, the more popular it becomes, the less clear it sometimes seems to be what one actually does. So let’s clear something up. A Fractional CMO isn’t someone who does a fraction of your marketing. They’re not supposed to arrive every Tuesday, write three LinkedIn posts, adjust a Google Ad and disappear again. In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at what business owners and Managing Directors should genuinely expect when they bring senior fractional marketing leadership into their business. A good Fractional CMO should start by understanding the business before prescribing the marketing. Where are you trying to go? What’s driving growth? What’s holding it back? Who are your best customers? What’s Sales struggling with? Where is the marketing budget going and is any of it actually working? From there, you should expect clarity, strategy, leadership, challenge and commercial accountability. That means connecting marketing with the wider commercial strategy, providing direction to internal teams and agencies, challenging assumptions and being prepared to ask uncomfortable but useful questions such as: “Why are we spending money on this?” It also means recognising that more marketing isn’t necessarily better marketing. Sometimes the first contribution of experienced marketing leadership isn’t launching another campaign or increasing the budget. It’s stopping things. Software nobody needs. Agency services that aren’t delivering. Events attended through habit. Underperforming channels. Activity that exists largely because nobody has asked why it’s still happening. We also look at what you shouldn’t expect. A Fractional CMO isn’t an entire marketing department. Their job isn’t necessarily to personally write every article, design every advert, manage every social account and update every page of your website. Senior marketers can and should roll up their sleeves when required, but that isn’t where most of their value lies. You’re not hiring another pair of hands. You’re hiring another experienced head. And over time, good fractional leadership should help build capability inside the business, developing people, improving agencies, establishing systems and creating a marketing function that becomes stronger and more self-sufficient. Because when marketing lacks leadership, the instinct is often to do more. More campaigns. More channels. More content. More agencies. More software. When what the business may really need is someone experienced enough to say: “Here’s what actually matters.” And then make sure it happens. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer strategy, better decisions and marketing that genuinely supports business growth. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    11: What Should I Actually Expect From a Fractional CMO?

  5. Oct 1

    10: Why Is Everyone in Marketing So Busy?

    Ask a marketing team how things are going and there’s a reasonable chance you’ll hear one word: “Busy.” Very busy. Incredibly busy. Campaigns are launching. Content is being written. LinkedIn is being updated. Emails are being built. Reports are being produced. The CRM needs attention. There’s an exhibition coming up. And somebody has scheduled another meeting to discuss what happened in the previous meeting. Everyone is working extremely hard. So why is the Managing Director still asking: “What is Marketing actually achieving?” In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean looks at one of marketing’s most persistent problems: confusing activity with effectiveness. Marketing has an almost infinite supply of things it could be doing. New channels, new platforms, new campaigns and new technology are constantly being added, but very little ever seems to get removed. The result can be a marketing function that is permanently busy without necessarily moving the business forward. We look at why a lack of strategy creates more work, how Marketing can gradually become the company’s internal “request department”, and why technology and AI haven’t necessarily made marketers less busy, they’ve simply made it possible to produce considerably more stuff. And that raises an increasingly important question: Just because we can produce more marketing, should we? We also look at the difference between measuring outputs and outcomes, why constantly overwhelmed teams have no time left to think, and why sometimes the most valuable decision a Marketing Director can make is: “We’re going to stop doing that.” There’s a practical suggestion too: alongside your marketing to-do list, create a marketing stop list. Look at everything you’re currently doing and ask why it exists, who it’s for, what it’s supposed to achieve and what would actually happen if you stopped. Because good marketing isn’t about creating the maximum possible amount of marketing. It’s about doing the smallest number of things capable of producing the greatest useful effect. So next time someone tells you Marketing is incredibly busy, don’t automatically be reassured. Ask: “Busy doing what?” And then ask the question that really matters: “Does it actually matter?” Because a marketing team running at 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction isn’t high-performing. It’s simply getting lost more efficiently. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners, Managing Directors and marketers who want better decisions, clearer strategy and considerably less pointless activity. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    10: Why Is Everyone in Marketing So Busy?

  6. Sep 24

    09: Should We Hire a Marketing Manager or a Marketing Director?

    “We need someone to sort out the marketing.” It sounds simple enough. The business is growing. Marketing is becoming more complicated. Sales wants more leads. There are several agencies doing vaguely related things. And somebody has finally admitted that the CRM isn’t going to manage itself. So, you need a marketing person. But do you need a Marketing Manager or a Marketing Director? In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at why these aren’t simply two versions of the same job with different salaries, and why hiring the wrong level of experience for the problem you’re trying to solve can be an expensive mistake. A Marketing Manager will typically take a strategy and turn it into coordinated activity: campaigns, content, events, agencies, digital marketing, budgets and reporting. A Marketing Director should be working at a different level, connecting marketing with the commercial ambitions of the business and making decisions about markets, customers, positioning, investment, growth and the marketing capability the company needs next. Put simply: If you know where you’re going but need someone to organise the journey, you probably need management. If you’re not entirely sure where you’re going, you may need leadership. We also tackle the increasingly common job description that expects one person to develop the global marketing strategy, generate leads, run exhibitions, manage the CRM, write content, create graphics, produce video, support Sales, manage the website and preferably know a bit of HTML. That isn’t really a Marketing Manager. That’s an entire marketing department with one email address. And what if you genuinely need senior marketing leadership but don’t need — or can’t justify, a full-time Marketing Director? Fractional leadership can provide the strategic direction, commercial thinking and senior experience the business needs, while a Marketing Manager, Executive, internal team or external specialists handle the day-to-day execution. For some growing businesses, the right answer may be both capabilities: The Marketing Director asks, “What should we be doing and why?” The Marketing Manager asks, “How are we going to make it happen?” So before writing the job description, forget the title for a moment and ask a much more useful question: “What problem are we actually hiring this person to solve?” Answer that properly, and the job title becomes considerably easier. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want better decisions, clearer strategy and marketing that actually supports where the business is going. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    09: Should We Hire a Marketing Manager or a Marketing Director?

  7. Sep 17

    08: Do We Need a Rebrand or Do We Have a Bigger Problem?

    “We need a rebrand.” It’s an exciting sentence. It suggests change, progress, new beginnings and, almost inevitably, several meetings devoted to discussing slightly different shades of blue. But what if the brand isn’t actually the problem? In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean looks at one of the most common assumptions growing businesses make: that changing the logo, colours, website and visual identity will somehow solve a much deeper commercial problem. Because a genuine rebrand isn’t simply a new logo. It’s about how customers understand your business, what they think you’re good at, who they believe you’re for and, ultimately, why they should choose you. We explore when a rebrand genuinely makes sense, perhaps because the business has grown, entered new markets or simply outgrown the way it presents itself, and when the real issue may be positioning, pricing, customer experience, sales, service or an unclear proposition. There’s also the danger of throwing away valuable brand recognition simply because the leadership team has become bored with it. Sometimes evolution is considerably smarter than revolution. And before commissioning the new website, rewriting the brand guidelines and ordering 3,000 mugs with the new logo on them, there’s one important question to ask: What are we actually trying to fix? Because if the problem is deeper than the brand, changing the wrapping won’t solve it. It will simply give you a much more attractive version of the same problem. And that’s not rebranding. That’s redecorating. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business leaders who want better decisions, clearer strategy and considerably less marketing theatre. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    08: Do We Need a Rebrand or Do We Have a Bigger Problem?

  8. Sep 10

    07: Why Does Our Competitor Look Bigger Than Us?

    Have you ever looked at a competitor and wondered how they manage to look so much bigger, more established and more successful than you? Their website looks impressive. They’re constantly appearing on LinkedIn. Their branding is polished. Their case studies look fantastic. They seem to be everywhere. And yet you know the reality. You may have more employees, more customers, more experience, more revenue — perhaps even a better product. So why do they look like the market leader? In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin explores the gap between the reality of a business and the way the market perceives it. Because customers can’t see your turnover, management accounts or record-breaking quarter. They judge your business by the signals you put into the world, your website, visibility, positioning, branding, case studies, customer evidence and the way you communicate. We look at how consistent visibility can create perceived scale, why strong positioning can make a smaller specialist look more authoritative than a much larger generalist, and how social proof, case studies and confident communication can dramatically change the way a business is perceived. We also look at the danger of competitor envy. A company making lots of noise isn’t necessarily more successful and copying everything your competitors do is rarely a sensible strategy. Instead, the question is: What are they communicating that you’re failing to communicate? If your business has grown but your marketing hasn’t kept pace, you may not have a business problem at all. You may have a perception gap. And closing that gap doesn’t mean pretending to be bigger. It means making sure the outside world can see the strength, experience and credibility that already exists inside your business. Marketing, Properly! - practical marketing thinking for business leaders who want better decisions, clearer strategy and considerably less marketing theatre. Hosted by Sean Makin, a Fractional CMO and Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and brand. Produced in Scotland.

    07: Why Does Our Competitor Look Bigger Than Us?
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The podcast for business owners, founders and managing directors who want marketing to make a little more sense. In each episode, we’ll tackle one of the questions business leaders should be asking about marketing, brand and growth, without the jargon, hype or miraculous five-step formulas. Just practical thinking, straight answers and occasionally the uncomfortable question nobody else wants to ask. Produced in Scotland.

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