The honest answer to ‘is my marketing working?’ is often: “I’m not sure”. And that uncertainty is, itself, one of the signs.

If you’re wondering whether your marketing is working, you’re already asking the right question. Here’s five signs your marketing needs a fresh pair of eyes.

Something I often hear, and have heard for most of my 20+ years in marketing. ‘We’re doing stuff. We’re just not sure what its doing.’

This is a clarity problem and it costs. Marketing that isn’t quite working keeps individuals, and even whole teams stuck, busy, unsatisfied and it costs them in time, budget and effort. There’s content going out, emails being sent, things happening. The absence of results can be easy to explain away; the dreaded algorithm, the economy, the timing, the lack of resources.

But sometimes what you actually need is someone to look at the whole picture from the outside and say: this is what I see.

So, here are five signs that now might be the moment.

1. You’re doing lots of things but you can’t explain what’s working (and what isn’t!)

If someone asked you right now – ‘what’s your most effective marketing channel?’ – could you answer confidently? Not instinctively, not optimistically. Confidently, with something to back it up?

Most small organisations doing their own marketing are in activity mode rather than strategy or analysis mode. Things go out because they feel like they should, not because there’s a clear picture of why, or what they’re contributing. That’s often what happens when you’re running everything at once. But it does mean your energy and budget might be going to the wrong places. No-one wants or needs that.

2. Your marketing doesn’t quite sound like you

You read a piece of your own (or ChatGPT) content and it’s… OK-ish. Competent. But it doesn’t have the energy of an actual conversation with you. It could have been written by anyone.

This is one of the most common issues I see, especially with purpose-driven organisations. The mission is compelling, the team is passionate, the work is genuinely important but the website sounds like a committee wrote it on a Tuesday afternoon with seventeen other things to do.

Authentic marketing – the kind that gets people to care, and take action – sounds like the brand it represents. It owns its space. If yours doesn’t, it’s worth looking at.

3. You keep meaning to sort the marketing strategy and never quite do

It’s on the list. It’s been on the list for a while. Other things always feel more urgent, and who are we kidding – in a small team they usually are!

The problem is that without a clear plan, your marketing becomes reactive. You post when you remember, you rush, you respond to things as they come up, you try things that seem like good ideas without a framework to measure whether they are. None of that is wrong, sometimes done is better than perfect. But it’s not going to get you where you want to go.

4. You’re trying to be everywhere and it’s exhausting

Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, email newsletter, website, TikTok, events – you know that all of these matter and you’re trying to show up on all of them. And it’s too much.

Here’s the thing: you don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be in the right places, consistently, with something worth saying. A smaller number of channels, done well and done regularly, will always outperform everything spread thin. If you’re unsure which social platforms might be best for you, you download HubSpot’s Social Media Trends Report here for free.

If the volume of what you think you should be doing is making you not do any of it, that’s a sign the strategy needs simplifying.

5. You’re not sure your marketing reflects how good the work actually is

This is the one that comes up most with the organisations I most love working with. The work is genuinely brilliant. The impact is real. The people behind it care deeply. Yet sometimes the marketing undersells it, or doesn’t quite capture what makes it special.

There’s often a gap between how an organisation actually feels from the inside; the energy, the mission, the relationships, and how it comes across to the outside world. Closing that gap is one of the most satisfying things I get to do.

So what do you do when your marketing needs a fresh pair of eyes?

The first step is recognising it. Acknowledging that something’s not quite right isn’t a sign of failure, it’s the beginning of doing something about it.

A fresh outside perspective doesn’t have to mean a big commitment or a big budget. Sometimes a single open conversation changes everything. Sometimes what you need is someone to look at what you’ve built with fresh eyes and identify what’s working and what’s not.

That’s exactly what the Wild Heart Audit is for. If any of the above sounds familiar, it might be worth a no-obligation conversation.

The Wild Heart Audit is a fresh look at your marketing using my two decades of experience – I’ll look at your messaging, your channels, your content, your consistency. You get clear, honest findings and a practical conversation about what to do next. Starting from £350.

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