Most founders don't have a marketing problem. They have a starting problem.

I talk to a lot of SME founders and CEOs who know their marketing needs attention. The website hasn't been updated in three years, there's no consistent presence anywhere, and the business is still largely running on referrals and reputation. Good foundations – but fragile ones.

They know something needs to change. And yet, month after month, it stays on the list.

Sound familiar?

The reasons are always understandable. Cash is tied up. The team is stretched. There's a big contract in the pipeline that'll free things up. Q4 is always manic. January will be better. January comes, and something else takes priority.

I'm not here to judge any of that – running an SME is relentless, and marketing rarely feels like the fire that needs putting out today. The problem is that by the time it does feel urgent, you're already behind.

The delay is the problem

Here's what I see again and again: it's not the absence of a strategy that hurts most, it's the months and months of inaction while everything else moves on. Competitors quietly improve their presence. Potential customers who could have found you, didn't. Trust that could have been building, wasn't.

Doing nothing has a price. It's just an invisible invoice.

You're invisible to AI

There's a newer consequence of inaction in marketing that most founders haven't considered yet. When people use AI tools – ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others – to research suppliers, services, or solutions, those tools draw on what's actually out there about your business. Your website, your content, your online presence. If that content is thin, outdated, or simply absent, you won't feature in those results. You won't even be in the conversation.

This is genuinely new territory, and it's moving fast. The businesses building a consistent, credible online presence now are the ones that AI will surface when a potential customer asks the right question. The ones staying quiet are becoming harder to find – not just on Google, but everywhere people are now looking.

It doesn't have to be a big bang

One of the most common misconceptions is that getting started means committing to a huge project with a huge price tag all at once. It doesn't.

A lot of my clients spread the work – and the cost – over several months, even the better part of a year. We identify the most important place to start, make meaningful progress there, and build momentum from that foundation. It quickly starts to feel less daunting and more like traction.

A phased approach also means you can see results before committing to the next stage. It's lower risk, more manageable, and frankly more sustainable than trying to do everything at once.

Where to start

If your marketing has been sitting on the to-do list for longer than you'd like to admit, the answer isn't to wait until conditions are perfect. They won't be. The answer is to start somewhere sensible, with someone who'll be straight with you about what's realistic.

If that sounds like a conversation worth having, I'd love to hear from you. No hard sell – just an honest chat about where you are, where you want to be, and how we might get there without it feeling overwhelming. Because the best time to start was six months ago. But today works too.

Get in touch today to boost your marketing.

• Contact Marc

• linkedin.com/in/marcantonybates/

About Marc Bates

Marc is a fractional marketing director who helps growing businesses sharpen their positioning and build stronger digital presence. Through Fractional Marc, he works with established companies ready for strategic direction and emerging businesses building their marketing foundations from scratch. He's also a co-founder of Iterato Training, an online Project Management training provider.

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