I was talking with a business owner recently who said something that stuck with me:
“I don’t know where my business is heading.”
She wasn’t starting from scratch.
She’d been in business for several years. She had experience, a strong network, and referrals coming in. People knew her and trusted her work.
But as we talked, it became clear that the business was evolving.
She had ideas about new offers. There were different opportunities she wanted to explore. She was thinking more intentionally about the work she really wanted to be doing.
And her marketing hadn’t necessarily caught up with all of that yet.
I see this happen a lot.
Our businesses evolve because we evolve and our marketing needs to evolve too.
Your Reputation Can Take You a Long Way
There is nothing wrong with building a business through referrals.
Honestly, I think referrals are one of the best indicators that you’re doing good work. Much of Red Cape has grown through relationships, referrals, and people telling other people about us.
I’m incredibly grateful for that.
But I’ve also realized that there comes a point when you may want to reach beyond the people who already know you.
Maybe you want to work with a different type of client. Maybe you’ve become more specialized. Maybe you’re developing a new offer. Or maybe you simply don’t want your business growth to depend entirely on who happens to know someone who knows you.
That’s when your online presence starts to do more.
Someone who doesn’t know you should be able to find you on LinkedIn, visit your website, read some of your content, and start to get a sense of who you are.
How do you think?
What do you care about?
Who do you help?
What do you want to be known for?
Because they don’t have the benefit of someone sitting across from them saying, “You need to talk to Tiffany.”
Your marketing has to begin building some of that trust for you.
You Don’t Have to Have It All Figured Out
I think this is where people can get stuck.
We think we need to have everything perfectly figured out before we start putting ourselves out there.
I don’t think we do.
I’ve come to see marketing as an experiment.
You put something out there. You pay attention. You have conversations. You see what people connect with. You learn something. And then you adjust.
I’ve done this in my own marketing.
The way I show up today isn’t the way I showed up several years ago. I’ve become more comfortable sharing my experiences, telling stories, talking about what I believe, and allowing more of me into my marketing.
And I’m sure it will keep changing.
That’s part of it.
We grow, and our marketing grows with us.
Your Marketing Needs to Evolve With Your Business
The work you wanted five years ago may not be the work you want today.
You may be clearer about the people you want to work with. Your expertise may have deepened. Your offers may have changed. You may have stronger opinions about the work you do because you’ve now spent years doing it.
All of that should eventually show up in your marketing.
That doesn’t mean you need to throw everything away and start over every time something changes.
Sometimes you just need to look at what you’ve already built with fresh eyes.
Your website.
Your LinkedIn profile.
Your content.
Your offers.
Your messaging.
Do they actually represent who you are and where your business is today?
And maybe even more importantly:
Do they support where you want to go next?
I think that’s a question worth coming back to regularly.
Because I don’t believe marketing is something we figure out once and then leave alone.
It’s part of building a business.
We learn. We change. We get clearer. Our businesses change with us.
Our marketing needs to evolve, too.
