Keir Whitaker

Let's Stop the Marketing Guilt

When it comes to marketing their businesses, clients often tell me they know exactly what they should be doing. The problem? It sounds exactly like every other agency or app company in the ecosystem. You know the drill—a blog article a week, 12 LinkedIn posts a month, regular email newsletters, new channels to explore. The list never ends.

And then there’s the smiley LinkedIn thought leader who wants to sell you a course about segmentation and funnels that will change your world — all for the princely sum of $499 (paid in four equal installments). Because clearly what you need is another framework to feel guilty about not implementing.

But here’s the trap. It’s easy to look at what other businesses are doing and assume you should be doing it too. What’s much harder is figuring out what actually deserves your time and limited resources in your business. That’s where I come in.

So What Actually Matters?

Before we talk tactics, we need to be clear on what the business is trying to do. Where are you focused? What kind of growth are you building toward? What does your positioning actually support?

Without that foundation, every marketing idea feels equally urgent. With it, the decisions get much easier.

I’ll help you work out:

• What deserves focus
• What can go in the backlog
• What you can stop doing altogether

Without this clarity, marketing turns into a constant low-level guilt. You always feel behind on something, even when the business is actually doing well.

Making It Happen

Once you have direction (which we can review when needed), our attention turns to actually doing the work.

This is where a lot of marketing falls down. Not because people are lazy, but because plans are vague, unrealistic, or disconnected from how the business actually operates day to day.

Good marketing execution is practical. It fits around client work. It respects your time and resources. And it prioritises boring regularity over sporadic bursts of enthusiasm.

It’s about doing something regularly over nothing consistently.

How I Help

When I help a business with their marketing, we begin by getting clear on what’s actually worth doing — and what isn’t.

This usually means:

• Stepping back from the list of “shoulds”
• Getting clear on where the business is focused and what kind of growth you’re building toward
• Deciding where marketing can realistically make an impact
• Narrowing the focus to a small number of meaningful activities
• Turning those choices into clear, doable, repeatable steps

From there, it’s about follow-through. Making progress, adjusting as you go and avoiding the trap of endlessly rethinking the plan instead of acting on it.

When marketing has clear direction and consistent delivery, it stops feeling like a side project you’re constantly neglecting. You know what you’re working on. You know why it matters. And you can see progress over time, even when things aren’t perfect.

If this sounds familiar, working out what deserves your attention and helping you act on it is one of the ways I help.