Which marketing do you mean

Someone starting a small business will often say, with real worry, that they need to do some marketing now.

Ask what they mean and the answer keeps moving. A nicer logo. Posting every day. Getting into more shops. A discount for the opening week. Being found when people search. Making the first customers so happy they come back with their sisters. Answering the complaints faster. Working out who the thing is actually for.

Every one of those is a fair thing to want. They are not the same job. Some of them cost money and some cost attention. Some pay back next week and some pay back in three years. A few of them pull in opposite directions.

When all of it hides under one word, the word stops helping. The person worrying about marketing cannot tell whether they are doing it well, because they never settled what doing it would look like. Every hour feels both necessary and pointless. Every suggestion from a friend sounds equally urgent, so the loudest one wins the week.

The same muddle turns up at every size. Ask ten people who carry the title what their job is and you will hear ten jobs, most of them sincerely held and several of them in quiet conflict with each other.

Nothing moves until somebody stops using the big word and uses a small one instead. Not marketing, but getting the jar onto two more shelves in this neighbourhood. Not marketing, but making sure the people who bought once hear from us again.

Give the work its real name. Say what it is for. Then it becomes possible to tell whether today was spent on it.