The Best Advice We Gave a Client This Week? Don’t Spend the Money.
Why the most valuable thing a marketing expert can do is sometimes talk you out of a purchase.
Last week, one of our clients forwarded us an email.
It started with congratulations. She’d been named a finalist in a national industry award. Lovely. By paragraph four, the pitch landed.
For just $2,000+GST, she could secure a “digital awards package.” A Q&A article on the publication’s website. A backlink to her own site. Promises of first-page Google rankings. And the line we couldn’t quite stop reading:
“We consistently receive inquiries from link builders willing to pay thousands for hyperlinks to their clients’ websites for SEO purposes.”
She replied, copying us in.
“What do you think about these opportunities????”
Our advice, in one word?
Don’t.
Why we said no
Let’s break down what was actually being sold here, because the surface of this offer was so polished that even a savvy business owner could be forgiven for biting.
It wasn’t really a feature. The “article” wasn’t a journalist’s editorial profile. It was a Q&A she’d write herself, by filling out five questions and supplying a photo. The “feature” was paid placement, dressed up as recognition.
The SEO pitch was the red flag, not the selling point. Google explicitly devalues paid backlinks. Their algorithm has been hunting them down for years. So when a publication brags that “link builders pay thousands for these,” that’s not a sales pitch, that’s an admission. Any link you pay for is, by Google’s own rules, a link you shouldn’t be buying.
The audience was the wrong audience. The publication’s readers were other professionals in her industry — colleagues, competitors, peers. Not the small business owners she actually serves. The audience mismatch alone made the maths impossible.
The opportunity cost was enormous. For our client, $2,000+GST equated to several months of properly strategic content. A full website refresh. Six months of social media management. A whole campaign with real, measurable, owned outcomes that would keep working for her long after a single article had quietly disappeared from anyone’s feed.
So we said no.
Not because every paid placement is a bad idea (some are brilliant). Not because the publication isn’t legitimate (it is). But because this offer, for this client, at this stage of her business, wasn’t going to do what she wanted it to do.
And honestly? That conversation, that no, was easily the most valuable thing we did for her that month.
Executor vs. trusted advisor
There’s a huge difference between a marketing person who executes tasks and one who protects the business.
The executor runs with whatever brief you throw at them. New campaign? Sure. Fresh launch? On it. Want to spend $2,000 on a thing your business doesn’t need? Great, we’ll make it look pretty.
The trusted advisor pauses first and asks the harder questions.
Is this the right move for you, right now?
What problem is this actually solving?
Is there a smarter way to spend this money?
What does this take you away from?
Because here’s the truth nobody in this industry says out loud. The marketing world is full of people very happy to take your money. Paid features. Premium directories. Sponsored awards. “Limited-time” packages. Ad placements that promise the world. There’s no shortage of places to spend.
A good marketing consultant doesn’t just help you spend it. They help you spend it well, which sometimes means not spending it at all.
5 questions to ask before any marketing spend
The next time someone (us included, honestly) pitches you a paid opportunity, run it through these five questions before you reach for your card.
Will this reach my actual ideal client? Big audience is not the same as the right audience. A feature in front of 50,000 of your peers is worth less than a thoughtful piece in front of 50 of your perfect-fit clients.
What’s my realistic return, and over what timeframe? Forget the magic ROI calculators. Just an honest gut check. If you spend this money, what would have to be true in three months, six months, a year, for it to have been worth it? If you can’t answer, you’re not buying value, you’re buying hope.
Am I buying this because it makes business sense, or because it makes me feel important? Ego spending is real. So is FOMO spending. So is “everyone else is doing it” spending. None of those are good reasons. (And we’ve all done it.)
What else could this money do? The opportunity cost question, and often the most clarifying. If you took the same dollars and put them into better content, a website refresh, a coach, a course, hiring help, what would happen?
Could I run a smaller version of this first? Almost any big marketing spend has a tiny version you can test first. A small ad campaign before a big one. One sponsored post before a year-long deal. One award entry before the platinum package. If the small version doesn’t work, the bigger one almost certainly won’t either.
If you run all five honestly and the answer is still yes, great. Spend with confidence. But more often than not, the questions themselves make the right answer obvious.
What our client did instead
When we said no to the $2,000, she didn’t lose anything.
We sat down together and looked at where her business actually needed traction. The answer wasn’t “more vague exposure.” It was sharper messaging, a clearer pathway for new enquiries, and consistent visibility in front of her people, not someone else’s.
So that $2,000 stayed where it could actually work. Building her business, on her terms, with results she could measure.
That’s the difference.
The whole point of having someone in your corner
The most valuable thing about working with a marketing consultant isn’t really the work they produce.
It’s the conversation that happens before any work begins.
The “let’s pause and think about this” moment. The push-back that saves you from a bad decision. The honest opinion when you’re about to spend money on the wrong thing. The someone-in-your-corner who’s looking out for your business as a whole, not just the bit they’re paid to deliver.
If your marketing person isn’t doing that, they’re not really your advisor. They’re just a vendor.
There’s a difference. And in a noisy, expensive, AI-saturated marketing world, that difference might be the most important thing your business has going for it.
Want someone in your corner who’ll tell you the truth, even when it costs them the sale? Book a discovery call and let’s chat about what your business actually needs next (and what it doesn’t).
