“I Don’t Know What Works Anymore!” Why Your Marketing Feels Like a Black Box

You’re not one of the people I meet whose first words to me after learning I do marketing are, “Oh, I hate marketing.” You actually like marketing (even though you can get real frustrated over it). And you know quite a bit about it—what channels you want to be on, what good content looks like (in your standards), roughly what you should be doing. But, when you ask yourself "what's working?" you feel your stomach drop a little, because the honest answer is: I have no idea.

That feeling of doing marketing but not knowing if it even works anymore is one of the most frustrating places to be as a small business owner. Because you can't fix what you can't see, and right now, you can't really see anything.

Here's what's actually going on. (A.K.A. What we’re going to talk about in this blog.)

• Why doing more isn't the same as learning more

• Why "what's working?" is actually the second question you should be asking

• What it looks like to track your marketing without turning it into a part-time job

• How having a record of your activity changes everything about how you make decisions.

"Why does it feel like I'm doing so much but getting nowhere?" Because you're producing. You're not tracking.

When marketing doesn’t feel like it’s working, most of us default to doing more as small business owners. We post more, pivot faster, try the new thing someone mentioned on a podcast. Because the doing feels productive—and in the moment, it is. You're showing up. You're trying.

But extra effort without a record isn’t something you can learn from.

In a nutshell, the problem is you're doing things in isolation, with no thread connecting this week's Instagram post to last month's email to the inquiry that came in on Tuesday. Everything exists in a vacuum. And when everything exists as these single tasks you checked off, you can't make meaning out of any of it.

So, you keep doing. And keep wondering. The question stays the same. And you just feel more stuck.

When you feel this way, here is something you can do. Organize all those things you’re being productive by goal. Why? Because this will help you see what marketing tasks have a chance at helping you reach a goal and which are just things you are doing out of habit (or desperation).

This is the start of putting together an actual marketing plan. Turning that list of things you do and ideas into marketing with a direction—which is how you do things and make progress.

"How am I supposed to know what to focus on?" Ask yourself the right question first.

Most small business owners go straight for results (leads, clicks, followers, sales) before they've ever documented the “what am I doing” part. And I get it. Results are what matter. Results are what pay the bills.

But you can't reverse-engineer success from vibes. You can try. (It doesn’t work.)

So before you can ask "what's working," you have to be able to answer "what did I actually do?" Not what you planned to do. Not what you think you did. What actually happened—which channels you showed up on, how often, what kind of content you put out, which weeks you went dark because life got in the way.

It’s the next step after you’ve organized your tasks and ideas by goal. 

That record is the foundation. It is your marketing plan. And without it, you can know what you are supposed to focus on because you can’t make judgements about whether something is working (or not) without it.

"Do I really need to track all these metrics?" No, and tracking doesn't have to be complicated (really)

I know "track your marketing" sounds like the beginning of a very long project involving color-coded spreadsheets and a fresh cup of coffee you'll have to reheat 4 times before finishing. It can be that. It doesn't have to be that. In fact, it shouldn’t be that unless you are a serious spreadsheet nerd.

What you're actually after is visualization of what the things you did did for you. For example, if you’ve been focused on consistently blogging twice a month for the last 6 months, has the percentage of people visiting your website from organic search gone up?

When you have months and years of that data, something shifts. You start seeing what you do consistently next to whether or not it moves the needle. You see where your energy is going and whether it matches where your clients actually come from.

But this isn’t about tracking all the metrics. It’s about tracking the numbers that are going to help you make smarter decisions. And it can! We surveyed 245 small business owners for the State of Small Biz report and found that those who track their metrics monthly and use the information to make decisions are 2.8x as likely to rate their marketing as “very” or “extremely” effective. 

Starting simple really is the way to go here. And this video will help answer the question I know you’re thinking. “What KPIs should I track as a small business owner?”

"What changes when I actually have a record of what the marketing I've done?" A lot—in a good way.

I hear it all the time from small business owners who finally document their marketing plan and start tracking their metrics…they're almost always surprised by what they find.

(Because everything was pure vibes.)

Sometimes it's that they've been putting so much energy into something that doesn't connect to how their clients actually find them. Sometimes it's that they've been more consistent than they gave themselves credit for—they just couldn't see it because they had no record to look back at. 

Either way, they stop guessing. They stop feeling like their marketing is something happening to them and start feeling like something they can actually steer. The whole “I don’t even know what works anymore” starts to let go of the grip it has on your brain. 

"So how do I actually make this stick?" This is the part where you need to do a few more things differently

Creating your marketing plan and figuring out what numbers to track is the easy part (really). Actually doing it consistently is where most people get stuck.

Right now, you probably have your ideas somewhere: a doc, a note, emails to self, screenshots, or a spot in your Notion account you set up in January with a lot of intention. But that is kind of where it ends…maybe sprinkle your Claude account into the mix and way too much time spent on Instagram. 

Basically, it’s a lot of well-meaning intentions that don’t ever make it into the real world as actual marketing because you haven’t set yourself up with something(s) that actually help you do the work. 

That's exactly the problem Enji was built to solve. It's a marketing project management tool for small business owners who do their own marketing, and it brings your planning and your doing into the same place. So instead of having a strategy document you never open and a to-do list that doesn't connect to anything, you have one view of what you're working toward—and the tools to actually check those tasks off as complete.

The next time you catch yourself thinking "I don't even know what works anymore," I want you to hear that differently. Not as proof that you're not smart enough to do your own marketing (you are), but as a signal that you've been flying without instruments.

You like marketing. You know what good looks like. The missing piece isn't effort or ideas or even strategy. It's being able to see your marketing clearly enough to actually trust what you're doing and make smarter calls about what to do next.

That starts with a marketing plan. It gets better when you track against it. And it sticks when you have a place that makes both of those things feel like a normal part of how you run your business.

Tayler Cusick Hollman is the founder of Enji, a marketing project management tool built for small business owners who are serious about their marketing but struggling to make it happen consistently. With over a decade of experience as a small business marketing consultant, she's spent years helping founders stop guessing and start doing.