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After 18 years in business, I know that marketing focus differs at every growth stage. And recently, a bad hair day reminded me of that. Here’s what happened…
The other day, I decided to colour my hair… myself. The result? Not awful. Actually, it was okay. Some people even complimented me. But here’s the thing. It wasn’t what I wanted. And that’s what got me thinking about business. Just because something looks good doesn’t mean it’s the result you were trying to achieve. You can have a beautiful website, an active social media presence. But is your business growing in the direction you intended?
What are you actually trying to build?
Growth Must Be Intentional
As business owners, we can get so caught up in doing that we forget to ask ourselves why we’re doing it in the first place. We launch campaigns, introduce new services, hire people, invest in advertising, and try different things. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. But before we do any of that, we need to understand our intention.
What is the goal? Where are we going? What does success actually look like for our business at this particular stage?
After 18 years of running Cucumber Marketing, this is exactly where we’re putting our focus. Helping business owners identify what they are trying to achieve and develop a marketing strategy that supports their goals. Because every business needs different care at different stages of growth. And for simplicity, I like to think of three stages.
1. Plan(t)ing: Select the Best Soil
You’re just starting out. You have an idea, a vision, and probably a million things you want to do. It’s tempting to jump straight into advertising, social media, hiring people, and thinking about scaling. But first, you need solid foundations.
Who are your customers? What problem are you solving? Is there a market for your product or service? What makes your business different? How will you reach customers and turn their interest into sales? This is the stage where you establish your positioning, messaging, business model, and marketing fundamentals.
Don’t get distracted by what established businesses are doing. You don’t need their marketing strategy. You need one that supports where you are today.
Your priority: Build a solid foundation before investing heavily in growth.
2. Nurturing: Learn, Test, and Adjust
You’ve planted your business. Now you’re in the selling game. You’re learning about your customers, developing relationships, testing your messaging, and discovering what actually works. This is where patience becomes incredibly important. You might discover that the audience you originally targeted isn’t quite right. Your messaging might need adjusting. One marketing channel might perform better than another.
That’s normal!
This is the time for testing, measuring, learning, and making small improvements. Don’t become impatient with A/B testing or the little adjustments that seem insignificant. They’re helping you understand your market and build a repeatable process for attracting and retaining customers. And don’t rush into scaling something you haven’t figured out yet.
Your priority: Strengthen customer relationships, refine your strategy, and build consistency.
3. Growing: Think Beyond Yourself
Now you’re entering a different stage. You’ve established your business. You know your customers. You have products or services that sell, and you’ve developed marketing activities that generate results.
But growth introduces new challenges.
You’re no longer thinking only about acquiring your next customer. You’re thinking about building a team, developing processes, strengthening your brand, and creating a business that doesn’t depend entirely on you.
Your marketing strategy needs to evolve, too.
How do you maintain consistent messaging as your team grows? How do you protect the customer experience? Where should you invest to support your next stage of growth? And perhaps most importantly, what kind of business are you building for the long term? What legacy do you want to create? Don’t become so focused on day-to-day marketing activities that you lose sight of the bigger picture.
Your priority: Build the people, systems, and strategy that support sustainable growth.
Grow in the Right Season
Each season of business growth brings different challenges, opportunities, and lessons. Just like in nature, you can’t expect to harvest when you’ve only just planted your seeds. And you can’t keep planting forever without taking care of what’s already growing. Sometimes your business needs new foundations. Sometimes it needs patience and nurturing. And sometimes it’s ready for expansion. The fun part of entrepreneurship is that we’re constantly learning. The challenge is recognizing what we need to learn and implement at each stage. You might even find yourself returning to the planting stage when launching a new service or entering a new market. That’s part of the growth process.
A Fresh Approach to Marketing at Cucumber
This thinking is behind the next chapter of Cucumber Marketing. After 18 years of helping businesses with their marketing, we’re putting greater emphasis on identifying the right priorities before jumping into execution. Our approach starts with understanding where your business is today, what you’re trying to achieve, and what’s standing in your way.
From there, we can audit your current marketing, develop a focused strategy for the next 90 days, and provide the advertising support or business coaching appropriate for your stage of growth. Because the goal isn’t simply to do more marketing. It’s to do the right things at the right time, for the right reasons. And unlike my little hair-colouring experiment, we want to make sure the result actually matches the vision!
So, what season is your business in? Are you planting, nurturing, or growing? And is your current marketing strategy helping you get where you actually want to go?