Sometimes you want answers from a real person with skin in the game. Here's a collection of questions about marketing that I have enjoyed answering.
Add your question, drop me a line directly scaple@capleconsulting.co.uk or connect on LinkedIn.
Q: How can we define our target audience more effectively?
A: Our approach at Caple Consulting Ltd starts with creating Ideal Customer Profiles ICPs. By aligning your proposition with who it serves best and analysing your current best fit customers, you can build a profile that informs you of your target audience so you can deliver marketing messages that speaks to their specific needs. Check out this article for more about ICPs.
Q: How can we improve our brand awareness and perception in the market?
A: There’s a whole process to go through to get your messaging on point and researching your target audience, but once you have that, you can be confident in knowing where and what to communicate.
While you can leverage social media, paid search and email to amplify your message with engaging, high value or thought leadership content, there is no substitute for providing a great customer experience that everyone shouts about.
Further reading on: Messaging and Ideal Customer Profiles.
Q: How can we improve our SEO and get us to rank higher on Google?
A: Create unique content that has good on-page optimisation underpinned by sound technical SEO, supported by quality inbound links and social media.
Search has evolved, we now take into consideration AI Overviews, so the structure of your content is as important as the relevance to the search term. Lead with a concise summary and then breakdown the detail.
Read more about SEO in this article.
Q: What is a reasonable ROI to expect from our marketing efforts?
A: Great question. At a campaign or tactical level, you can calculate the percentage of generated revenue or profit that you want to invest in marketing and that’s your target ROI.
At a strategic level the principle is the same, but you’ll factor in wider costs and lifetime value. The real challenge is how you measure, especially if your marketing is omni-channel where looking at the bottom line may be a more representative value of your marketing efforts.
Q: Do I need SEO or paid ads (Google/Facebook/LinkedIn)?
A: Building out a robust strategy will give you the answer to this as you’ll discover more about your target audience and how they are most likely to become customers.
You’ll probably decide to incorporate both and choose which channel gets more focus and resource.
Q: Do I really need email marketing in 2025?
A: Email marketing works best when you have good or earned data ensuring that the right message gets to the right person at the right time. Marketing automation can help with this, triggering tailored email messages following specific user actions.
What you send matters, think about the value of your message and if it contributes towards building a relationship.
Newsletters are still popular in 2025, more successfully as one of several touchpoints that bind communities with an online/offline crossover.
Keep the questions coming,
Steve.
