Marketing Dopamine • October 17, 2026
What Is Actually Working?
Most business owners can tell you everything they are doing to market their business. Far fewer can tell you which of those things is actually working.
That is not a criticism. It is one of the most common gaps I see. When everything is running at once, the posts, the emails, the networking, the ads, it becomes almost impossible to tell what is pulling its weight and what is just taking up time.
So the default is to keep doing all of it.
And when results stall, to add one more thing.
Before you add anything new, find out what is already working.
The answer is usually simpler than it seems. Look at your last five clients or customers and ask a plain question. How did each of them find you? A referral. A conversation. A post that stayed with them. A talk you gave. Write it down.
Patterns show up quickly. Often, most of the business came from one or two places, while most of the effort went everywhere else.
That is not a failure. It is information. And it is far more useful than another new tactic.
Your best next move is often hiding in what already brought people to you.
Clarity does not start with doing more. It starts with looking honestly at what you have already done.
Lisa Carmichael is the author of The Marketing Dopamine Workbook: From Awareness to Action, available now, a companion to her book Marketing Dopamine: What Your Brain Is Really Doing When You Think You’re Building a Business, coming soon. Learn more at marketingdopamine.com
Taking the time to look at what’s already working can provide so much clarity and save us from spreading ourselves too thin. Sometimes the answers are right in front of us if we just take the time to look.
Exactly! Sometimes we’re so busy looking for the next thing to try that we overlook what’s already working. Taking the time to recognize that can help us make better decisions about where to focus our energy. Thanks for sharing!
I interviewed someone whose business is working remarkably well.One of the things she does is to organize a haunted market. The market that she creates has brown exponentially since she started it two years ago. The growth is incredible. She did a lot of online stuff and she went viral. I wrote an article about the market. It was amazing.
What a great example of finding something that works and building on it! Growing a market that quickly in just two years is impressive. It sounds like she’s found a way to connect with her audience and create something people want to be part of.
My husband and I had our interior decorating business since 1967, retiring in 2018. In all those years the only advertising we did other than in our church bulletin was word of mouth and referrals from our clients. Of course way back in the ’60’s it was different than things are today but we started in the small town where we lived in upstate NY and relocated to SC to care for my mom who had Alzheimer’s. We started out with a few condo management companies and the rest was history, our clients told others and it continued that way until we retired.
What a wonderful example of the power of relationships! To build a business that lasted more than 50 years, largely through word of mouth and referrals, says so much about the trust you earned from your clients. Marketing has certainly changed over the years, but I still believe relationships and reputation are at the heart of a successful business. Thank you for sharing your story, Martha!
That seems wise! But you’re right. When you’re not getting the results you want, the most tempting thing to do is to look for something new. You don’t think to stop and evaluate what might already be helping and maybe could be tweaked. So thanks – I’ll keep that in mind.
Exactly! It’s so easy to think we need a new strategy when sometimes a small adjustment to what’s already working can make all the difference. I think taking the time to evaluate before jumping into something new is a habit worth developing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Looking at your last five clients is such a simple exercise, and I like that it relies on real answers instead of guesses about which marketing is working. I see this all the time with the business owners I work with: one or two sources bring in most of the work, while most of the time and money goes somewhere else. I’m going to borrow your advice to find out what’s already working before adding anything new, Lisa.
I love that you’re seeing this with the business owners you work with, too! It’s amazing how much time and money we can spend on marketing without stopping to ask what’s actually bringing in customers. Sometimes the simplest questions give us the most useful answers.
Honestly, I feel in our field (IT services) the most effective “tool” is to do a good job, which might get you referrals. You can’t measure it, you can’t increase it, just keep doing it…
I agree! Doing a great job and earning the trust of your customers is one of the best ways to grow a business. Referrals may be harder to measure, but they’re certainly worth paying attention to. Sometimes our happiest customers are our best marketers, and we don’t even realize it. Thanks for sharing!