"Are you a 'DTF f-boy'?"
Let me paint you a picture.
You've spent three weeks putting together a social media post. It's well-written. The graphic looks great. You've picked the right time to post and you've even boosted it with a small ad budget. It goes out. A few likes. A couple of shares. Maybe a comment from your mum. Nothing.
You try again. Different post, different platform, same result. So you start wondering if you need a better graphic, a bigger ad budget, a different platform entirely. You hire a freelancer. You buy a course. Still nothing. You start thinking maybe you're just not a 'marketing person.'
But here's the thing I want to tell you: the problem almost certainly isn't your budget, your creative, or even which platform you chose.
The problem is the sequence.
The Date Analogy Nobody Wants to Hear
Why We Skip the Courtship
I don't think business owners do this because they're pushy or oblivious. I think they do it because they're impatient — understandably so. You've got a great product or service. You know it works. You know it could genuinely help people. So why wouldn't you just... tell them?
Because knowing something and trusting someone are two completely different things.
Think about the best first dates you've ever had — the conversations where time disappeared, where you felt genuinely seen, where you left thinking about the next one before you'd even reached the car park. What made those work wasn't the other person's résumé. It wasn't their qualifications or their pitch. It was the way they made you feel understood before you'd said very much at all.
That's the magic trick. And it's available to any small business willing to do the work.
The Sequence Is Everything
Great marketing — like great dating — happens in stages. Not because we're playing games, but because trust takes time to build. You can't shortcut it. You can only earn it.
Here's what the sequence looks like when it's working:
First, you attract attention. Not with a sales pitch — with something genuinely interesting, useful, entertaining, or relatable. Something that makes your ideal customer think: "This person gets it."
Then, you engage their emotions. You tell stories. You name frustrations they haven't been able to articulate. You show them they're not alone. You build familiarity.
Then, you earn their trust. Through consistency. Through useful content. Through proof — case studies, testimonials, demonstrations of your thinking. You make deposits into a trust account before you ever attempt a withdrawal.
And finally — when all of that is in place — you make an offer. And because you've done the work, the offer doesn't feel like an interruption. It feels like the obvious next step.
What This Looks Like in Practice
A few years back I worked with a rugby franchise here in New Zealand — the Canterbury Crusaders. Twelve Super Rugby titles, one of the most recognised sporting brands in the country. You'd think their marketing would basically run itself.
But the brief wasn't about brand awareness. It was about moving tickets — and specifically about converting a warm audience into buyers.
The campaign we ran didn't start with an offer. It started with content that gave existing fans reasons to feel connected — stories, behind-the-scenes moments, content that deepened the relationship rather than immediately extracting from it. Only once that emotional warmth was established did the commercial push begin.
The result? A $32,000 ad spend that returned $180,000. Not because the ads were magic. Because the sequence was right.
The same principle works at every scale. I've seen it generate 450 leads from a single Facebook comment for a solo nutritionist with no ad budget. I've seen it take a San Francisco software startup from zero to $1.8 million in revenue in eighteen months. The number of zeros changes. The principle doesn't.
The Real Question to Ask
Most small business owners ask: "What should I be posting?"
It's the wrong question.
The right question is: "Where is this piece of content supposed to sit in the relationship I'm building with my customer?"
Is it designed to reach someone new who's never heard of you? Then it needs to be immediately interesting — not immediately promotional. Is it for someone who's been following you for a while? Then it can go a little deeper, be a little more direct. Is it for someone who's already downloaded your lead magnet and opened your last three emails? Then yes — now is probably a good time to make an offer.
The content itself matters less than where it lands in the sequence.
So, What Now?
Have a look at your marketing from the last three months. Not what you hoped it would do — what it actually did. Look at the posts, the emails, the ads.
Then ask yourself honestly: how much of it was designed to attract and engage? And how much of it was jumping straight to the ask?
If the ratio is off — if most of what you've put out there has been offers and promotions with very little in between — that's your answer. That's the leak in the system.
The good news is that fixing the sequence costs nothing. It just requires a shift in thinking. Stop asking how to sell more and start asking how to earn the right to sell.
The ask is the easy part. It's everything before the ask that does the work.
Do that well, and the sales follow.
WANT TO GO DEEPER?
📖 THE BOOK
Marketing on a Shoestring is the complete guide to building a marketing system that works — without a big budget or a marketing degree. Coming soon.
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🎙 THE PODCAST
Real marketing conversations for small business owners. No fluff, no jargon — just what actually works.
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🎓 THE COURSES & WORKSHOPS
Learn the Shoestring system in a live workshop or self-paced course — with a community of small business owners doing the same work.
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