Should Service-Based Business Owners Really Pay for Marketing?
- Corina Tennies
- Aug 11
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 13
Owning a small service-based business is no small task. I should know. It’s exhausting.
First, there is the service you provide: the thing you get paid to do. There are also proposals to send, bills to pay, technology to manage, operations to improve, etc., etc…
Then, there’s marketing. For service-based businesses, content marketing helps show that you’re a real, active business – not to mention helping you show up in search results (SEO/AEO).
For many business owners, it's the thing they know they should be doing, but can never quite justify spending time or money on.
And after enough effort without obvious results, the question eventually becomes: "Is this even worth it?"
Throughout my career, I’ve seen a pattern. It's a conversation that typically goes something like this:
“Most of my business comes from referrals so why would I pay for marketing?”
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“Can I just do it myself?”
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“Who do I hire?”
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“I can’t tell if it’s working.”
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“This is a waste of money.”
True. Potential clients don’t usually find or reach out immediately after you post something.
But a referral isn't a new client. And landing more of the “right clients” – you know the ones: a good fit, easy to work with, and pay without hassle – usually requires more than one person saying, “Go to them.”
The overlooked role of marketing: Validation
You and your clients don't go from referral ➡️ directly to hiring.
They investigate.
Maybe they read a blog.
They usually notice if your business posted last month instead of three years ago.
People are looking for reassurance, asking themselves:
"Are they credible? Will they be the right fit? Should I call them?"
This is validation.
Rethinking the role of your marketing efforts
Content is often not the source of the relationship; content is the validator of the relationship.
You need content marketing to show that your business is credible, active, and worth contacting.
I want you to sit with this a little.
Copy it down somewhere and revisit it when you start to question if it’s worth doing. For those times when you think, “I posted for three months and didn’t get a client.”
Your marketing goals: Reinforce the decision someone has already started making
So is marketing “worth it”? Yes, you need to invest time and money into content marketing. The level to which you take those efforts is more nuanced and a topic I plan to address in a future article.
Because the reality is often this: You may not have gotten a client simply because of something you posted.
However, that client likely chose you because after they met you, or were referred to you, or saw your name somewhere, they then went to your website, LinkedIn profile, articles, and posts and felt, “This is a real business I can trust.”
That's validation.
So instead of asking, “Did this post get me a client?” ask yourself, “If a potential client finds me today, does what they find give them another reason to choose me?”
This is how you evaluate whether content marketing is doing its job.
