Parts of Marketing Strategies That Seem Scary But Don’t Have to Be: 2025 Update
Originally Published in 2018 and Updated in May 2025
Creating a sustainable marketing plan can feel like navigating a maze. Commonly, you’ll find opaque agencies that send you complex reports filled with insider jargon, and they’ll want to lock you in to intimidating long-term commitments.
But here’s the truth: what seems scary is often just misunderstood. At Creekmore Marketing, we are a friendly digital marketing agency that serves the US and abroad. We’re based out of scenic Lexington, KY—and we’re here to provide friendly supportive marketing solutions that demystify the parts of marketing that can make business owners hesitate.
Whether it’s deciphering keyword reports, analyzing competitors, or setting realistic goals, these strategies are far less daunting once you break them down. Want to learn more? Reach out to a member of our Business Development team today!
The Fear: Long-Term Contracts
Many agencies lock clients into rigid agreements, prioritizing retention over results. They’ll promise businessowners with results that they can’t prove or set up unrealistic timelines for growth—all the while locking you into a lengthy contract. If this feels like taking a leap of faith? It is! What if the strategy doesn’t work?
The Reality: Sustainable marketing strategies take time to optimize, and your agency should help you understand your investment. At Creekmore Marketing, we offer
a contract you can leave at any time because we believe that your digital marketing agency should earn your commitment. We avoid trapping clients in long-term contracts because we prove our value month after month and year over year and offer flexibility to build lasting partnerships.
The Fear: "One-Size-Fits-All" Approaches
While the elements of a strong marketing strategy all include similar features, many agencies come to the table with the same generic strategies that ignore your business’s unique needs. These cookie-cutter strategies often overlook key differentiators, avoid understanding your brand’s unique voice, and ignore key factors like your competitive landscape, or customer pain points. This leads to lackluster results.
The Reality: Your industry, location, customers, and brand value are unique—and
we believe that your digital marketing should be unique too. We tailor campaigns to your goals, whether it’s hyper-local SEO for your small business or a PPC strategy that targets your ideal clients—on a nationwide scale.
The Fear: Competitor Analysis
Many businesses and agencies perform their work in a vacuum and avoid looking deeply at the context of a business in its field.
The Reality: At Creekmore Marketing, we serve a large variety of businesses (even more than listed here), so we have the experience you need to better understand where your marketing strategy ranks with local and national competitors.
Competitor research isn’t about intimidation—it’s about opportunity. We keep factors like market rivalry, economic power, and customer trends in mind without overcomplicating your marketing plan with fluff. We ask important questions like:
- Are new competitors entering your space?
- What are rivals doing well (or poorly) in their ads?
- How does your web presence compete?
The Fear: Setting Realistic Marketing KPIs
Many businesses and marketing agencies avoid discussing or understanding what drives their clients’ need for marketing. That’s why we help our clients develop
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that suit their business and marketing strategy.
The Reality: We translate these insights into actionable steps, so you compete smarter—not harder. Understanding how your business fits into the wider landscape can be scary. Frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces or PESTLE Analysis are just a couple of structured ways your business can spot opportunities and understand risks.
- Porter’s Five Forces examines industry competitiveness by analyzing five key factors: the threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, the threat of substitutes, and competitive rivalry. This helps businesses identify their market position, assess profitability potential, and develop strategies to mitigate external pressures.
- PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) Analysis provides a macro-environmental scan, breaking down external influences into six categories.
Given your analysis, then you can better set up KPIs that are both ambitious but achievable. For small businesses, some digital marketing aspects to focus on may be metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, or ad spend return-on-investment (ROI).
At Creekmore Marketing, we’ll help you define KPIs that align with your budget and growth stage—no guesswork required. By grounding your strategy in a thoughtful framework, you’ll be able to move beyond superficial tactics with a marketing approach that aligns with your business’s reality, vulnerabilities, and advantages.
Marketing Doesn't Have to Be Scary—You Just Need the Right Marketing Partner
At Creekmore Marketing, we believe knowledge is power. That’s why we walk you through our proprietary marketing dashboard every month (if required) to discuss your most important data instead of giving you unactionable keyword reports or leaving you stranded in analytics and reports.
Whether it’s outmaneuvering competitors or ditching cookie-cutter tactics, our team makes marketing feel approachable. Ready to tackle the "scary" parts head-on? Contact us for a free consultation and see how we can tailor a strategy to your business.
