Cash or Effort: The Hidden Secret to Marketing Riches

Cash or Effort: Like Sinatra said, You can't have one without the other

If you want your business to grow, you are going to need either cash or effort. There is no way around it. Success does not show up on its own. Marketing requires visibility, and visibility requires investment. You are either going to have to pay for it or put in lots of sweat and work to get it.

You either buy your way into the conversation or earn your way into it. And whichever path you choose, it takes consistent action over time to gain traction.

The Cash Path: Buy Your Way to Relevance

If you have a large Nike type marketing budget, you have options. If you're wondering about that competitor of yours who is bigger and makes more money than you, I bet their budget has a good deal to do with it. Since they are willing to spend, they can do many more things.

They can:

• Show up in more places more often
• Hire agencies or freelancers to produce high-quality creative
• Run paid ads across multiple channels
• Get expert strategy advice and fractional CMO-level support
• Pay for PR and promotion to show up in top-tier publications

With enough budget, you can be seen by the right people, in the right places, at the right time. You can accelerate awareness. You can build trust faster through volume and quality. People are funny about how they decide to trust brands. Know one way that works? Showing up a lot. People start to think that if you are everywhere, you must be good at what you do because...you're everywhere.

Cash allows you to create mental availability (being known and remembered) by showing up often enough to stay top of mind. The rule of 7, an old marketing idea, says someone needs to see you seven times before they remember you. That rule was created when there were only a handful of advertising options. Today? That number is likely much higher.

And frequency matters. If those impressions are spaced too far apart, they are forgotten. Think of TV shows today (we're looking at you Stranger Things). They give you 8 episodes and then take 3 years between seasons.

When they do dare to release a new season, it's been so long you have completely forgotten what was going on and why you even were watching the show in the first place.

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, at least not in marketing. Absence makes the heart forget you ever existed and makes the heart start connecting with that other brand who is showing up much more often.

The Effort Path: Earn Your Way to Attention

What if you do not have the budget? Or, likely more accurately, you do have money for a budget, you just don't want to spend it and are hoping there is a way to make your business grow on the cheap.

Then it is going to take effort. A lot of it.

You will need to:

• Create consistent content for social media
• Build an email list and write valuable emails
• Produce blog posts that educate and attract
• Engage directly with your audience on platforms
• Create videos, case studies, white papers, and helpful tools

If you are not spending money, you need to spend time. You need to show up over and over again to build recognition and trust. That means having a strategy and sticking to it even when it feels like nothing is happening.

The biggest problem business owners face with this approach is inconsistency. They start strong, then taper off when they do not see immediate results. But visibility builds over time. People remember what they see often. If you are only showing up once in a while, you will not stay in anyone’s mind.

Effort works, but it takes longer. You will be doing everything manually, and you will have to learn and adjust constantly. But if you do not have cash, this is your only option.

What Works Best: A Combination of Both

Ideally, you use both. That means investing enough money to increase your reach, while also putting in the effort to show your personality, build relationships, and stay present.

You create high-quality content, and you promote it. You use ads to scale the reach of your best-performing assets. You use your time to interact with your audience, respond to questions, and keep the momentum going.

But if you are trying to grow using just one or the other, be realistic about what that path looks like. It is very difficult to grow a business relying on effort alone unless you are incredibly consistent and incredibly good at what you do. It is also easy to waste cash if you throw money at marketing without any strategic focus.

You are either going to pay for attention with cash or earn it with effort. The only exception? You found some VC out there who isn't great at decision making who was willing to write you a check and give you a pile of cash to market this awesome idea you have.

Final Thought

Marketing is about building familiarity. It is about being known, being remembered, and being trusted. And that requires visibility over time.

So ask yourself: do you have cash or effort? Either one will work. Neither one on its own will.

Smart marketing uses both.