Spaghetti Marketing, Six Years Later

In December 2020 I wrote a piece for the Federated Media blog about something I called spaghetti marketing. You know the move: throw it at the wall and see what sticks. A few ads here, a boosted post there, a sponsorship because someone asked nicely.

Six years later, the channels have changed. There’s AI search now, streaming audio, screens in the dashboard, more ways to reach people than ever. What hasn’t changed is how most local businesses put the pieces together. Or don’t.

It’s not that you’re doing nothing

When I sit down with a business owner in Michiana, they’re rarely doing nothing. Usually it’s the opposite. There’s a website somebody built a few years ago. A Facebook page. Maybe Google Ads, maybe radio, an email list that gets used twice a year, a CRM half the team logs into.

Every one of those pieces might be fine on its own. The problem is that nobody decided how they hand people off to each other.

Where it actually breaks

Here’s what I see over and over:

• The ad makes a promise the website doesn’t keep. Someone hears your spot about the fall tune-up special, looks you up, and lands on a homepage that doesn’t mention it. They leave.
• The lead lands in an inbox nobody owns. A form comes in Saturday afternoon. Someone sees it Tuesday. By then they’ve called your competitor.
• The happy customer never gets asked. You did great work. They’d gladly leave a review or send a friend. Nobody asked.
• Nobody knows what worked. Sales were up in May. Was it the radio, the mailer, the weather? Without a way to tell, next year’s budget is a guess.

None of those are advertising problems. They’re connection problems.

The fix starts with a question, not a channel

Back in 2020 my advice was to ask “what’s next?” before spending the next dollar. I’d put it more simply now: every impression should lead somewhere. So for any piece of your marketing, ask four things:

1. When someone sees or hears this, what do we want them to do next?
2. When they do it, what do they find?
3. Who follows up, and how fast?
4. How will we know it worked?

If you can’t answer those four for a channel, adding budget to it won’t help. Fixing the handoff will.

Think in a loop, not a list

The way I map it is a flywheel with eight stages: Understand, Create, Amplify, Be Found, Convert, Nurture, Delight and Learn. Attention comes in through Amplify. It has to be caught at Be Found and Convert. It gets kept at Nurture and Delight. And what you learn at the end feeds the next turn.

Most businesses are strong at one or two of those and quietly leaking at the rest. The good news is that the leak is usually in one spot, and fixing that one spot often does more than doubling the ad budget.

Where to start this week

You don’t need a new agency or a new platform to start. Pick the channel you spend the most on and walk through it like a customer would:

• Hear or see the ad.
• Search for the business the way a customer would, on your phone.
• Click through. Fill out the form or call.
• Time how long it takes to hear back.

Write down every spot where you would have given up. That list is your plan.

If you want a head start, the Marketing Checkup takes about three minutes and shows which stage is leaking. No pitch at the end. Just the next move.