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The hard barriers limiting marketing success

Published 5 months ago • 1 min read

May 2026

The hard barriers limiting marketing success

25 years ago, a small business had basically two marketing options: drop flyers into post boxes or advertise in the local newspaper.

Medium-sized businesses might have layered on regional radio, while the giants dominated TV.

Then came digital marketing. Suddenly, everyone got a sniff of an affordable, nationwide market presence. But the reality is a bit different.

Digital marketing promises easy access, but it is still bound by the same constraints that all marketing activity faces.

There are two fundamental constraints that dictate marketing success, which you need to be aware of and actively manage for:

Constraint 1: Physical availability

Your product or service must be available where people want to buy it. AvaiIability is a baseline requirement for marketing success. People can't buy you if they can't find you, whether online or offline.

I say "marketing success" because "place" is one of the four Ps of an integrated marketing approach. Product, price, place and promotion.

Constraint 2: Mental availability

People need to know you exist, and remember you even if they are not currently shopping around.

This means two things:

  1. You need to promote to the whole market, not just those who are currently shopping. It means building a brand.
  2. You need to stand out from the crowd so people don't forget about you. It means investing in creative excellence.

The catch is that both physical and mental availability cost money to overcome! They are like physical forces working against your success.

Niche or die

The only way for a small business to beat the odds and fight back against these gravity-like forces is to redefine the market and target a niche.

That's how Salesforce did it - they decided to target salespeople inside SMEs with fewer than 30 employees. Today, they dominate enterprise CRM.

In many ways, marketing only works once you have enough money to make it work. So if you don't, shrink your playing field until you can win, both physically and mentally.

I'll send my next mailer in June.

Bernard

Bernard is the owner of Firejuice, a marketing consultancy that helps ambitious businesses take a structured approach to growth.

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Smoke Signals

By Bernard Jansen

Stong views on branding, marketing and business growth.

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