The September Marketing Reset: 7 Things I’d Review Before Q4
September always feels a little bit like a second January to me. Summer is over, routines start to settle back in and, for a lot of small businesses, there’s suddenly a bit more headspace to look at what’s actually happening before we head into the final few months of the year.
And Q4 matters. Depending on your business, you might be coming into your busiest period, thinking about Christmas, trying to build January bookings or already starting to look ahead to next year.
But if this was my business, I definitely wouldn’t start by deciding I needed to create loads more content.
I wouldn’t suddenly commit to posting five times a week, start a podcast, rebuild the website and decide that this is finally the month I’m going to crack TikTok.
I’d look at what I already have first.
That’s pretty much how we approach things at MAAI anyway. Strategy first, always. Not strategy for strategy’s sake, and definitely not disappearing into a dark room for six months before coming back with an enormous PDF, but actually looking at what’s happening, what the business needs and what is worth putting your time and money into.
So, if I was sitting down to give my own marketing a September reset, these are the seven things I’d be looking at.
1. I’d work out where my customers are actually coming from
Before I spent another pound or another hour on marketing, I’d want a much clearer idea of what has genuinely brought business in this year.
We often ask clients where their enquiries come from and there can be a bit of a disconnect between what they feel is working and what is actually generating business.
You might feel like Instagram is your most important channel because that’s where you see people liking, commenting and messaging, but when you actually look at your enquiries, a huge proportion might have found you through Google.
Equally, you could be putting loads of effort into Facebook while most of your best customers actually come through recommendations.
You don’t need some enormous attribution system to start figuring this out either. I’d simply look at my last 10, 20 or even 30 customers and ask how they found me.
Google? Social media? A recommendation? An email? A networking event? A blog? Someone seeing you locally?
And if you realise you genuinely don’t know, that’s useful information too, because it means it’s probably worth starting to ask.
For us, this is one of the big principles behind good marketing. We want decisions to be powered by data rather than guesswork. It doesn’t have to be complicated data, but we do need something more than “I think Instagram is probably working”.
2. I’d look at my website as though I’d never seen it before
This is surprisingly difficult because we become completely blind to our own websites.
You know exactly what your business does. You know what each service is. You know where everything sits on the site and which button somebody is supposed to click next.
Someone landing on your website for the first time doesn’t have any of that context.
So I’d actually go through the site, on desktop and mobile, and ask myself whether somebody new could quickly understand what we do, who we work with, where we work, why they should choose us and what they’re meant to do next.
Small businesses change really quickly. You add services, stop offering others, change your pricing, get new photography, refine your messaging and get much clearer about the kind of work you want. It’s really easy for the website to quietly stay two years behind you.
Your website shouldn’t be an archive of the business you used to have. It should be one of the hardest-working parts of your current marketing.
And this doesn’t necessarily mean rebuilding it. Sometimes it’s changing the headline on the homepage, rewriting a service page, adding clearer calls to action or finally replacing those photos you’ve been meaning to change for the last 18 months.
Small changes can make a big difference.
3. I’d check whether Google, and AI search, actually understand what I do
SEO gets talked about as though it’s this huge technical mystery, and yes, there are technical elements to it, but I always think the best place to start is much simpler.
If someone doesn’t already know the name of my business, can they find me when they search for the thing I actually want to sell?
I’d go onto Google and search for my main services without using my business name. I’d look at what comes up and then I’d go back to my own website and ask whether I’m actually giving Google enough information to understand what I do.
Do I have proper pages for my core services? Am I using the language my customers actually use? Have I explained where I work? Am I answering the questions people ask me all the time? Do I have older blogs that could be updated and made much more useful rather than just constantly churning out something new?
And now there’s another part of this conversation too, because the way people search is changing.
More of us are asking questions through AI tools like ChatGPT and AI-powered search, rather than always typing a few words into Google and working our way through ten blue links.
For a small business, I don’t think that means panicking and deciding SEO is dead. Quite the opposite.
The basic principle is still the same. Your website needs to give search engines and AI tools enough clear, useful information to understand who you are, what you do, who you help and why you might be relevant to the question somebody is asking.
That means good service pages, genuinely helpful blogs, useful FAQs, clear local information and content that demonstrates actual expertise.
It doesn’t mean stuffing the words “Scottish Borders marketing agency” into every second sentence until nobody wants to read it.
At MAAI, we’re increasingly looking at SEO and AI search as part of the same wider discoverability picture. We’ve written more about how blogging, SEO and AI search work together.
Search behaviour will keep changing, but businesses still need to be understandable, findable and trustworthy wherever their customer happens to be looking.
4. I’d look at the content that has actually worked
And by worked, I don’t mean the post I personally liked best or the Canva graphic everyone in the business thought looked lovely.
I mean what people actually responded to.
I’d go back through the last three to six months and look at what people watched, saved, shared, clicked and replied to.
There are nearly always patterns.
Maybe your behind-the-scenes content consistently does well. Perhaps the straightforward educational posts you nearly didn’t publish get saved far more than everything else. Your team videos might reach twice as many people as your graphics. Your Stories might quietly be doing far more work than your actual grid.
Sometimes businesses come to us feeling like they’ve run out of ideas when, actually, they already have loads of information telling them what their audience wants.
We don’t always need to reinvent the wheel.
If something worked, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with coming back to the same theme with a different example, a different question or a slightly different format.
One of the quickest ways to make marketing overwhelming is to convince yourself that every piece of content has to be a completely original idea nobody has ever thought of before.
It doesn’t.
5. I’d check that social media wasn’t doing all the heavy lifting
I love social media and obviously it can be hugely valuable, but I would never want my entire marketing strategy sitting on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other platform that I don’t actually own.
Reach changes. Algorithms change. Platforms change. Your account can be restricted. And you can have thousands of followers who still don’t see everything you post.
So I’d look at the other ways I’m building an audience and bringing people back to the business.
Do I have an email list? Am I actually using it? Is there useful content on my website that can continue bringing people in six months after I publish it? Do I have a proper way of following up enquiries? Do I communicate with previous customers? Is there anything I could do to encourage people who already know and trust me to come back?
I’d also look at whether I’m squeezing enough value out of the content I’m already making.
If I spend time creating a really useful blog, could part of that become an email?
Could it give me two or three social posts? Could I talk about the same subject in Stories? Could it answer a common sales question?
This is a big part of how we work at MAAI because marketing, websites, SEO, email and social shouldn’t feel like five totally separate jobs fighting for space on your to-do list.
They should be working together.
6. I’d decide what I actually need Q4 to do for the business
This sounds really obvious, but it’s probably one of the things that gets skipped most often.
Before I made a content calendar for October, November and December, I’d decide what I actually want those three months to achieve.
Do I need more bookings? Am I trying to sell more at Christmas? Do I want a stronger pipeline for January? Is there a newer service that people still don’t really know about? Do I want more repeat customers? Do I want to build a completely different type of client for next year?
Because the answer changes what you should be talking about.
If I need January bookings, for example, I’m not waiting until 2 January to suddenly announce that diaries are open.
I’d be working backwards. What does somebody need to know about me in September or October? What problem could I help them understand? What would build confidence in November? What proof or reassurance do they need before they’re ready to make an enquiry?
Suddenly you have a content strategy.
And it’s a much more useful one than opening Canva on a Monday morning and thinking, “Right. What on earth am I posting tomorrow?”
7. I’d make a plan that I could actually stick to
Believe it or not, this is probably the most important one.
Small businesses very rarely struggle because there aren’t enough marketing ideas.
There are usually far too many ideas.
The problem is time, capacity and knowing what should actually happen first.
So I wouldn’t make a massive plan that looks brilliant on paper and requires 15 hours a week to deliver when I realistically have three.
Maybe the right plan is two strong social posts a week, regular Stories, one useful blog a month, one email and a bit of time every month improving the website and SEO.
Maybe it’s less than that.
Maybe you’re at a stage where you need more.
The point is: it needs to work in the real world.
Consistency doesn’t mean doing everything, everywhere, all the time. It means deciding what matters and then actually getting it done.
And, conveniently, that’s pretty much our whole thing here at MAAI.
You probably don’t need to start again
A September marketing reset doesn’t mean throwing everything you’ve done this year in the bin and creating a brand new strategy from scratch.
Most of the time, I wouldn’t recommend that at all.
I’d look at what is already working and do more with it. I’d look at what isn’t doing anything and question why I’m still spending time on it. I’d find the obvious gaps, get clear on what the business needs next and then make a handful of deliberate changes.
Because good marketing really isn’t about creating more and more noise.
It’s about having some clarity around where you’re going, making sensible decisions based on what you know and then actually following them through.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should a small business review its marketing?
There isn’t one rule that works for every business, but I’d recommend checking in regularly rather than waiting until something clearly isn’t working.
A quarterly review can be a useful rhythm. Look at where enquiries and sales are coming from, what your audience is responding to, whether your priorities have changed and where you’re spending time or money without seeing much return.
That doesn’t mean rewriting your marketing strategy every three months. Often, it’s about making a few sensible adjustments based on what you’ve learned.
How do I know which marketing channels are actually working?
Start with your customers.
Look at your most recent enquiries and customers and find out how they first discovered you. That might be Google, social media, email, recommendations, networking or something else entirely.
Then look beyond likes and follower numbers. Website visits, enquiries, bookings, sales, email sign-ups, calls and other actions that matter to your business can give you a much clearer picture of whether a marketing channel is doing its job.
And if you don’t currently know where your customers are coming from, start asking. You don’t need a complicated system to begin gathering useful information.
What should a small business include in a Q4 marketing plan?
Start with what the business actually needs Q4 to achieve.
That could be Christmas sales, filling your diary, launching or growing a particular service, generating January enquiries, encouraging existing customers to return or building awareness ahead of next year.
Once you know the goal, you can work backwards and decide which messages, channels and activities are most likely to support it.
Your marketing plan should also take account of your actual capacity. A simple plan that gets delivered is far more useful than an ambitious one that sits untouched in a folder.
Do small businesses still need SEO now that people are using AI search?
Yes, but it’s useful to think more broadly about discoverability rather than treating traditional search and AI search as completely separate things.
Your website still needs clear information about what you do, who you help, where you work and the questions you can answer. Useful service pages, blogs, FAQs and evidence of genuine expertise all help create that picture.
The way people find information is changing, but being clear, useful, relevant and trustworthy still matters.
Does a small business need to be on every social media platform?
No. Being everywhere isn't automatically better marketing. The right channels depend on your audience, your business, your goals and what you can realistically maintain.
I’d rather see a business use a smaller number of channels well and consistently than spread itself so thinly that none of them gets the attention it needs.
And I’d make sure social media isn’t working alone. Your website, search presence, email marketing, referrals and other channels should all be part of the wider picture.
Need some help working out what comes next?
That’s how we work at MAAI. We combine strategy, creativity and practical delivery across marketing, content, websites, SEO, email and digital, and we work alongside businesses rather than sitting somewhere on the outside throwing recommendations over the fence.
Some clients come to us because they want to hand their marketing over. Others want someone to help them make sense of what they’re already doing.
Sometimes there’s a very specific problem to solve, and sometimes the starting point is simply, “I know we should be doing this better, but I don’t really know where to begin.”
You don’t need to have the answer before you get in touch.
Helping you figure out the right starting point, based on your goals, your capacity and your budget, is part of the job.
If you’d like to talk through where your marketing is now and what might make sense next, get in touch with us.
No fluff, no faff and definitely no marketing for the sake of marketing. Just a clearer plan and the support to actually make it happen.
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