From quiet periods to “work has gone mental”: one year with a CoLab client

When you’re running a small business, it’s very easy to feel like your marketing should be doing more, with faster results. You post something and wonder why it hasn’t brought in an enquiry. You run an ad for a few weeks and question whether it’s worth continuing. Or, marketing simply gets pushed down the to-do list during a busy period, only to become urgent again when things suddenly go quiet.

The reality is that good marketing rarely comes from one big, exhausting push. More often than not, it’s the result of doing the right things consistently and giving them time to work together.

One of our clients is a brilliant example of exactly that.

Where we started

A little over a year ago, we started working with a highly skilled bespoke business that was experiencing some quiet periods. They already had a fantastic offering, but they needed help making a bit more noise, getting "back on track," and building a reliable pipeline of local leads.

We didn’t come in and tell them they needed to post every day, be on every platform, or suddenly spend heaps on advertising. Instead, we focused on a few core areas where we knew we could make a difference without causing burnout.

Over the year, that included:

• One high-quality Instagram post every week: Building a credible organic presence without creating an unrealistic content treadmill.

• Strategic Meta ads during quieter periods: Using a modest budget focused entirely on a highly specific, hyper-local geographic radius.

• A targeted website makeover: Improving discoverability to capture people already searching for what they offer.

• A print leaflet for their local directory: Bridging the gap between digital and traditional local marketing.

The directory built local awareness, the website was ready when people searched, Instagram gave potential customers a visual understanding of their craftsmanship, and the targeted paid ads provided an extra push whenever things got quiet.

Images: clients’ work

Why one Instagram post a week was enough

There’s a lot of pressure on small businesses to constantly create content. Post every day. Make more Reels. Jump on another platform. Feed the algorithm.

For this client, we did the opposite.

We committed to one strong Instagram post every week and simply kept doing it. Over a year, that consistency built up a beautiful feed full of quality content, without expecting the business to churn out something new every day just for the sake of staying visible.

It’s a perfect example of quality over quantity. Consistency doesn’t have to mean constantly.

The same thinking applied to their paid advertising. Rather than pouring money into Meta ads all year, we used a modest budget strategically and kept the targeting incredibly tight to their local area. We weren’t trying to reach as many people as possible; we were trying to reach the right people.

Giving marketing enough time changed what we could do

One of the biggest benefits of working together over a longer period has simply been having enough time to do, learn, and improve, rather than changing direction every month.

Marketing needs time to give you useful information. By consistently showing up, testing what we were doing, and reviewing the results over months rather than weeks, we could build a much clearer picture of what was actually working for this business. Instead of reacting to one quiet month or changing something before it had a chance to work, we had real results to learn from and could make better decisions because of them.

It also gave us the opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive. We weren't constantly starting again or scrambling to get the next piece of content out. We took a step back, looked at the bigger picture, and could spot other opportunities to strengthen what we were already doing.

That's how things like the website refresh came into the mix: we could see that improving discoverability would support the work happening elsewhere and had the time to actually act on it.

Over the course of the year, that meant we weren't just doing their marketing. We were learning what worked for their business, refining it, and building different parts of their marketing around those learnings.

That's the value of giving marketing enough time: you get a much more accurate picture of what's achievable, what's working, and where your time and budget are best spent.

In this case, it worked. Enquiries and conversions increased, and eventually, this message landed in our inbox from the founder: “Work has gone mental!!! Thanks to all your input and creativity, we seem to be back on track!!”

Images: clients’ work

A year later, we have a marketing tap

That’s probably the biggest difference between where we started and where we are now. We have essentially built a marketing tap that we can turn on and off.

When things get quiet, we’re not guessing what to try next. We have a much clearer understanding of what works for this business, who we need to reach, and which parts of their marketing we can lean on when they need an extra push.

For small businesses, that’s a really important thing to remember. Marketing doesn’t always mean doing more. Sometimes, what you really need is a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve, the patience to learn from what you’re doing, and the consistency to keep going long enough to see meaningful results.

When the founder eventually messages to tell you that work has “gone mental”, you know you’re probably onto something.

If your marketing currently feels a little stop-start, or you’re not sure where your time would be best spent, come and have a chat with us. We’d love to see where we can help.