The Soil and Roots: Strategy

What Strategy Really Is, and Why It Changes Everything

Before anything blooms, there’s the soil. It doesn’t draw attention. No one walks through a garden admiring its topsoil or pointing out the depth of a root bed. People notice the fruit, the flowers, the stretch of green reaching up toward the sun… but none of it would exist without what’s happening underneath. Good soil is quiet and unassuming, but everything depends on it. 

In your marketing, the soil is your strategy. It’s the layer that holds your ideas in place, gives shape to your message, and feeds every visible outcome. When it’s tended well, the rest of the system has something to grow from. When it’s dry or neglected, nothing sticks. Tactics may sprout, but they won’t hold. Campaigns might bloom briefly, only to wilt as soon as conditions change. And unlike the rest of the garden, poor soil can’t be disguised with effort or aesthetic. It either supports growth, or it doesn’t.

Good soil vs. shallow soil

There’s a quiet confidence to rich soil. It holds moisture, stays cool in the heat, and is full of the invisible nutrients that feed everything else. When your marketing grows from this kind of foundation, a strategy that’s thought through, rooted in real understanding of your offer and audience, you can feel it. The work has depth. Messages land. Content doesn’t just fill space; it connects. You’re not flailing for your next idea because the direction is already set, even if the execution evolves over time.

But try to grow things in shallow soil, dry, loose, rushed together with whatever was on hand, and the results might fool you for a moment. A few shoots here and there. A campaign that looks decent on the surface. A post that gets a bit of traction. For a while, it might seem like it’s working. Until it doesn’t. Until your messaging starts to drift. Until you find yourself second-guessing your pricing, rewriting your offer descriptions every few weeks, and wondering why none of it seems to be building toward anything. You’re showing up, but the pieces don’t feel connected. You’re writing, but the message shifts from week to week. You’re spending money on ads, but they sound like someone else wrote them, someone who maybe read your About page once.

It’s not that you’re doing it wrong. It’s that there’s nothing underneath holding it together. Rocky soil will let you plant, but it won’t help you grow. The roots don’t find depth, the leaves don’t last, and what starts as effort soon becomes exhaustion. And perhaps most frustrating of all? You’ve been working just as hard. Harder, even. But without that layer of strategy underneath it all, the return just doesn’t match the energy spent.

Why strategy gets skipped

There’s a reason so many small business owners skip the strategy step. It’s not laziness. It’s urgency. You’ve got bills to pay, a calendar that won’t sit still, and a quiet sense that you’re already behind. So when someone says, “Take a step back,” it can feel like the opposite of helpful. Why would you pause when everything’s telling you to move faster?

But the garden doesn’t care how quickly you plant. If the soil isn’t ready, nothing takes. And that’s the trap… it feels like you’re saving time by jumping straight into content, campaigns, and visibility. But what you’re really doing is shifting the cost downstream. Because when you don’t take the time to set roots, you end up reworking everything. The messaging doesn’t land. The offer needs rethinking. The content doesn’t convert. So you go back and tweak, rewrite, redesign. Again. And again.

The reality is that strategy gets skipped because it’s quiet work. We get absolutely no dopamine hit from it. No algorithm boost. Just questions. Some big, some irritating. Questions like: What exactly am I offering? Who is this really for? What makes this different from what they’ve already tried? And perhaps the hardest one: Why should anyone care? And all of these questions start to feel a little too personal for our liking.

It’s uncomfortable, yes. Like standing in a garden plot with your gloves on and no plants in sight. But once you’ve done this part, the rest of your work starts to flow. You’re not rewriting captions endlessly or pivoting every time a trend hits. You’ve got something underneath that holds it all together. Something that tells you, “This is right,” before the data does.

That’s what strategy really is. Not a brand deck or a vision statement on a slide. It’s a layer of clarity that turns your marketing from guesswork into movement. It anchors your decisions and absorbs the stress of a changing market. It’s the work you do when you’re ready to stop scrambling.

So what does a good strategy look like?

Let’s stay in the garden for a moment. Good soil isn’t just dark and crumbly. It holds nutrients, sure, but it also has structure. It drains well. It’s been turned, worked, and composted over time. There’s intention in it. It’s been built to support growth, not just hold space.

A good marketing strategy is no different. It’s not a pile of half-formed thoughts in a notebook or the third version of your Instagram bio. It’s the layer that supports everything else (content, campaigns, outreach) and helps them work in harmony. When it’s there, you feel it. Things align. Words come easier. You stop rewriting your website every other month. You know what to say, where to say it, and why it matters.

At its core, a solid strategy gives you clarity on four things: what you’re offering, who it’s for, why it matters, and what someone needs to believe in order to say yes.

Let’s start with the offer. Not the feature list. Not the deliverables. The offer. What problem does it solve? How does it work? Why this, and not the thousand other things they could try instead? Saying “I offer a 1:1 consulting package” is like saying “I plant vegetables.” It’s technically true, but it tells me nothing. On the other hand, “I help marketing leads build a functioning marketing system in 90 days”... now we’re working with something. That tells me the job it does, the outcome it aims for, and who it’s built to support.

Next, who it’s for. And no, “small businesses” doesn’t count. That’s a category, not a person. Strategy asks you to picture someone specific, not just their job title or income bracket, but what they’re dealing with, what’s keeping them stuck, and what they desperately wish would work already. You’re not talking to a sector. You’re speaking to the business owner who’s tired of throwing spaghetti at the algorithm. You’re helping the marketing manager who’s drowning in ideas but can’t get the C-suite to sign anything off.

Then, why it matters. Not in your terms, in theirs. This is where strategy really stretches your empathy. What happens in their world if your thing actually works? How does it feel? What changes? “Done-for-you ad setup” might sound efficient to you, but what they hear (what they care about) is “I can stop second-guessing every click.” “Monthly content planning calls” becomes “I finally feel like I know what I’m doing.” Those are the roots that hold.

And finally, the part most people forget: belief. For someone to say yes to your offer, they need to believe three things: that the problem is real, that solving it is worth their time and money, and that you are the one who can help. If even one of those doesn’t land, the sale slips through. No matter how polished your website is or how many emails you send. Strategy means thinking about how your messaging helps them build those beliefs, slowly and steadily, like healthy root growth underground.

None of this happens by accident. You can’t shortcut your way to good soil. But once it’s in place, everything else becomes less of a scramble. Your visibility efforts stop feeling like a performance. Your nurture content starts sounding like you. You stop chasing hacks and start growing something real.

Questions to dig into your soil

Let’s step off the path and get our hands dirty. Because this is the part that’s most often skipped in marketing advice… sitting with the questions long enough to get a real answer. Not a quick rewording of your tagline. Not an AI-generated positioning statement. Actual thought. Real work. The kind that leaves your mental fingernails muddy.

Good soil, after all, isn’t just something you buy in a bag. It’s something you build. It gets amended over time. You add compost. You remove stones. You learn which areas stay too wet and which dry out too quickly. Strategy works the same way. It’s not a once-off document or a beautiful PDF. It’s something you shape, test, and return to.

So, how do you know if your strategy is actually holding?

This is a bit of a layered question. You start by asking yourself things like:

• Does my messaging stay consistent across channels, or do I keep rewriting it because it never feels quite right?

• When someone asks what I do, can I answer in a way that makes their eyes light up, or do I fumble through five different explanations?

• Are people engaging with my content and offers in a way that makes sense for where they’re at, or do I always feel like I’m convincing rather than inviting?

If the answers feel shaky, your soil might be too.

To strengthen it (or start fresh), here are the questions I recommend digging into. And I do mean digging. These are not quick answers. They’re the kind of prompts you return to with a fresh cup of coffee and a slightly furrowed brow. That’s a good sign.

• What am I really selling?

  Not the format. Not the 3-month plan or the set of deliverables. What outcome are you making possible for someone? What shifts in their life or business would occur if this works?

  
  

• Who is struggling with this, and what does that struggle actually feel like?

  Zoom in. Get past the avatar. What’s happening in their day when the problem you solve becomes unbearable? What are they googling in frustration? What do they secretly wish someone would take off their plate?

  
  

• What do they already believe about this problem, and what do they need to believe to want a solution?

  Some people aren’t ready to solve a problem until they believe it’s solvable. Others don’t act until they believe the cost of inaction is higher than the risk of change. What kind of shift does your audience need in order to move?

  
  

• What makes my approach feel different or more relevant than the other options out there?

  You don’t have to be the only one. But you do have to be the one who makes sense to the person reading your page, watching your story, or hearing your pitch. What is it about your way that meets them where they are?

  
  

• What’s changed in my audience’s world recently, and does my message reflect that?

  Markets shift. Tech changes. Life throws curveballs. Your audience isn’t static, and neither should your messaging be. If the world has changed and you haven’t, there’s a mismatch waiting to happen.

  
  

• If I stripped away every tactic (no ads, no reels, no funnels), what’s the one thing I’d want people to remember about what I do?

  This is the root. If all else fades, what truth remains? That’s your core message. That’s what you build around.

None of these questions are designed to give you neat, box-checked answers. In fact, if you breeze through them in ten minutes, you’ve likely stayed on the surface. These are questions that should nudge you, stretch you, maybe even unsettle you a little. That’s how you know they’re working. That’s how you know your roots are taking hold.

Because when the answers start to click into place, when you feel your feet plant firmly in what you know, what you offer, and who it’s for, everything else gets easier. Content, offers, pricing, and platforms. They stop floating. They anchor. And your garden finally has a place to grow from.

An example of rooted strategy in action

Imagine, for a moment, that you run a small design studio. You've been taking on a mix of projects for years, some logos, the occasional website, and a bit of packaging when it comes your way. Your site says something safe and catch-all like: “We do logos, branding, and packaging for businesses of all sizes.”

It’s tidy. Professional. Broad enough to appeal to everyone. And yet, somehow, no one seems particularly drawn to it.

The work trickles in, but it feels disconnected. You're rewriting your services page every few months. Your Instagram bio changes more than the seasons. You know you're good at what you do, but it’s hard to articulate why, or to whom.

Now, let’s step into the soil.

You start paying attention to your favourite projects. The ones that felt less like work and more like alignment. You notice a pattern: they’re nearly all in the food and beverage space.

You remember that bakery that told you their packaging helped them finally get picked up by that big-name deli. You think about the indie coffee roaster whose whole brand story came to life after your workshop. You realise these aren't just outliers. They're your ideal clients.

And when you look even closer, the picture sharpens.

These clients aren’t just looking for a logo. They’re trying to stand out in crowded markets, on shelves stacked with similar-looking products, margins tighter than ever, audiences who buy with their eyes long before they read the label. They don’t need a generic design. They need presence.

You also realise that the best work (the kind that turns heads and earns loyalty) happens when you’re brought in early. When you can shape the brand from the ground up, not just tidy it up at the end.

And deep down, you believe something important: that design isn’t just about looking good. It’s about helping small, brilliant businesses punch above their weight. It’s about giving them the tools to compete, connect, and grow.

That’s the compost talking. The roots are finding their grip.

So now, your message sounds more like this:

“We help independent food and drink brands look as good as they taste, with standout branding and packaging that earns shelf space and customer loyalty.”

And just like that, your strategy has depth.

You're not promising everything to everyone. You’re solving a real problem, for a real group of people, with a clear voice and a strong point of view. You’ve traded surface-level soil for something rich and alive. That’s what rooted strategy looks like. It doesn’t just support your marketing. It nourishes it. You’ll still have to water and tend it (nothing in the garden grows on autopilot), but now you know what you’re growing and why.

You don’t need to do more. You need to dig deeper.

Honestly, this part of the garden rarely gets the attention it deserves. There are no shiny metrics to track here, no impressive screenshots to post. You can’t point to it and say, “Look what I built.” And yet, everything that does grow and every result you’re chasing depends on what happens here, in the dark, quiet layer beneath the surface.

It’s tempting, when your marketing feels off, to jump to the next visible thing. A new lead magnet. A fresh content plan. Maybe another course with a shiny promise. And look, those things aren’t wrong. They can help. But only when the ground beneath them is stable. Without strong roots, you’ll keep circling the same problems. Working hard, showing up, tweaking things, but never quite seeing the growth you hoped for.

Strategy isn’t something you can rush. It asks for more than a checklist. It asks for thought. For honesty. For perspective. But the beauty of this work (the reason it’s worth doing) is that it doesn’t just clarify your marketing. It makes the rest of the system easier to manage. Less guessing. Less second-guessing. More momentum that feels aligned.

So if your marketing feels scattered, shaky, or like you’re endlessly reinventing the wheel, pause before piling on more.

Don’t reach for another template. Don’t launch another funnel.

Go back to the soil.