Zia Reddy

21/04/2026

People act when something feels personally relevant.

This comes up quite often when you start refining messaging. There is usually a concern that narrowing the focus will mean leaving people out or reducing reach. It can feel like you are saying less and limiting who can engage with what you are putting out.

What tends to happen in practice is that people only engage properly when they can see themselves in what they are reading. If the message is broad, it may make sense, but it is easy to move past. If it reflects a situation they recognise, it holds their attention for longer and feels more worth responding to.

There is strong research behind this as well.

For example, the Elaboration Likelihood Model by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) shows that when something feels personally relevant, people are more likely to process it more carefully. Meaning that, if your customer finds your message specifically relevant to them, they'll be more open to what you have to say.

If you look at your own ads or content through that lens, applying this becomes quite practical. Instead of asking whether more people could relate to the message, focus on whether the right person would recognise themselves in it immediately. That usually means being more specific about the role, the situation, or the problem you are speaking to, and allowing that to carry the message rather than trying to include every possible audience in the same space.

In most cases, improving the performance of your marketing campaigns comes from making it easier for someone to see that the message applies to them, rather than trying to make it apply to more people.
Source:

Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Kao, C. F., & Rodriguez, R. (1986). Central and peripheral routes to persuasion: An individual difference perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 1032–1043. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.1032.

20/04/2026

This week’s article is a bit of a long one because it deals with a form of marketing FOMO that I’ve had to deal with in the past, and the answer to this is supported by quite an extensive number of peer-reviewed studies. So, I needed to dig into the research and make sure that I cover this topic as thoroughly as possible.

I was walking a client through a lead generation campaign last week, and as we were wrapping up, the client paused and asked whether we should also mention all the other people who could use the product. And look, their thinking made sense on the surface. If more people can benefit from their product, it surely makes sense to say so somewhere in the ad.

But, while it may feel natural to broaden a message so it can stretch further, cover more ground, and appeal to more people, the difficulty with this is that attention does not expand in the same way.

So, in this article, I answer the question: why does broadening a message often make it harder for anyone to act on it?

https://www.ziareddy.com/post/why-people-don-t-act-even-when-they-could

Trying to reach everyone? That might be why your ads aren’t working. Here’s how to fix your targeting, messaging, and conversion flow.

13/04/2026

I was on a call last week, going through campaign performance with a client.

We’d covered the setup, looked at what was working, agreed on next steps… all fairly straightforward.

And then right at the end, they asked:

“Is there anything else we should be thinking about that we haven’t covered?”

It’s a good question. But it’s usually not about the campaigns.

It’s that feeling of knowing there’s something missing… you just don’t know what it is.

In this week’s article, I talk about where this question actually comes from, how it shows up in day-to-day work, and what you can do to get out of that loop.

You can read it here: https://www.ziareddy.com/post/what-if-i-m-missing-something

That constant feeling of “am I missing something?” in your marketing? Here’s why it happens and how to fix it with a clearer structure.

10/04/2026

1. You can’t hit a goal if you haven’t clearly defined what the client actually needs.

I spent time this week on improving performance on a paid campaign. And the results were amazing... but the client still wasn't happy. Why? Because, as we were discussing results, it became clear that there was a gap between need and expectation. We were working towards what the client needed, but that wasn't what they wanted. Once we got specific about that, the direction of the work changed, and the next steps made a lot more sense.

Related to this...

2. Your client is not supposed to have the answer. If they did, they wouldn’t need you.

Clients come to you with a problem, or a version of one. Or they even sometimes come to you with something they see as the solution to a problem. But part of the job is to work through that with them, ask the right questions, read between the lines, and shape what needs to happen before getting into ex*****on.

3. Setup matters more than people think.

Yes, sometimes done is better than perfect, but when it comes to systems, pay attention. When systems and tracking aren’t set up properly, it shows up everywhere. In reporting, in decision-making, and in how confident you feel about what you’re looking at. Taking the time to do it properly at the start saves a lot of time later.

08/04/2026

I put together a simple check this week after seeing a pattern across a few campaigns.

If your content is doing its job but people aren’t taking action, the issue is often not the CTA itself. It’s the step you’re asking someone to take. This worksheet will help you check whether your CTA actually fits the moment your content creates.

It walks you through:

1. What your content is really doing for the reader
2. What you’re asking them to do next
3. Whether those two things line up

It takes a few minutes to go through, but it makes the gaps very obvious when they’re there.

You can work through the worksheet here or download a PDF version at ziareddy.com.

07/04/2026

I’ve been noticing this more and more in campaigns lately that a lot of the time, we’re asking people to take an action because it’s what WE want to happen next, rather than thinking about what would make sense for THEM in that moment.

Someone reads something or watches something and they’re just starting to figure things out. They’re getting a better sense of what’s going on or seeing something they hadn’t quite put into words before.

Then the next step asks them to book a call, request a quote, or make a decision that feels further along than where they are.

When you look at your own content this way, it becomes much easier to spot where things aren’t making sense, and whether it really fits the moment the content creates.

A simple way to check it is to take one piece of content and ask yourself what it’s actually doing for the person on the other side. Are you helping them realise something? Are you helping them understand what’s going on? Are you helping them weigh up options?

Then look at what you’re asking them to do next.

If someone reads it and walks away thinking, “Okay, I think I get what’s happening now,” but the next step is to book a call or request a quote, there’s a gap there. The content has moved them forward, but not far enough for that kind of action.

In that case, the next step should stay closer to where they are. Something that helps them explore their situation a bit more, reflect on it, or see how it applies to them.

That small change in the way you structure and use your CTAs really changes the role they play in the overall customer journey.

06/04/2026

I spent some time last week reviewing a few campaigns where everything looked like it should have been working, because the message made sense, the problem was clear, and you could see how someone reading or watching it would relate to it.

And then you get to the end… and nothing happens.

In both cases, the issue came down to what the content was asking of the audience. What was the CTA saying?

In one case, they were asked to download something, but there was no explanation of what they would get or why it mattered. In another, they were asked to request a quote at a point where they were still trying to figure out what was going on in their situation.

The step didn’t fit the moment.

If you want to check this in your own campaigns, take one piece of content and write down:

What the content is doing for the user
What the CTA is asking them to do

When those two things don’t align, people will not take action.

I’ve unpacked this a bit more in this week’s article at https://www.ziareddy.com/post/where-good-marketing-stops-working.

Why your campaigns aren’t converting. Learn how to fix misaligned CTAs and guide users to the right next step in your marketing journey.

03/04/2026

In my line of work, I generally meet with people who are trying to sort their marketing out, and it’s not that they’re not doing anything. It’s that they’re doing a bit of everything, and it’s hard to tell if any of it is actually adding up to something.

There’s content being created, campaigns being tested, ideas being saved for later, and all of it feels like it should be moving things forward. But without a clear place to start or a way to connect those pieces, it becomes difficult to know what’s working and what to do next.

That’s a big part of the work I do as a marketing consultant. Helping people step back, make sense of what’s already happening, and figure out where to focus so things start to move in a more structured way.

The resources on my website are built around that same idea. They’re there to help you think things through properly, whether that’s getting clearer on your strategy, sense-checking your content, or understanding what’s actually driving results.

Some of them are free, some cost a couple of euro, and all of them are designed to be useful without adding more complexity.

If you’ve been trying to get your marketing into a better place and weren’t sure where to start, there’s probably something there that will help.

Have a look: https://www.ziareddy.com/

02/04/2026

Not all leads want the same thing.

It’s easy to treat leads as a single group once they come in, because they sit in the same place and go through the same process. But how someone arrives usually tells you more than the fact that they arrived.

I saw this recently while working on a campaign where enquiries were coming through, but they weren’t turning into anything meaningful. All the technical elements were there. The ads were running, the traffic was good, the form was collecting details, and follow-ups were being sent.

But when we looked more closely, the issue was in the messaging after the submission.

People were coming in at a specific point with a specific need, and the message they received didn’t fully reflect that. It spoke more broadly because it's always easier to do one thing that covers a lot of bases than to narrow down. BUT, that made it harder for someone to see how it related to what they were trying to do.

And that gap in messaging is easy to miss, because the lead itself looks the same in the system.

Two people can fill in the same form and appear identical, but their intent can be very different depending on where they came from and what prompted them to take action. If the message doesn’t take that into account, the follow-up becomes less relevant, and that’s where things start to drop off.

A useful way to look at this is to take one source of leads and ask what someone was likely thinking at the moment they decided to engage.

What were they responding to, and what would they expect to happen next based on that?

Once you answer that, it becomes much easier to shape the message so it meets them in the right place, rather than expecting them to adjust to a more general narrative.

And that tends to have a direct impact on how those leads move forward, because the message feels like a continuation of what they’ve already started, rather than something new.

01/04/2026

Your tools aren’t the problem.

When something isn’t working inside a CRM or marketing platform, the instinct is to look for what needs to be changed in the setup. It usually feels like something has been missed or configured incorrectly.

What often sits underneath that is how the process itself has been defined.

Most systems rely on a sequence of steps that happen outside the tool. An enquiry comes in, someone reviews it, a conversation happens, and a next step is agreed. If those steps haven’t been thought through in a way that connects, the system has nothing consistent to follow.

That’s where things start to feel disjointed, and we start blaming the tool, meanwhile we're expecting it to achieve something great with inputs that aren’t stable.

Tools don’t operate on their own. They reflect the structure they’re given.

A useful way to test your structures is to take one simple path, for example a new enquiry, and follow it through on paper (it's not time for the system yet).

Where does it come in, who sees it, what happens next, and what needs to be recorded so the next step can happen without relying on memory.

If you can’t describe that flow in a way that makes sense, the system won’t either.

Once that path is worked out, THEN you go back to your tool. It then becomes much easier to decide what the tool needs to do, and how it needs to do that, because it’s supporting something that already makes sense.