A Room Full of Business Owners Asked Us About Marketing. Here's What We Said.

Introduction

Marketing isn't hard because people lack ideas. It's hard because everyone is trying to be heard at the same time.

Last month, our founder Jacob was invited to join the panel at Maidstone Marketing Unfiltered, a quarterly event hosted by The Business Terrace, bringing together business owners across Kent for an evening of honest, unfiltered conversation about growth, marketing, and everything in between.

Four people from completely different industries, answering real questions from a room full of businesses at every stage of the journey. No filter, no agenda.

It was one of the best evenings we've been part of in a long time.

The panel at Maidstone Marketing Unfiltered, May 2026. Left to right: Tom Wilson, Jacob Ryan (Devigo), Penny Williams and Hannah Spence.

The Questions Everyone's Asking (But Not Always Out Loud)

Honestly, the audience made the night.

The questions came from businesses at completely different stages, in completely different industries. And yet, almost every question circled back to the same thing:

• "Where should I be spending my time with marketing?"
• "Should I be on social media?"
• "Do I need to be running ads?"
• "What's actually working right now?"

On the surface they sound different. But underneath, they're all asking the same question: how do I get in front of the right people without wasting time and money?

The honest answer? Most businesses accidentally build their marketing around themselves instead of their audience. They post on platforms they personally like. They copy what competitors are doing. They spend money because someone told them they "should."

Strategy doesn't need to be complicated. It starts with a few simple questions: Who buys from you? What do they care about? Where do they spend time? What would make them trust you? Answer those honestly and everything else follows: your messaging, your budget, your content all get a lot clearer.

On Content: Quality Has Never Mattered More

One topic that came up repeatedly was content: what to post, how often, and whether any of it is actually worth the effort.

Our take: in an era where AI can produce volume on demand, quantity is no longer the differentiator. Quality is. Specifically, content that feels real.

When someone in the audience asked what's actually performing right now, the answer was simple: people. Not polished graphics. Not stock imagery. People working, building, doing the thing. Day-in-the-life content. Behind-the-scenes footage. The kind of stuff you could capture with a pair of Meta glasses and ten minutes of your day.

Video and reels consistently drive the highest engagement across platforms, and that's not changing anytime soon. But more importantly, personal content converts. Photos of the director. Videos of the team. Process shots. The more a website or social feed shows the humans behind the business, the more trust it builds, and trust is what turns browsers into buyers.

Karl Cowell, who hosted the panel and runs The Wix Guys, made the same point: even on a tight budget, genuine personal content can transform a website. It's one of the most underused assets most business owners already have.

We'd echo that completely. When clients give us real photography and video to work with, the end result is always stronger. It's something we actively encourage as part of every project.

On Starting Out: Backing Yourself When No One Else Will

There was a moment in the evening that stuck with us.

A young director in the audience asked the panel directly: what are the realities of starting out? Where do you actually find work? How do you get going when you have nothing yet?

Jacob's answer was simple: you go all in. You put your bets on something, you commit fully, and you trust that it'll show you the way. Not naively — you need to be doing the work, learning fast, and staying honest with yourself about what's working. But the self-belief has to come first, because no one else is going to hand it to you.

Jacob started Devigo young. That's not something we lead with, because frankly, the work speaks louder than the backstory. But having built an agency from nothing, worked with serious clients across London and beyond, and figured most of it out through doing, the one consistent truth is that the people who make it are the ones who didn't let uncertainty stop them from starting.

The grass isn't always greener when you're running your own business. Some days it's genuinely hard. But for the right kind of person, it's a healthier decision, and the compounding of experience you get from going early is something you simply cannot replicate by waiting.

On Budgets: Where to Actually Spend

Marketing budgets came up throughout the evening, and the honest answer is that most small businesses either overspend on the wrong things or underspend on the right things.

A few things we believe strongly:

Video first. If you have budget to spend on content, put it into short-form video. Reels and video content consistently outperform everything else for reach and engagement, and that's a trend with real staying power.

Your website is a sales tool, not a brochure. A site that loads fast, looks sharp, and tells the right story to the right person will do more for your business than a year of posting. It compounds: a good website keeps working for you long after it's built.

Personal content is free leverage. Before spending a penny on ads, make sure your social profiles and website actually look like a real business with real people behind it. That alone closes more deals than most people realise.

A Brilliant Evening With the Right People

Being on a panel alongside Tom Wilson, Hannah Spence, and Penny Williams, all bringing completely different backgrounds and perspectives, was a genuine reminder of how much you can learn when people just speak plainly about what they've experienced.

Thanks to Karl Cowell for hosting, to Maidstone Borough Council and The Business Terrace for the space, and to everyone who came and asked the raw questions most people keep to themselves.

If you're in Kent and want to be in the room next time, keep an eye on Maidstone Marketing Unfiltered on Eventbrite. It's the kind of event that's actually worth your evening.

One More Thing

If you've read this far and you're thinking about your website, whether you're starting fresh or what you've got isn't doing justice to your business, we'd love to have a conversation. No hard sell, just a chat.