Gillian Rotstein is a marketing and communications consultant based in the Toronto area. She works with small businesses and independent brands on strategy, content, and positioning, after several years inside larger agencies before she started her own practice. In this conversation, she talks about who she works with day to day and what those clients tend to need most, which is not always what they ask for first.
Who Makes up Most of Your Client Base?
“Mostly small business owners and independent brands. Some are a few years in and starting to outgrow what got them started. Others are brand new and trying to figure out how to talk about what they do before they have a big budget to do it. There isn’t one type. A restaurant owner and a service business and a product line don’t need the same plan, but they usually arrive at my door for a similar reason: they’ve been doing marketing on instinct, and instinct is running out of road.”
What Do Clients Usually Think They Need, Versus What They Actually Need?
“Most people come in asking for a tactic. A new website, a social calendar, better photos. Those things matter, but they’re rarely the real gap. The real gap is usually that nobody has ever sat them down and asked what they’re actually trying to say about their business, to whom, and why anyone should care. Once that’s answered, the tactics get a lot easier to choose. Without it, you’re just producing content and hoping some of it lands.”
Is There a Moment When You Can Tell a Client’s Needs Have Shifted?
“Usually it’s when the questions change. Early on, a client asks me how to get more followers or more traffic. Later, once the basics are steady, they start asking better questions: which of our services should we be known for, should we raise our prices, is this the right audience at all. Those aren’t marketing questions anymore, not really. They’re business questions that marketing happens to sit next to. When a client starts asking those, I know we’ve moved somewhere useful.”
What Do Small Business Owners Need That They Rarely Ask for Directly?
“Permission to slow down, honestly. A lot of owners feel like they’re supposed to be everywhere, posting constantly, chasing every platform at once, because that’s what it looks like everyone else is doing. Nobody asks me to help them do less. But that’s often what actually moves things forward: fewer channels, done properly, instead of five done halfway. I end up giving that kind of advice more than any tactical fix.”
How Do You Handle It When What a Client Wants Isn’t What They Need?
“Carefully, and usually with questions rather than corrections. If someone is set on a rebrand when the real issue is that their offer isn’t clear, I’ll ask what they’re hoping the rebrand changes. Sometimes that question answers itself. Sometimes they’re right and I’m missing something about their market, which happens too. I’d rather talk someone through their own reasoning than just tell them they’re wrong, because the ones who get there themselves actually stick with the decision afterward.”
Do Clients at Different Stages Need Different Things From You?
“Very different things. A brand-new business usually needs structure: a clear story, a consistent look, a plan they can actually follow without a team behind them. A more established one usually needs someone to challenge what’s gotten comfortable. They’ve had the same tagline for six years and nobody’s questioned it since. Neither group needs the same conversation, which is part of why I don’t hand people a template and call it a strategy.”
What’s the Most Common Misunderstanding Clients Have About the Work?
“That marketing is a department that runs separately from the rest of the business. It isn’t. If the pricing is confusing, or the service delivery is inconsistent, marketing can’t paper over that for long. It can make a good business more visible. It can’t make a confused one look clear. I say this early, because it saves a client from spending money on content that was never going to fix the actual problem.”
What Have Clients Taught You That You Didn’t Expect to Learn?
“How much confidence matters, separate from skill. I’ve worked with people who are excellent at what they do and still undersell it constantly, because they’re not sure anyone wants to hear about it. Part of the job turned out to be building that confidence alongside the strategy, not after it. I didn’t expect how much of this work is really about helping someone believe their own business is worth talking about.”
What Does a Client Relationship That’s Working Look Like to You?
“They start pushing back on me. Early on, clients tend to agree with whatever I suggest, because they’re not sure what good looks like yet. Once they start saying ‘I don’t think that fits us’ or ‘our customers wouldn’t respond to that,’ I know they’ve found their own judgment again. That’s the actual goal. I’m not trying to make anyone permanently dependent on me. I want them to get specific enough about their own business that eventually they need me less, not more.”