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THE FIELD NOTES

THE BLOG.

38 articles on marketing, Google Ads, local SEO, branding, and web design, written by the person doing the work.

Isometric illustration of three small adjacent platforms each carrying a different workspace: a single chair beside a small desk for a freelancer, a small round table with two chairs for in-house team, and a larger multi-station office for an agency.

FEATURED - June 24, 2026

Should you hire an in-house marketer, an agency, or a freelancer? (The honest tradeoffs)

There's a moment in most small businesses where the owner stops being the marketer. The question is who picks it up next. Here's the honest comparison of in-house hires vs marketing agencies vs freelancers in 2026, with real cost numbers, the criteria for each, and the hybrid model most established SMBs end up using.

Isometric illustration of a brass balance scale with lime-green coins on the left pan and a rising lime-green line graph on the right pan, the right pan slightly higher, representing positive marketing ROI.

June 23, 2026

How to measure marketing ROI for a small business (the math, the tools, and what to ignore)

Most small business owners I work with can tell me, off the top of their head, what they spent on marketing last month. Roughly none can tell me what it returned. Here's the actual math for marketing ROI in a small business, the tools that work in 2026, and the metrics that look meaningful but aren't.

Isometric illustration of a minimalist storefront mid-construction with lime-green scaffolding around the upper facade and a small lime-green sapling growing beside the entrance, representing the in-progress nature of marketing for a new business.

June 22, 2026

Marketing for a new business: the first 90 days, in priority order (no audience, no list, no history)

A new business has the opposite marketing problem of an established one. You don't have data, audiences, history, or budget. You have time, urgency, and curiosity, which are different fuels entirely. Here's the first-90-days marketing plan I'd write for a brand-new US small business in 2026, in priority order, with the dollar amounts and the channels to skip on purpose.

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