Blog
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.
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.
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.
How to use AI for small business marketing in 2026 (without sounding like a robot)
Six months ago a client asked me if they should fire their copywriter and replace them with AI. The answer was no, but the question wasn't stupid. Here's where AI actually helps small business marketing in 2026, the four highest-ROI use cases, the tools we use day to day, and the voice mistakes that get an SMB blacklisted by inbox spam filters.
Branding for small business (the difference between a logo and a brand, and what to actually invest in)
When people say "branding" to me, half the time they mean a logo. The other half they mean something so vague it can't be priced. Here's the practical breakdown of what branding is for a small business in 2026, what to actually invest in first, and the five things your brand is whether you've defined them or not.