Small biz marketing tips

$An Asian woman works at a laptop surrounded by plants. The caption reads, "Ever wondered what a fractional CMO could do for your business? Spoiler: the sky's the limit. Just make sure you treat them like one of your team."$

How does a fractional CMO work? A mini case study.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to hire a fractional CMO or fractional marketing director? Well, you’re in luck, because I’m going to tell you—using a client of ours as an example. This client, an established e-commerce company, came to us a few years back because they wanted help with their marketing. They had a staff full of talented and creative people, but nobody had the time or the experience to build and execute an effective marketing strategy. Getting...

A man sits at his desk and holds his head in his hands. Over the top is the caption, "Overwhelmed about your marketing options? Not all marketing "best practices" actually are best practices for smaller businesses. Feel free to skip them and breath a little easier."

The top five marketing best practices that don’t make sense for small businesses

Good news! I’m going to take a break from telling you all the marketing best practices you should be doing… and, instead, tell you which marketing best practices are simply not worth it for small businesses. Yes, you read that right. I’m going to tell you what not to bother with. Consider it like a wee holiday. Before I get started on this, let me remind you that these are all marketing best practices. This means, that—if you have the...

A robot hand points to the text, "Google's Adwords AI might seem like the answer to a search marketer's dream... but is it really a nightmare?" against a techno background

Can You Trust Google’s AI to Optimize Your Search Ads?

Google has rolled out new AI-powered suggestions to help advertisers optimize their Google Ads search campaigns. Using machine learning, Google now analyzes your account data and makes recommendations on things like new keyword ideas, bid strategies, ad creative, and more. The promise is enticing: let Google’s advanced AI do the heavy lifting of campaign optimizations so you can spend less time tinkering and testing. After all, Google has access to a wealth of data that the average advertiser couldn’t possibly...

A business woman is writing on a glass through which you can see the rest of the team talking about marketing planning.

7 Marketing Steps to Grow Your Business in 2024

7 Marketing Steps to Grow Your Business in 2024 This is the time of year when many small business owners take a moment to pause, reflect, and think about what they need to do to grow their business in the coming year. And since marketing should be a pretty significant part of that, we thought we’d share some of the most important steps you can take to kick your business into growth mode in 2024. First, and foremost, we’re strictly...

A Christmas work party with food and happy people, and text over it that reads, "The holidays don't have to be just about stress, even if you own the company. Plan ahead, get work completed early, and take a moment for yourself."

Five Thoughts on Surviving the Holidays as an Entrepreneur (and a Marketer)

For some reason this year it struck me particularly strongly how different the holidays feel when you’re an entrepreneur than they do when you just work for someone else. Back in those carefree days, the period leading up to Christmas was a gentle slide into, well, not much work getting done. People brought in treats, silly sweaters were worn, holiday parties were had, white elephant exchanges occurred, and it was generally pretty well expected that nothing important would happen until...