Blog

Field notes.

Field notes on local marketing — what works, what fails, and why.

AEO: why your website now has to be readable by AI

Customers now ask AI for a recommendation, and AI cites sources it can read. Here's what makes a website AI-readable — and why a 2022 brochure can't compete.

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How much time should your marketing actually take?

Most owners are the marketing bottleneck — the profile half-done, the site untouched for years. A managed system should cost you an hour a month.

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Hire a marketing employee, an agency, or a system? The real cost of each

An owner really has four choices for marketing. Three add a rope to your business. One removes one. The honest cost of each, side by side.

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Why your competitor with worse work keeps beating you

You're the better operator, but the worse shop keeps winning the job. Here's why — and why it has nothing to do with your work.

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The Tuesday from hell: why the owner is the marketing bottleneck

The business you built for freedom took it instead. Why the owner is the bottleneck for everything — including marketing — and the way out.

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Presence vs. Proof: Why B2B Doesn't Market Like Local

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The Real Reason Your Marketing Isn't Generating Calls

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How do local customers decide who to call?

They decide before they ever call — online, in about four minutes, across three places. Here's the buyer's journey every local customer takes, and where most businesses lose the deal.

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The pattern that wouldn't stop

Twenty years marketing local service businesses, the same failure every time. Why marketing fails — and the system I built to fix it.

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