Marketing
Content and a plan, staged to your budget. No magic promised.
What this is
There is no magic. No matter what a company promises you, marketing is a combination of things — and a good part of that combination is free.
Before anyone sells you a monthly retainer, there is a list most small businesses have not worked through. A QR code at the register pointing to your site, your socials and your Google reviews. Replying to the people already posting about you. Putting something useful out instead of another sale.
That is what builds trust, and trust is what makes the paid work land later. Buying ads before any of it exists is how people end up deciding that marketing does not work.
Start with these
Most of these cost nothing but time, and most businesses have not done them. Work down the list before you spend a dollar.
- 01Do you have a presence where your demographic actually spends time — not where you do?
- 02Are you only ever posting a sale, a service or a product?
- 03Are you giving away any real insight from your field, the kind that establishes you know it?
- 04Is there a QR code at your register pointing to your website, your socials and your Google reviews?
- 05Do you respond when someone posts about you, good or bad?
- 06Do you actually know who your target audience is?
- 07Would your niche be better served by paid Google ads than by posting at all?
Where your customers actually are
Percentage of U.S. adults in each age band who use each platform. If your customers are over 65, Instagram reaches fewer than one in five of them and TikTok barely one in eight — while YouTube and Facebook still reach most. Pick where your people are, not where you are.
| Platform | 18–29 | 30–49 | 50–64 | 65+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 95% | 92% | 85% | 64% |
| 68% | 80% | 74% | 57% | |
| 80% | 62% | 40% | 19% | |
| TikTok | 63% | 44% | 30% | 12% |
| Snapchat | 58% | 31% | 13% | 4% |
| 48% | 35% | 16% | 6% | |
| X | 33% | 25% | 16% | 10% |
Source: Pew Research Center — Survey of 5,022 U.S. adults, 5 February – 18 June 2025.
What Google Ads actually costs
Median performance across 13,474 U.S. search campaigns. Useful because it tells you what a month actually buys, rather than what an agency hopes it buys.
- Cost per click$5.42
- Click-through rate6.64%
- Conversion rate8.18%
- Cost per lead$66.69
$500≈ 92 clicks≈ 7 leads
That is a real month at the published medians, in an average industry. In legal, insurance or financial services, where clicks run $7–$10 and up, the same $500 buys closer to 50 clicks and four leads.
Source: WordStream — Median across 13,474 U.S. search campaigns, 1 April 2025 – 31 March 2026.
What this looks like
- 01
The free list first
QR code at the counter, review responses, profiles that are actually filled in. Costs nothing but time, and it is where the fastest returns usually are.
- 02
Trust before selling
Give away real insight from your field. People buy from the person who already helped them once for nothing.
- 03
Paid ads where they fit
Some businesses are genuinely better served by Google Ads than by posting. We will tell you which one you are, including when the answer is ads and not us.
- 04
A progressive plan
Staged to your budget, so you can stop at any point and still be left with something that works on its own.
Why us for this
Lee Franks spent 25 years running operations before starting this — restaurants with full P&L, asset auctions for banks and the FDIC, a warehouse for a large internet sales company, and a sales floor. You are hiring someone who has been on your side of the table.
What it costs
You set the budget. We build a progressive plan that fits inside it and stages the rest, so nothing is bought before the thing underneath it is working.
If you have $10,000 to spend, we are honestly not your best option. Google our competitors and try them — they are built for that budget and several of them are good at it. If your budget looks nothing like $10,000, that is exactly who we are for.
- We will not promise you magic, because nobody can deliver it.
- We will not sell you a retainer before the free things are done.
- We will not tell you to be on every platform. Most of them are not where your customers are.
If you have ten thousand dollars to spend, go and try our competitors. If you do not, we should talk.
Straight answers
What is a realistic monthly budget?
It depends what you are buying, but the paid side has real published numbers. Across 13,474 US search campaigns measured by WordStream between April 2025 and March 2026, the median Google Ads click cost $5.42 and the median lead cost $66.69. So $500 a month buys roughly 92 clicks and about seven leads in an average industry, and less than that in competitive ones like legal or insurance. Below a few hundred dollars a month, paid campaigns rarely gather enough data to improve. The unpaid work — a QR code at the register, replying to reviews, posting something genuinely useful — costs time instead of money and usually pays back sooner, so we start there. If your budget is around $10,000 a month, we are honestly not your best option; the larger agencies are built for that. Below it, we build a staged plan that fits what you actually have.
How do you measure whether it is working?
By tracking it, which most small businesses are not doing. Start with the plain question: do you know your return on what you are already spending? If you cannot answer that, everything after it is a guess. Marketing takes trial and error, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something — but trial and error only pays off if you are measuring. Untracked campaigns are the fastest way we see a small business waste large amounts of money. We can help you set the tracking up and read it.
Do I need to be on every platform?
No. Trying to be everywhere is the most common way a small business wastes time on marketing. Pick where your customers actually are and do those properly. Pew Research Center surveyed 5,022 US adults in 2025 and found Instagram used by 80% of 18 to 29 year olds but only 19% of those 65 and over; TikTok runs 63% against 12% across the same gap. YouTube and Facebook stay high in every age band. If your customers are older, two platforms reach almost all of them and the rest are a hobby. If they are younger, the mix changes but the principle does not.
Is SEO still worth doing now that AI answers questions directly?
Yes. SEO is still important — it has become one component of the plan rather than the whole plan. As AI search becomes more common, people get their answers in more places than a list of blue links. That changes how much of your budget search should take, not whether it deserves any. The businesses that get hurt are the ones who treated it as the only thing that mattered. How much weight it deserves depends on your business, and we will tell you honestly — usually less than an agency selling SEO will say.
Also on the bench
- 01Websites
Fast, editable, on-brand sites built to convert — not just to win awards.
- 02Custom software
Tools shaped around how you actually work — no off-the-shelf compromises.
- 03Ecommerce
Stores that load fast and check out faster. Built to scale with your catalog.
- 05Operations
We map the messy parts and fix the bottlenecks quietly killing your margins.
- 06AI advisory
Where AI helps, where it's hype, and what to do about it. No buzzwords.
Need marketing?
Thirty minutes on your actual problem. No deck, no discovery theatre, no obligation to hire us.