Marketing playbooks
In-depth, sourced guides on search and AI visibility, CRM automation, websites, email, paid social, content, reporting, experiential marketing and AI. Each one is based on work I’ve done since 2020 or am doing now, opens with the short answer and ends with the tools and sources. New playbooks are added regularly.
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All playbooks
How businesses can use Muse by Meta: how it works and ways to get more customers
What Muse by Meta is, how the AI agent works behind the scenes, and practical ways businesses can use it to win more customers, with prompts to copy.
How to get your business mentioned in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity
How AI assistants choose which businesses to name, a test to see where you stand today, and the settings, listings and pages that help you get mentioned.
How to build a sales pipeline: stages, rules and a simple forecast
How to set up a sales pipeline for a small business: five stages with clear rules, a weighted forecast calculator, a weekly review and follow-up messages.
Customer acquisition cost and lifetime value: the two numbers behind your marketing budget
What customer acquisition cost and lifetime value mean, how to calculate both, what a good ratio looks like, and a calculator with worked examples.
Trade show booth on a budget: how to plan, staff and follow up for leads
How a small business can plan a trade show booth that brings in leads: the real cost, an eight-week countdown, a booth script and a 72-hour follow-up.
Google Business Profile: a complete setup and optimisation guide
How to claim, verify and fill in your Google Business Profile the way Google asks, then keep it working with photos, reviews and a ten-minute weekly routine.
SaaS trial-to-paid: the onboarding email sequence that converts free trials
Seven onboarding emails for a 14-day SaaS free trial, with copy-and-paste templates, behaviour triggers, benchmarks and a trial conversion calculator.
Service pages that rank and sell: how to structure one page per service
Why one page per service beats a single services page, what to put on each one, and an outline builder that drafts your title, headings and questions.
Black Friday marketing plan for small businesses: a 6-week countdown
A week-by-week Black Friday plan for shops and service businesses: pick an offer that still makes money, build your list, and run the weekend calmly.
Halloween marketing ideas you can launch in a week
Halloween marketing ideas for shops, restaurants, service businesses and online stores, with a seven-day launch plan, templates and Canadian contest rules.
Fall marketing for local service businesses: how to run a seasonal campaign
How local service businesses can turn fall triggers like the first frost into bookings, with a trigger calendar, a campaign builder and follow-up scripts.
How to use Claude for marketing (with 15 copy-paste prompts)
The five parts of a good prompt, how to set up a Project that knows your business, the draft, critique, refine loop, 15 prompts you can copy, and which plan to pick.
GA4 setup guide: set up Google Analytics 4 in 10 minutes
Five steps to get Google Analytics 4 running on your website, what it tracks on its own, and the five settings to change on day one. Every step follows Google’s own help pages.
How much to spend on Meta ads (and when to scale)
A simple budget formula with a worked example, cost-per-lead benchmarks by industry, a five-step plan for scaling and what to do on a small budget.
How to choose a CRM: a simple guide with Salesforce, HubSpot and GoHighLevel compared
What a CRM actually does, explained simply, plus a five-step way to choose one and an honest comparison of Salesforce, HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Zoho CRM and Pipedrive.
Email subject lines that get opened: 30 templates and what the data says
Thirty fill-in subject lines in six types, plus ready-made subject and preview-text pairs for common emails, what the data says, and how to test without trusting open rates.
Website launch checklist: 30 checks before and after you go live
Thirty checks in six parts, from broken links and forms to SEO, Core Web Vitals, tracking, privacy and accessibility, plus what to watch in the first week after launch.
20 follow-up text message scripts that get replies
Copy-and-paste texts for missed calls, new leads, quotes, appointments, reviews and win-backs, with when to send each one, how to automate them and the consent rules to follow.
30 social media hook templates that stop the scroll
Thirty fill-in-the-blank hooks for video, carousels and posts, grouped into six types, with examples, the platform guidance behind them and a simple way to test which ones work for you.
Local SEO checklist for service businesses
The 30 checks that move a service business up in Google Maps and local results: profile, website, reviews, listings and tracking, in the order to do them.
How to choose marketing channels for your business
A five-question scorecard, the Bullseye method and a 30-day test plan, so you commit to one or two channels that fit your buyer instead of spreading thin across ten.
How to start marketing the right way: audience research before tactics
Know the buyer before you choose a channel: demographics, psychographics and behaviour, the AI tools that speed up research, and what Canada’s diversity means for your plan.
The 5 best AI tools for business in 2026, and what MCP changes
Claude, ChatGPT, Muse, Higgsfield and Gemini: what each one is best at, how MCP connects them to your CRM and files, and a simple plan to start this week.
Experiential marketing: how to plan a brand activation that generates leads
How to turn festival and event foot traffic into leads: one goal, a 30-second interaction, a QR capture path into your CRM, and follow-up within 24 hours.
7 lead magnets for experiential marketing and brand activations, with examples
QR contests, spin-to-win wheels, samples, photo moments and more, with real examples from Coca-Cola, Tim Hortons, Costco, CIBC and others, and the contest rules to know in Canada.
How to write a blog post that ranks on Google and gets cited by AI
A repeatable nine-step method: search intent, outline, answer-first writing, evidence, on-page SEO, images and the checklist to run before you publish.
SEO vs AEO vs GEO: how to get found on Google and cited by AI search
What each term means, how AI search engines choose the sources they cite, the tools you need, and a 30-day checklist for a small business site.
The 5 CRM automations every service business should set up first
Missed-call text back, speed-to-lead, reminders, review requests and nurture, with copy-and-paste message templates and the compliance rules to check.
Landing page best practices: 5 things to put above the fold
The five elements that do most of the work before anyone scrolls, the speed targets to hit, and how to test a page for free in one afternoon.
Email segmentation strategy: 5 behaviour-based segments to build first
Five segments built on what people did, what to send each one, and the sender requirements that keep your emails out of spam.
Meta ads for local service businesses: creative first, targeting second
How Meta’s automated delivery changed targeting, how to brief an ad that finds the right local customer, and the follow-up that makes leads worth paying for.
How to write a monthly marketing report clients actually read
A one-page structure, the metrics that belong on it, the UTM setup that makes the numbers trustworthy, and a free tool stack to build it.