Budgeting
The Small Business Marketing Budget
What marketing should cost, in real monthly numbers: by channel, by approach, and by what you're free to skip.
The Marketing Department The Marketing Department: A Marketing Blog for Local Business Owners
The Marketing Department is the marketing blog I write for local business owners. I run a marketing agency in Baltimore, MD, and I owned my own companies before that. Every article here comes out of work I've done.
Written in Baltimore, MD. Free to read.
I Solve Business Problems Every Single Day
Every article here answers one question owners keep asking me, and each one ends with steps you can run without hiring anybody. Some came out of client work. Some came out of running my own companies and writing down what the expensive lessons cost me.
I add to the library when a job teaches me something worth writing up. If you'd rather hand the whole system off, that's the work of a Baltimore digital marketing agency.
As marketing blogs go, this one is for the owner who wants marketing tips to use on Monday morning: how search engine optimization decides which pages search engines show, how a landing page turns a visit into a call, and how online marketing channels like social media marketing and Google Ads compare on cost. A blog post earns a place here when it answers something a customer typed into a search engine.
For every local business
Local Marketing
How to Promote Your Business Locally
Free and low-cost ways to get seen in your own zip code before you buy a single ad.
Google Ads
Setting Up Your Google Ads Account
Get the account bones right before you put a dollar behind a keyword.
Customer Service
The Importance of Customer Service in Marketing
Why the way your phone gets answered is marketing, and how to turn those moments into income.
Consulting
Digital Marketing for Consulting
Growing a firm when the product is you: referrals, rankings, and a pipeline that isn't luck.
Local Marketing
Community Postcards
Ten businesses split one neighborhood mailer. The real numbers from the cards I ran, and the honest reason I stopped running them.
Local Marketing
Local Marketing Strategies
Which channels earn their keep, what they cost, and the order to run them in. Foundation first, search second, ads last.
Local Marketing
Google Business Profile Optimization
The full checklist, the categories trap, and the review rules most guides still get wrong, from someone who manages real profiles.
Strategy
SEO vs Google Ads
From someone who runs both channels for the same local businesses: real costs, real timelines, and the decision rule that picks between them.
Web & Platforms
Wix vs Squarespace
Built on both, left both. Where each one genuinely wins, what the plans really cost, and which one lets you take your website with you.
Web & Platforms
WordPress Alternatives
Six reasons people leave WordPress, and the six different places each one should send you. Sorted by the reason, not by a ranked list of platforms.
Web & Platforms
WordPress vs Squarespace
Decided by who will run the site. What you will do every month, three years of platform cost at published rates, and what each one drops if you switch.
Web & Platforms
Replit Alternatives
Four reasons people leave Replit and the kind of alternative each one points to, with Replit, Lovable and Base44 side by side in their own words.
Web & Platforms
Lovable Alternatives
Four kinds of Lovable alternative and what Lovable's own docs say comes with you to each one: your code, your data, your domain.
Web & Platforms
How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
An AI website builder can have a site online in an afternoon. One that brings in customers takes a few weeks, and seven of my own projects show where those weeks go.
Web & Platforms
Lovable SEO
It gives you exactly what you ask for. What Lovable handles for search on its own, checked against its docs, and the parts you have to know to ask for.
Web & Platforms
Is SEO Worth It for a Small Business?
Leads from social is a good place to be. You just do not own that platform. Score your channels against four questions and see which one you cannot afford to lose.
Web & Platforms
Why Is My Website Not Showing Up on Google?
Six free checks you run in order, from whether Google has your site at all to whether you are searching where your customers do.
Local Marketing
How to Get More Google Reviews
The ask, the link and the timing, what Google's policy allows and bans, and what 228 Google reviews looked like at my own venue.
Local Marketing
Why Is My Business Not Showing Up on Google?
Not on Maps, there only for your exact name, in the wrong spot, suspended or stuck on Pending: what each one means and the check for it, from Google's own help pages.
Web & Platforms
Squarespace Alternatives
Every migration I've run off Squarespace has landed on a custom-coded site. What that move costs, and when your site is better off staying exactly where it is.
Web & Platforms
Wix Alternatives
Picking a Wix alternative is the easy part. Getting your website out is where it costs you, because Wix doesn't hand it back when you go.
Web & Platforms
How Much Does a Website Cost for a Small Business?
Bought as a one-time project, a small business website usually runs $3,000 to $10,000. What the big ranges leave out is that it goes on costing you long after the project ends.
Web & Platforms
Website Redesign Cost
The published cost guides put a website redesign at $3,000 to $10,000 as a one time project. I price the same work by the month, starting at $800 with the website built inside the plan.
Customer Service
Lead Follow Up: Why Your Leads Ghost You
What the published data says about price, reply speed and how many times to follow up, with every source rated for how much to trust it.
Web & Platforms
What Makes a Good Website? The 98 Checks Behind Ours
The six jobs a good website does, the 98 automated checks I run to prove it does them, and the real mistakes on real sites that created them.
For event space owners
Event Venues
Are Event Spaces Profitable?
A former venue owner runs the honest math on what event spaces really earn.
Event Venues
Are Wedding Venues Profitable?
The wedding side of the same math: what one date earns against what the room costs every month.
Event Venues
Event Venue Advertising
The full guide to keeping a booking calendar full, written by an owner who had to.
Event Venues
Event Space Business Plan
The plan I actually followed at Studio 87, from an empty former vape shop to a booked-out weekend calendar in under a year. Every number came off my own accounts.
Tools we use and recommend
Tools
HoneyBook CRM Review
Five businesses on it since 2021. What it really costs, what it replaces, and the parts I would complain about.
Tools
Google Workspace for Small Business
The setup guide: domain email, MX records, moving your old mail across without losing it, and which plan to pick.
Tools
Notion for Small Business
Running client work in one workspace: project management, database views, whether Notion AI earns its money, and how it compares to Asana and Trello.
Web & Platforms
Squarespace SEO
An honest read from someone who built 20+ sites on it and doesn't sell it anymore, plus a Circle Gold discount if it's still your platform.
This isn't theory. Every tactic here got tested on a real business before it got written down.
Who Writes The Marketing Department?
I write every article on this page. My name is Willis Aybar, I founded Another Monday, a Baltimore marketing agency, and I was a business owner years before anybody called me a marketer.
My first classroom was Studio 87, an event venue I owned and ran myself. I taught myself SEO because the rent came due whether or not the phone rang, and it worked: $100K in revenue in year one, then 380+ bookings and 250+ five-star reviews across the three and a half years I ran it, with SEO leading the growth the whole way.
The rest of the stack came the same way. Web design, Google Ads, AI, all self-taught, all tested on my own companies first. The longer version of that story sits on the about page, and the client-by-client receipts live in our case studies.
I bought these lessons with my own money, on my own businesses.
Where Do These Articles Come From?
Every one of them comes out of paid client work or a business I've owned, and the focus never changes: what actually works for a local business. When a post walks you through reviews or landing pages, that's the same playbook people hire us to run.
Some blog posts are about strategy: a digital marketing strategy that begins with your target audience, which marketing campaigns to run first so the first one helps pay for the next, and the lead generation numbers and marketing analytics that tell you whether it's working. Others stay close to the customer experience, from the first search to the phone call. Content creation for this library starts from questions real customers ask, and I'd rather create content you'll use than fill a calendar. The content strategy is to publish marketing content you can act on the same week.
- SEO. The spine of most articles here, and most of what we do as a Baltimore SEO company: getting a business found for the searches that pay.
- Google Ads. For lead flow while rankings build, our Google Ads management puts you in front of people already searching for what you sell.
- Content marketing. Blogs like this one, plus short-form content that builds trust before the first call.
- AI. Custom AI chatbots for small business that answer questions and pre-qualify leads while you're with a customer.
These numbers came off our own dashboards, the ads, the listings, and the sites we build, and every card is stamped with the window it covers:
All time, since 2021
3,089
calls and form fills from the ads we run
Last 30 days
3,079
customers took action on the Google listings we manage
Apr to Jul 2026
1 in 14
website visitors became a lead, on a site we built
Read It, Then Put It to Work
Start with whichever article sits closest to the thing that's been bugging you, then run its checklist against your own website and see what's missing. If you'd rather get the wider view first, my guide to local marketing strategies maps how the pieces fit together, and my google business profile optimization checklist covers the one listing every local search touches. If you're picking a platform, my Squarespace SEO piece is the honest read, and if you're deciding which channel gets your first dollar, SEO vs Google Ads, compared is where I lay out the real costs and the decision rule.
Nothing here is theory I read somewhere. Every guide comes out of an account I run or a business I owned, which is why the numbers carry the window they were pulled from and why I tell you when something didn't work, the Studio 87 pieces most of all, since that venue was mine and I wrote down what went wrong right beside what made money. The client guides come from the dashboards, so when a tactic costs more than it returns you'll read that here before you spend a dollar finding out yourself. If a guide ever goes stale it gets corrected rather than quietly left up, because these pages are the same reference I use when a new client asks me where to start.
You can also just hire it out. The same playbook runs behind our marketing services, built for owners who are done doing it alone. Call or text 410-999-0169 and tell me what you're stuck on.
Definitely will leave a 5 star review from my end. I'll work on that today. If I could leave 100 stars I would! Thank you so much for all your help and support here. We couldn't have made it this far without your help and support along the way. You're the best !
Client message
One thing I love about you is that when you see something wrong, you don't care. You're very blunt. You focus. And I'm a blunt person, so I never feel offended with what you point out. No matter what excuse or what I say, you're like, it still doesn't add up.
Owner, event venue we handle SEO for
Another Monday Based in Baltimore, MD. Serving Baltimore, Washington, DC, and local businesses nationwide. 410-999-0169 info@anothermonday.online
Something here land for you?
Say what you're working on. Every one of these comes to me.
- 450K+ search impressions across the sites we manage
- 5,800+ organic search clicks across the sites we manage
- 600+ leads and booking requests across the sites we manage
Last 90 days, across the sites and Search Console/GA4 accounts Another Monday manages. Figures as of August 2026.
When You'd Rather Just Hand It Off
Book a free strategy session and we'll walk through your marketing together: what's working, what's leaking, and what I'd fix first. Bring questions from any article and I'll answer those too.
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