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 · By Willis Aybar 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.
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.
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
How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
Seven of my own projects with the real dates on them. Five shipped between 25 and 50 days, and the four that ran longest were never running long on the building.
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.
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.
- 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. 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
2,382
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.
Book a Free Strategy Session¡También Hablamos Español!