Guides
Guides
Everything here is free, ungated, and written for business owners rather than marketers. No email required, no download form. If you work through these and decide you don't need an agency, that's a fine outcome — it's why we wrote them this way.
Start with the playbook if you're doing this yourself. Use the individual guides as reference.
Where should I start?
The DIY Marketing Playbook — the sequenced version. Eight chapters covering what to do first, what to skip, and the honest point at which hiring someone makes sense. If you're under about $1M in revenue, read this one and ignore the rest until you've worked through it.
Everything below goes deeper on a single piece of that playbook.
All guides
| Guide | What it covers | Read it if |
|---|---|---|
| The DIY Marketing Playbook | The whole sequence, eight chapters | You're doing your own marketing |
| Local SEO for Service Businesses | How the map pack works and what moves it | Customers find you by searching nearby |
| Google Business Profile Optimization | Step-by-step profile setup, including suspensions | You have a profile that's half-finished |
| How to Get More Google Reviews | Timing, scripts, automation, and why gating is risky | You have fewer reviews than your competitors |
| Local Link Building | Sponsorships, associations, suppliers, press | You've done the basics and organic is stuck |
| SEO for Service Businesses | Content coverage, structure, technical health | Your website isn't producing |
| How to Get Found in AI Search | What works for AEO/GEO, and what's oversold | Your buyers research before calling |
| The Paid Media Guide | All seven paid channels, with real cost data | You're spending on ads, or about to |
What's the right order?
If you're starting from nothing:
- The playbook — get the sequence right before optimising anything
- Google Business Profile — highest return afternoon available
- Reviews — free, takes an hour to automate, compounds forever
- Local SEO — the rest of the map pack work
- Paid media — once the above is done and the phone gets answered
- SEO and AI search — the slower, compounding half
Steps 2 and 3 are genuinely free and take an afternoon between them. Most businesses skip straight to step 5 and wonder why it's expensive.
Why are these free?
Because most of the businesses reading them shouldn't hire an agency yet, and we'd rather be useful now than sell something premature.
If you're under $500,000 in revenue, agency fees are a large share of your margin and the work in these guides is genuinely doable yourself. When your constraint becomes time rather than knowledge, our pricing is published so you can check the numbers without a sales call.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to give you my email?
No. Nothing here is gated. There's an optional email course if you want the playbook delivered in sequence, but every word is on the site regardless.
Are these actually useful or are they sales material?
They're written to be acted on alone. Each one includes what it costs to do yourself and an honest section on when hiring someone makes sense — which is usually later than agencies suggest.
How often are they updated?
Quarterly. Marketing platforms change constantly, and a guide with stale information is worse than none. Each page shows when it was last reviewed.
Which guide should a brand-new business read?
The DIY Marketing Playbook. It's the sequence, and the other guides are the detail underneath it.
Do you have anything on software and tools?
Yes — the software section covers what we actually deploy for clients, including what we don't recommend and why.
Still stuck?
If you've worked through these and something isn't landing, thirty minutes is free and there's no obligation. Sometimes the answer is that marketing isn't your constraint.
Schedule a consultation · (615) 669-0707
Written by Jared DeValk, founder of Nashville Digital. Last reviewed September 2026.