Guides
How the work in front of the first conversation gets done
Everything here is about the same moment: someone has a problem, they have found you, and nobody has spoken yet. What you ask them, and what they get back, decides most of what happens next.
How to run ads to a lead magnet
The three-step funnel for paid traffic: the ad names one problem, a short page teaches one thing, and every person who answers your questions gets a consultation written just for them.
Read the guideThe client intake form, and the thing it should give back
A good intake form collects what you need to do the work. A better one answers the question the person was already asking - before they have spoken to anyone. Here is what to ask, arranged by the kind of work you do, and what to do with the answers.
Read the guideThe website audit checklist
Everything worth checking on a site, in the order that finds the expensive problems first. Written for people who audit sites for other people - so the last section is about turning the audit into work.
Read the guideThe lead magnet funnel
Four moving parts, one of which does almost all the work and gets almost none of the attention. Here is the whole shape, and where to spend your time inside it.
Read the guideHow to create a quiz lead magnet
A quiz works as a lead magnet for one reason: answering questions about yourself is more interesting than downloading a file. That advantage is easy to waste, and here is how not to.
Read the guideWhat is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is something a business gives away in exchange for a way to contact the person - usually an email address. The definition is simple. Which ones actually work is the useful part.
Read the guideDiscovery call questions that actually qualify
Most discovery calls spend their first ten minutes collecting facts that could have arrived in writing. Here are the questions worth asking out loud, and the ones to ask before anyone picks up.
Read the guideHow to qualify inbound leads without turning the good ones away
Qualification has a bad reputation because most of it is interrogation. Done properly it is a service: the people who fit find out faster, and the people who do not get an honest answer instead of a chase.
Read the guideAn SEO audit template that gets acted on
Most audit reports are a list of everything wrong with a site, sorted by category, delivered as a spreadsheet nobody opens. This is a structure for the other kind - the one that produces work.
Read the guideThe content marketing audit
Every content audit ends in the same four decisions. Getting to them honestly is the work, and the hardest part is being willing to delete things.
Read the guideThe social media audit template
The point of a social audit is not a slide of follower counts. It is to decide which channels deserve next quarter's hours - including the ones that deserve none.
Read the guideThe email marketing audit
Subject lines are the last thing to look at, not the first. Deliverability, list health and lifecycle gaps account for most of what an email program is losing.
Read the guideRather see it than read about it?
Answer a few questions about your business and it pitches the consultation lead magnet it would build for you. No account, no card.