https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/ Field notes on performance marketing, SEO, and the software we build to run it. en-us Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/field-notes-the-week-of-august-26-2026.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/field-notes-the-week-of-august-26-2026.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Notes A too-strict form field, a report nobody read, and a rescue that flipped to a rebuild: field notes on a week where the best moves were subtraction. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/field-notes-what-we-changed-this-week.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/field-notes-what-we-changed-this-week.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Notes This week's field notes: we moved a form and moved it back, killed a report nobody read, changed our first 30 days, and added a grader check for buried phone numbers. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/choosing-between-a-rebuild-and-a-rescue.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/choosing-between-a-rebuild-and-a-rescue.html Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Rebuild or rescue? The decision comes from diagnosing your asset's structure, surface, and plumbing, not from how tired you are of it. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-ai-actually-changed-about-content-marketing.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-ai-actually-changed-about-content-marketing.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Industry AI made content drafts free, which means volume is worthless and judgment is everything. Here is what actually changed, and the trap most teams fell into. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-metrics-we-put-on-a-client-dashboard-and-the-ones-we-leave-off.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-metrics-we-put-on-a-client-dashboard-and-the-ones-we-leave-off.html Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Opinion How we decide which marketing metrics earn a spot on a client dashboard, which ones we cut, and why every number needs a target to mean anything. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/how-to-brief-an-agency-so-you-get-what-you-wanted.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/how-to-brief-an-agency-so-you-get-what-you-wanted.html Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Most bad agency work traces back to the brief. Here is how to write one that transfers your judgment so you get what you actually wanted. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/email-is-still-the-highest-margin-channel-you-own.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/email-is-still-the-highest-margin-channel-you-own.html Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Industry Every other channel rents you attention. Email is the one marketing asset you own, and its margin math beats paid every time when you build it right. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/why-we-stopped-writing-40-page-audits.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/why-we-stopped-writing-40-page-audits.html Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Opinion We spent two years writing 40-page marketing audits before admitting the document was a performance, not a plan. Here is what we do instead. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/landing-pages-the-eight-decisions-that-matter.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/landing-pages-the-eight-decisions-that-matter.html Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Landing pages are a set of eight decisions, not a checklist of forty tactics. Here is the order that actually moves conversion. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/when-paid-search-stops-working-check-these-six-things.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/when-paid-search-stops-working-check-these-six-things.html Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Paid search rarely fails all at once. Six checks, in order, to find where the money is leaking before you touch a single bid. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-service-business-guide-to-review-generation.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-service-business-guide-to-review-generation.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Review generation is a timing and friction problem, not a service problem. Here is the follow-up system that gets service businesses more, fresher reviews. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/attribution-is-broken-here-is-what-we-do-instead.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/attribution-is-broken-here-is-what-we-do-instead.html Sun, 09 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Opinion Attribution assigns confident credit from broken data. We measure blended results, run holdout tests, and ask buyers directly instead. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-a-fractional-cmo-actually-does-in-the-first-30-days.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-a-fractional-cmo-actually-does-in-the-first-30-days.html Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Culture A real fractional CMO spends the first 30 days mapping your economics and fixing leaks, not launching campaigns. Here is the week-by-week sequence and why it works. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/why-your-website-speed-score-is-not-your-speed-problem.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/why-your-website-speed-score-is-not-your-speed-problem.html Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Industry Your PageSpeed score is a lab estimate, not a revenue signal. Here is what actually moves conversions, and when to stop optimizing speed entirely. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/how-to-read-a-marketing-report-without-being-fooled-by-it.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/how-to-read-a-marketing-report-without-being-fooled-by-it.html Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Marketing reports are stories someone chose to tell. Five quick reads to separate what actually happened from how it was framed to flatter the sender. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-local-seo-checklist-we-actually-use.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-local-seo-checklist-we-actually-use.html Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks The unpadded local SEO checklist we run with service clients, in order, with the reasoning attached and the busywork left out. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/mpp-goes-mcp.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/mpp-goes-mcp.html Tue, 04 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product Chat assistants that cannot touch your systems are a party trick. We built three MCP servers so Claude can work inside our CRM, our clients' websites, and their WordPress installs, with the same permissions we have. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-is-performance-marketing-really.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-is-performance-marketing-really.html Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT Opinion The term has been stretched to mean "we run ads and send a dashboard". Here is the definition we hold ourselves to, and the four questions that separate a performance partner from a vendor with a report. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/why-franchise-models-will-never-die.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/why-franchise-models-will-never-die.html Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Industry Every few years someone announces that direct-to-consumer, aggregators, or AI will finish off franchising. It keeps growing. The reason is a structural advantage that technology does not touch. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-the-mpp-website-grader.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-the-mpp-website-grader.html Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product Speed, code health, and SEO are well-covered by existing tools. The fourth score is the one that matters now: whether AI assistants can read, understand, and cite your site. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-happens-to-wordpress.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/what-happens-to-wordpress.html Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Opinion Forty percent of the web runs on a twenty-three-year-old PHP application, and the industry has been predicting its death for a decade. Here is what we think actually happens, and what to do if your business is sitting on one. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-pulse.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-pulse.html Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product Chat is where decisions get made and where they disappear. Pulse is our Slack replacement, built next to the work so the conversation and the record stop being different places. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/how-to-build-a-successful-peptide-website.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/how-to-build-a-successful-peptide-website.html Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Playbooks Peptide brands operate in one of the most compliance-sensitive corners of the internet. Here is how to build a site that ranks, converts, and survives contact with the FTC, the FDA, and your payment processor. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-motion.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-motion.html Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product Every company has a graveyard of documents that were written once and never read again. Motion is our attempt to make notes that stay connected to the work they came from. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/we-built-our-own-cms.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/we-built-our-own-cms.html Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product The gap between "the client wants to change one sentence" and "a developer has to deploy" is where agency margin goes to die. So we closed it. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-changing-seo-landscape.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/the-changing-seo-landscape.html Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Industry Ranking first stopped guaranteeing a click, and answer engines started reading your site instead of your customers. A practical account of what has changed, what has not, and what to actually do. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-flow.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/introducing-flow.html Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product We tried ClickUp, Asana, Monday, and Jira. Each one was a good product and none of them knew anything about our clients. So we built Flow inside the Portal, where that context already lives. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/independence-and-the-business-we-built-around-it.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/independence-and-the-business-we-built-around-it.html Sat, 04 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Culture Most agencies buy people's time and resell it at a markup. We built the company around a different trade, freedom in exchange for accountability, and today is a good day to explain why. https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/mpp-launches-the-mpp-portal.html https://marketingplanpros.com/blog/mpp-launches-the-mpp-portal.html Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT Product Every agency runs on a stack of software that almost fits. We added up what ours cost (in dollars and in context-switching) and decided to build the thing we actually wanted.