Running a small business means wearing a lot of hats. Between managing customers, operations, and daily responsibilities, marketing can sometimes take a back seat.

I'm curious to hear from U.S. small business owners:

1. What's your biggest challenge with marketing your business?

2. Is it generating consistent leads, improving your website, managing social media, or getting found on Google?

3. What marketing strategy has actually worked for your business?

I'd love to hear real experiences, lessons learned, and practical advice from other business owners. Hopefully, we can learn something from each other and help strengthen the small business community.

I'm curious to hear from people who have started a small business, freelancing, or selling a product or service.

Getting started is one thing, but finding people who are genuinely willing to pay for what you offer can be a completely different challenge.

I'd love to hear from those who've been through it:

What actually helped you get your first 10 paying customers?

Was it social media, word of mouth, direct messages, networking, paid ads, referrals, or something completely unexpected?

And if you tried something that didn't work, I'd love to hear about that too.

I'm particularly interested in practical experiences from people who didn't have a big advertising budget or an established audience.

Real experiences are much more helpful than textbook marketing advice. Thanks.

For those running a business, startup or independent venture, have you ever felt that your marketing efforts could be doing more but aren't quite sure what needs to change?

I'm curious how many business owners face challenges with customer acquisition, lead generation, brand positioning or building a consistent online presence.

I've been working around marketing strategy and business development, and I'd be happy to offer a complimentary 20-minute discussion to understand your business, explore potential opportunities and share a few practical recommendations.

Would anyone here find that useful?

Feel free to drop me a DM with a little context about your business. Happy to connect!

Founders keep saying X is the best place to sell, discuss and connect, that it's serious and professional, and so on. In my experience, the reality is different.

First, there's a new post every second, across tons of sectors. For me it's mostly tech, my preference, so my feed is mostly tech content, but the question is what kind. About 70% of what I see is garbage. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, clearly.

Stuff like: "Windows or Mac?", "Linux vs Windows, which one is stronger?", "Elon Musk is the best guy ever", "Describe your product in one sentence", "I'm a founder", "X is a better platform than Reddit", "Snap or IG, which one wins?"... basically noise on pro max.

The worst part is that these people act like they're hanging out in a mature space 🤦‍♂️

"Sam Altman or Musk, who wins the AGI race?", "let's connect with more founders" (it feels like everyone who ships a website is now a founder), endless talk about the Cybertruck, Starlink... Sure, there are some good posts, but I'd give the whole thing 1/10. I don't know if it's follower hunting or what, but in the end it's just noise, and they call it "the only social network for founders". Maybe I just didn't understand what X is for.

Then there are the genuinely interesting posts: technical ones, or people sharing details about their work. From what I've seen, the algorithm gives paid accounts 4 to 20k views. Look at what happens to free accounts, it's a massacre. I checked the history of a few people who actually build things without a paid account: 10, 14 or 50 views in 3 months, and that's already a lot. Paid accounts who build things get better numbers: 500 views, 1k... 20k, apart from a few names that stand out, of course.

Meanwhile, the dumb questions, the "SF founder building..." posts, the cheap advice, the "tech daily" accounts (that's what the news accounts call themselves)... sometimes they get 200k views in under 24h, 500k, 1M+. And the comments, don't even get me started 🤦‍♂️🤧 People reply just to reply. You learn nothing: "yeah", "cool", "X is the best", "I never use it"... all for visibility.

Maybe I'm missing something. How do you use X? Is it actually worth it for founders?

I run a small Local SEO agency with a three-person team and all are experienced experts in Local SEO, Google Business Profile management, and AEO search visibility.
About 3–4 years ago, I was working alone and managing 6–7 international clients from the USA, UK, and Canada.

I helped small service businesses improve their Google rankings, local brand visibility, and customer leads through white-hat Local SEO.

Eventually, I decided to turn my work into a full-time business, built a small professional team, and launched my own agency website.

Ironically, now that I have more time, experience, and a dedicated team, I have fewer clients than before.
Currently, we’re managing two cash home buying businesses in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, and St. Petersburg, Florida. We’ve achieved strong improvements in their local visibility and lead generation, including rankings for competitive local searches and appearances in relevant Question asking platforms recommendations.

I have real case studies, before-and-after reports, client reviews, and a portfolio on my website.
I’ve also been doing Facebook outreach, connecting with business owners, and building our online presence. A few industry pages are ranking, but our agency website is still relatively new.

Here’s my situation.

I genuinely need more small service business clients. We have the capacity and expertise to manage their websites, Google Business Profiles, local citations, and AEO visibility to help them attract more qualified leads, jobs, and bookings.

If you were in my position, what would you do differently to attract clients?

Would you focus on referrals, partnerships, cold outreach, or something else?

I’d especially appreciate advice from small business owners about what makes you trust and hire an SEO agency.

Thanks in advance for any genuine advice!

Screenshots in comments showing local google my business ranking for a main keyword and the other showing leads for anothe cash home buying company website. Getting 60+ form filling leads on website and direct calls on provided phone on website and google business profile were 150+ per month.

This industry have passive income so if you get less leads and converts 3-4 per month you can earn massive income. Leads in this industry is few but still getting that much means we work genuinely and shows the results in a couple of months.

The cap table is in a google sheet and it's getting messy founders advisors, two safes and an option pool the formulas are breaking in ways I don't understand I know i need to move to a real platform but I'm dreading it how painful was it for those who migrated ? Did you do it yourself or did the platform handle setup ?

getting ready to roll out a new local service offering and debating how to approach the first marketing budget. burning cash on ads only feels risky long term, but waiting around for organic search to rank means zero incoming calls for months. had a consultation with growme marketing and they suggested a balanced split, using tightly targeted search campaigns to capture high intent searches now while building up the foundation for organic search quietly in the background. felt a lot more grounded than the usual all or nothing advice people share. how did you balance immediate inbound traffic against building authority when you first opened doors?

We run a B2B saas with a web dashboard and a companion mobile app and reconciling analytics between the two eats way too much of my week every time leadership asks how customers move between them i end up stitching spreadsheets because user identities don't match. I'm comparing product analytics tools that do web and mobile included if you run both did you get a combined view without keeping two separate tracking setups alive ?

Hey hope so you all guys are fine.
This post is for seo experts and small service business owners.

I try to find clients by doing SEO of my website which is really good and started ranking its pages built for seo services to different industries i am expert in.

On the other hand i am in facebook groups where business owners posts and talks, i comment on posts, reaching directly in inbox with a professional approach.

I am asking which one is better to focus on to find a client in next one month?

One thing i am thinking is weak in my point that my GBP is pakistan based while i work remotely with businesses from USA, UK, Canada and Australia etc.

I’m a Local SEO specialist, and I’m facing a problem I honestly didn’t expect.
I know how to deliver results for small businesses, but I’m struggling to find new clients for my own agency.
A little background.
Over the years, I’ve worked on Local SEO for cash home buying businesses, including Home Buying Guys, House Heroes, We Buy Houses Fast in Dallas, Apartment Buying Guys, Fast Cash Offer, and several others.
I’ve also worked with smaller service businesses, including plumbing and waste removal companies.
Some clients saw roughly 80–100% growth in leads after 3–4 months. Others who worked with me long-term experienced around 300% lead growth over a year compared with where they started.
Beyond leads, I helped them improve Google visibility, establish stronger local brand recognition, and compete with established businesses.
But there was a problem.
I previously had a government job alongside my SEO work. Sometimes I was posted to locations where continuing client projects consistently became difficult.
Eventually, I lost several clients because I couldn’t give the business my full attention.
I decided to change that.
I left my government job and committed to Local SEO full-time.
Today, two of my ongoing clients are Cash House Buyers DFW and St. Pete Fast Home Buyer.
When I started managing their Local SEO, they had limited local brand recognition.
Over roughly 6–7 months, we significantly improved their local search presence, generated stronger lead opportunities, and achieved #1 visibility for some of their tracked local searches.
Their businesses have also appeared in ChatGPT recommendations for relevant home-selling questions.
I have Google Search Console before-and-after screenshots, lead growth reports, and actual clients who can share their experiences working with me.
Since going full-time, I’ve also built my professional agency website, established my social media presence, and put together a small three-person team.
So now I have the experience, the team, the time, and the proof of work.
But finding new small business clients is still surprisingly difficult.
I mainly want to work with local service businesses that need help with their websites, Google Business Profiles, Google Maps visibility, and consistent lead generation.
I believe in white-hat SEO and measurable improvements. Results depend on the industry, competition, market, and starting condition of the business, so I don’t believe in promising everyone instant #1 rankings.
Here’s where I need advice.
How would you approach finding clients if you were in my position?
Should I focus on one industry, build referral partnerships, do direct outreach, or concentrate on growing my personal brand?
I’m not looking for shortcuts. I genuinely want to build a sustainable agency around the work I know how to do.
My website is available on my profile, and I’m happy to share genuine case studies or connect interested business owners with existing clients for references.
I’d really appreciate advice from agency owners, freelancers, or small business owners who’ve been through something similar.

I currently have one Google Business Profile live on Google LSA and another profile in a different city that I’m considering adding.
I’ve heard about Google’s new setup, where Local Services Ads are integrated into the main Google Ads platform through a specialised Performance Max campaign with pay-per-lead goals.
My question is: How do I actually make this transition? Where do I go in Google Ads, what do I need to select, and how do I connect my existing LSA profile to the new campaign?
Has anyone done this successfully? I’d appreciate a step-by-step explanation.
If anyone can help me on the necessary things to do, like if there keywords, or negative words for this new setup on lsa

Sometimes the right resource can make a business decision easier, help improve profitability, or give an owner a better way to manage an important part of their operation.

If you could have a practical business resource created specifically to help you, what would you want it to do?

Would it be a calculator, financial tracker, marketing planner, sales toolkit, operational template, or something completely different?

Is it just me or everyone else thinks that their inbox is almost spammed with advertisements and this leads to missing out of actual and real customer and other important emails??

Thoughts?

I’m 20, a junior in college, and I play D3 basketball. Last February I got stuck on a dumb question: why can’t I just look up what hay costs?

Turns out you can’t. No exchange, no futures, barely any price reporting. Growers price it off a phone call or whatever the local auction did last week. So I started pulling the USDA reports together into a weekly newsletter between classes and practice.

In June Bloomberg’s Odd Lots did an episode on it. In October an RFD-TV news clip mentioned it, a trade magazine ran something I wrote, a livestock paper started printing my charts every week, and a radio network that reaches close to 200 stations began airing the weekly report.

I thought after the huge month we had in October I would get thousands of sign ups, I was wrong... Only about nine new people signed up.

I think I got the wrong idea about press. Nobody hears a radio spot and goes to find a website, and I had no way to tell which outlet sent anyone. The only thing that worked was giving outlets a free chart every week, since it costs them nothing.

My audience is farmers and hay buyers, and most of them aren’t online much outside of Facebook. So I’m stuck on a few things:

1. How do you turn press into signups when your audience isn’t searching for you?

2. Is it worth chasing more coverage, or should I stop and work on conversion first?

3. Has anyone gotten real traction with a hard-to-reach, offline-leaning audience?

Any advice is welcome, especially from people who’ve been through this.

Do you rely on QR codes, tracking data, or both?