Marketing consulting & training · Denver
I work with small teams and nonprofits who'd rather understand their own marketing than hand it to someone else forever. Audits, training, and honest advice.
Start here
No form, no email. This is what I'd tell you on a first call.
Pick one above and the answer shows up right here.
Most first campaigns struggle because the budget got spread across two platforms, four audiences, and eight different ads. Pick one platform, one clear offer, one audience, and give it enough money to actually learn something before you judge it. Google works well when people are already searching for what you sell. Meta works better when they aren't looking yet and you need to catch their attention.
First thing to doWrite down the one thing you want someone to do when they land on your site. Everything else follows from that.
When you can't tell whether ads are working, the ads often aren't the problem. Nine times out of ten the sale or signup was never set up to be counted, or it's counted on the wrong page. Good campaigns look dead, bad ones look fine, and you end up making decisions on numbers that were never right.
First thing to doFind one real sale or signup from last week and see if you can trace where it came from. If you can't, start there.
Rising costs are a symptom. Usually something shifted underneath: the audience got broader, an automatic campaign type started spending somewhere you didn't intend, a busy season kicked in, or people have simply seen the same ad too many times. The useful question isn't why it costs more, it's what happened right before it started costing more.
First thing to doCompare this week to a few weeks ago and look for the change in who is seeing your ads.
Email reaches people who already said yes to hearing from you. If you're paying to reach strangers while a list sits untouched, that's the cheapest fix available. It doesn't need to be fancy either. One useful email sent regularly beats a complicated automated series nobody ever finished building.
First thing to doSend one email this week. Make it genuinely useful rather than a sales pitch, and see what happens.
Accounts you inherit are full of things that look broken but are holding something up, and things that look fine but stopped working a year ago. Before touching any of it, write down what exists, who owns each account, and what's still charging you every month. A surprising number of wins come from turning off things nobody realized were running.
First thing to doList every account, who has access, and what each one costs per month.
About me
I've been doing marketing for ten years. Right now I'm the director of marketing for a youth sports and child development program with locations across two states, where the whole marketing team is me and one part-time team member. I've done every piece of it myself at one point or another.
Some of it I picked up in a classroom, but most of it I learned by doing it, and from a handful of people who were generous with their time and knowledge. Being handed that kind of help is the reason I like to hand it back now.
So on the side I work with one or two clients at a time, mostly teaching. I'd rather show your team how something works and leave them able to do it than keep you reliant on me.
The part of marketing I like is helping an organization reach the people who are already out there looking for them.
When the team is good and the thing they make is worth having, or the service they provide is a quality one, that stops feeling like selling and starts feeling like introducing two people who should meet.
Before you reach out
What it's added up to
Annual revenue at the company whose marketing I run
People on that marketing team. Me and one part-time team member, every channel, every location
Years doing this, most of them as the whole department
Ways to work together
All prices are in US dollars. These are the rates for established companies. If you're an individual trying to build up your own skills, getting a business off the ground, or a small organization with limited revenue, there's a different arrangement further down.
I go through your website, ads, email, and analytics, then tell you what I find. You get a short list of what to fix first, what to stop paying for, and what's already working. Written so anyone on your team can follow it. Delivered within ten business days of getting account access.
Starts at$300 USD
Live sessions for whoever actually does the work. Google Ads, Google Analytics, email, reporting, whatever you need. We use your real accounts instead of slides. Sessions are recorded and the notes are yours to keep.
Per session$100 USD20% off when you book four or more
Sometimes it's faster if I build the thing. When that's the case, I set it up, write down how it works, and walk your team through it so it doesn't turn into a mystery the day I leave.
ScopeBy projectQuoted in writing before any work starts
Not sure which of these you need? That's what the free hour is for. Full terms, payment, and refund details are in the terms of service.
Starting out, or learning on your own?
If you're an individual trying to learn this for yourself, building something from scratch, or working with limited revenue, that's a different conversation. Tell me what you're working with and we'll land somewhere that makes sense. Payment plans are completely fine.
And if you're an established company doing well, pay the regular rate. That's the part that makes the other part possible.
Free, nothing in return
Google, Meta, and nearly every other platform give away good training for free. The hard part isn't finding it, it's knowing which ones are worth your time and what order to do them in. So I made a list.
Plenty of people will get everything they need from this and never hire anyone. That's a good outcome. If you get partway in and want a hand, book a free hour and we'll talk it through.
A one-page PDF of links to the free courses the platforms already give away, plus a note on where to begin.
Get the list (PDF)No email needed. Just take it.
Questions I get a lot
There's no magic percentage, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your business is guessing. The real question is whether your budget is enough to learn something. If you're only getting a handful of clicks a week, you can't tell the difference between a bad ad and bad luck.
A reasonable way in: pick a number you'd be genuinely okay losing, spend it steadily for a month without fiddling, and see what one customer ended up costing you. Now you have a real number to make decisions with instead of a benchmark from someone else's business.
Compare what you paid to get a customer against what that customer is worth to you. That's the whole test. If it costs $40 to get someone who spends $300 with you over a year, the ads are working, no matter what the click-through rate looks like.
Clicks, impressions, and engagement are diagnostics. They tell you where something broke, not whether it's working. Plenty of campaigns with beautiful engagement numbers have never made anyone a dollar.
No, and trying to be is the most common way small teams burn out. One platform you post to consistently beats four you update when you remember.
Pick based on where your customers already are and what you can actually sustain. If making video feels like pulling teeth, a TikTok strategy will die in six weeks no matter how good the advice was.
Give it a few weeks of steady spending before you judge anything. Ad platforms need a stretch of consistent data to figure out who to show your ads to, and every time you change the budget, the targeting, or the creative, some of that resets.
The most common mistake isn't picking the wrong settings. It's changing them every three days and never letting anything run long enough to tell you something.
Boosting is the easiest way to spend money with the least control over what you get. The button is right there and it optimizes for likes and comments, which feel good and rarely turn into sales.
The full ads tool takes an afternoon to learn the basics and lets you tell the platform what you actually want, whether that's purchases, form fills, or calls. If you're going to spend money either way, spend it there.
Usually not a whole new one. What matters is the specific page people land on after they click. It needs to match the ad that brought them, make one thing obvious to do next, and load quickly on a phone.
Sending paid traffic to a slow homepage with six competing calls to action is how most ad budgets quietly disappear. Fix that page first and you may find the site is fine.
They do different jobs. Ads buy attention now and stop the moment you stop paying. SEO earns attention slowly and keeps working after you've done the work, but it can take six months to a year to show up.
If you need customers this quarter, that's ads. If you're building something you'll still be running in three years, do both, and start the SEO work early so it has time to mature.
For current clients
Everything billing-related is in one place. You can:
No cost, no pitch
Tell me a bit about your company and what isn't working right now. We'll figure out together whether I'm the right person for it. If I'm not, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
Pick a time that works. You'll get a calendar invite with a link right away.
See available timesNothing to prepare. Come as you are.
Rather write?
If booking a time feels like a lot, email works just as well. I answer within one business day.
The business bits
Marketing consulting services: written audits, live training sessions, and setup-and-handoff projects. Services are delivered remotely by video call, email, and shared documents. Nothing is shipped.
Audits start at $300 USD. Training is $100 USD per session, 20% off for four or more. Setup work is quoted per project before it starts. All prices are in US dollars.
Training sessions run at the time you book. Audits are delivered within ten business days of being granted account access. Project timelines are agreed in writing before work begins.
Invoices are sent through the client portal and are due within 30 days, paid by card or bank transfer. Overdue balances accrue a late fee of 1.5% per month. Card payments are processed by Stripe; payment details are never handled or stored by this website.
Cancel or reschedule a session more than 24 hours ahead at no charge. If a delivered audit doesn't give you anything useful, say so within 14 days and you get your money back. The full policy is in the terms of service.
Loftin Marketing, a sole proprietorship owned by Alanis Loftin, based in Denver, Colorado, United States. Reach a human at alanis@loftinmarketing.com.