Audrey Rawnie Rico

Whether it’s a simple flyer or a well-designed business card to impress your clients, the best promotional items for small businesses should help build your brand identity, aside from making you more memorable at events. They can even help gain new leads, site visitors, or social media followers, depending on your call to action. I’m…

Owned media is any media that comes straight from your business or that your business owns. Some examples are your website, your Facebook page, and your Instagram page. It’s any type of content that comes directly from your business, as opposed to from external sources like reviews on your Yelp or Facebook page. Those are…

The average newspaper ad cost in 2025 is $680.73 for a one-column-inch black-and-white print ad. However, costs increase for larger ads, like a full-page, full-color ad, and will depend on the publication in which you’re running your ad. A smaller local newspaper will have a far smaller ad cost than, say, the New York Times,…

Here’s a little marketing secret: You can get a 100% free Google Ads promo code. And yes, all of them are legit. The secret is that Google partners — and Google itself — regularly give out Google Ads coupon codes as incentives for customers. And they’re all great ways to get started with Google Ads…

Ever wondered how to get on the news? For the right reasons, of course. Landing press coverage would mean not just tons of new exposure, but also more credibility for your business. Yes, even in the age of all things digital — in fact, even more so. In the era of digital content overload, people…

When you run a small business (or honestly, even a big business), everything counts as branding. Even the little details — in fact, it’s the little details that distinguish a great brand from a regular one — which brings me to business letterheads. As an entrepreneur, nailing your official letterhead is one of those tiny details that…

Good marketing takes good marketing tools. I’ll even say that good marketing tools are essential for the success of your marketing strategy. Every business is unique, so there is no one answer for the “ultimate best” marketing tool for any purpose. But if you were to ask me for the best marketing tools for small…

Before anything else, I should warn you that there is almost no completely free way to get a domain name. For the most part, you’ll only get a domain name as a freebie with paid website or email hosting plans. And even if you do get a 100% free one from a free domain provider…

Semrush has always been my go-to for all things SEO and keyword research. And it recently updated its platform with a brand-new interface that claims to be an all-in-one marketing toolkit, with tools for social media, advertising, and content marketing, along with its signature SEO tools. In this Semrush review, I look at all those…

At a previous job, I helped manage a content marketing strategy for a D2C brand’s website. And one of our biggest challenges was figuring out how to constantly publish fresh content for our growing audience. That’s where the idea of content repurposing came in, and it’s since been one of the biggest lessons I learned…

When the time comes to make that big step to becoming a real, professional entrepreneur, one of the things you’ll want to do is upgrade your personal email address to a professional one, aka, one with a custom domain (ideally your business name). Some well-known professional email address examples are tcook@apple.com (Tim Cook of Apple)…

Earned media is any free publicity your business gets from outside sources, not from your own advertising efforts. It’s media that you organically “earn,” hence its name. Examples of earned media are mentions of your brand on social media, positive reviews of your business on your Google Business or Etsy profile, or positive coverage of…