More marketing.
Same headcount.
All the marketing horsepower of adding a bunch of headcount.. without actually adding the headcount. Competitive intel, strategy, thought leadership, social, creative, ads, research. It's like hiring a whole marketing team. Ish.
Agencies are great. Retainers are.. less great.
You've got three options for getting real marketing done. Two of them are expensive. One of them is us.
| Marketing agency | New marketing hire | Headcountish | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Retainer, plus hourlies, plus "scope" | Salary, benefits, laptop, snacks | A fraction of either. Ask us. |
| Time to first post | A "discovery phase." Then a quarter. | 90 days and an onboarding deck | Days. A couple of weeks, tops. |
| Who watches your competitors | An intern, on Tuesdays | Whoever has a free afternoon | It does. Every week. Automatically. |
| Who writes the first draft | Someone you've never met | Your one new person, for everything | Already written when you open the calendar |
| Who has final say | Depends who's on the account | You, if you have time to review | You. Always. Nothing goes out without a human. |
| Ads that follow the traction | Monthly report, quarterly tweak | "I'll look at it Friday" | Winners get budget. Losers get benched. Continuously. |
| Takes PTO | Your account manager does | Yep | Nope. |
The whole team. Ish.
Every hat a marketing department wears, worn at the same time, by one tool. Here's who you're "hiring."
Competitive intel
Reads your competitors' blogs, socials, and ads every week so you don't have to doom-scroll on their behalf.
Industry research
Tracks what your industry is buzzing about and ranks it by momentum. Your ideas list is never empty again.
Strategy
Turns what the market's saying into what you should say next. Every calendar slot gets the three strongest options, with receipts.
Social
Weekly posts for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Each caption written for its network, not copy-pasted across all three.
Creative
Graphics and video built straight from the copy, in your brand colors, sized for every platform. No Canva marathon required.
Thought leadership
Blogs, infographics, and downloadable kits.. gated behind a form, so the download becomes a lead.
Paid ads
Facebook and Google ads that put more money behind what's working and pull it from what isn't. Automatically.
AI search
Content shaped so ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI answers actually mention you when someone asks "who's good at this?"
The flywheel. Minus the buzzword.
Six things happen on a loop. The only one that needs you is number four.
Watch
Every week it scans your competitors and industry sources: blogs, YouTube, podcasts, socials, newsletters. Anything new gets flagged.
Decide
Every slot on your calendar gets the three strongest things you could say there, each with a "Why this?" drawer showing the exact posts and articles behind it.
Draft
Copy, graphics, video. Written in your voice, sized for the platform, links checked. Already done when you open it.
Approve
You read it. You press the button. Or edit it, swap it, skip it. Nothing goes out without a human. Ever.
Publish
Social posts, blogs, emails, ads, and gated kits go out on schedule. Leads land in your CRM with the source attached.
Learn
Engagement, downloads, and leads flow back in. What's getting traction gets more budget. What isn't gets benched. Then it starts over, smarter.
Handheld for a couple of weeks. Then it's all yours.
Real talk, we don't like dragging it out either. Our team sets everything up with you, then hands over the keys. From there it's a couple of clicks a week.
Kickoff
We meet your team, learn your voice, and get the login stuff out of the way.
We build your brand brain
Voice, personas, your features and the problems they solve, approved links. The stuff every draft is checked against.
We load the watchlist
Competitor sites, socials, industry feeds. Paste a link, it's tracked. The first scan looks back 90 days.
We approve together
Your first week of posts, side by side. You'll see how the calendar thinks and tune the cadence.
Keys handed over
You approve. It does the rest. We're a message away if you need us, but honestly, you won't need us much.
Works for the trades. Works for tech. Works for the people who do marketing for a living.
Three very different businesses, one calendar. Pick the one that looks like you.
A plumbing company
Seasonal jobs, local competitors, and "best plumber near me" in the age of AI answers.
See the plumbing playbook π‘A vacation rental software company
Eighteen features, seven loud competitors, and a trade show every six weeks.
See the software playbook πAn SEO agency
Everyone's marketing but their own. Sound familiar?
See the agency playbookYes, there's AI under the hood. No, we won't make it weird.
AI is how we do it, not what we're selling. What we're selling is a marketing department that shows up every Monday with the week already planned. Here's how we keep it from going rogue.
- Approval-gated, always. Every post, ad, email, and blog needs a human to press the button.
- Receipts on every idea. "Why this?" shows the competitor post or article behind each suggestion.
- Link-checked copy. If a caption says "learn more," the link actually goes to the thing.
- Full audit log. Every decision, human or otherwise, written down. Plus a kill switch for every channel.
- On-brand, on purpose. Your voice, your colors, your approved links. No off-script surprises.
Ready to add headcount? Ish.
Tell us about your business. We'll tell you what it costs and how fast we can have you up and running.
Get a quoteThe plumber who's always "meaning to post more."
Great at drains. Terrible at Instagram. Not because they don't want to.. because the truck's already full and the phone's already ringing. Here's how Headcountish runs the marketing while they run the routes.
- Size
- 4 trucks, 9 people, 1 dispatcher who also "does the Facebook"
- Market
- One metro area plus the suburbs
- Bread & butter
- Water heaters, drain cleaning, emergency calls, repipes
- Marketing today
- Google ads on autopilot, a post every few months, a website from 2019
Example company. Any resemblance to your plumber is a compliment.
The problem
Every plumber in town is fighting for the same three searches. The ones winning aren't better plumbers. They're louder.
- "Best plumber near me" now gets answered by AI. Google's AI answer and ChatGPT pick a few names. If your site doesn't say what you do in plain language, you're not on the list.
- Seasons change. The ads don't. Same drain-cleaning ad running in January while every water heater in town is dying.
- The franchise down the road posts daily. They've got a marketing department. You've got a dispatcher with a phone.
- Zero idea what's working. Leads come in. From where? Shrug.
Week one on the calendar
This is what Riverbend opens on Monday morning. Everything's drafted. They approve over coffee.
Draft ready
Waiting on you
Live
Scheduled
Ideas ready
What it watches
Riverbend pasted six links during onboarding. Now every week, it reads what they publish, spots what's getting traction, and folds it into the ideas.
What it makes
Three pieces from one week. All of it drafted, designed, and link-checked before anyone at Riverbend saw it.
If it's 10+ years old, the "weird noise" is it asking for help. We do same-week replacements, tankless or tank, and we haul the old one away.
Book a checkup before the first freeze. Link in comments π
12 things to do before the first freeze
Every download lands in Riverbend's CRM as a lead, tagged by source.
A cold snap hit Tuesday. Emergency-call ads started converting. Budget moved to them by Wednesday. Riverbend didn't touch a thing.
What changes
Same trucks. Same crew. Different phone.
Before
- Posts when someone remembers
- One Google ad, unchanged since spring
- No idea what the franchise is up to
- Website doesn't show up when AI gets asked
- Leads come in. Source: "the internet"
After
- Five pieces a week, approved in ten minutes over coffee
- Ads that shift with the weather, not the calendar
- A weekly nudge when a competitor makes a move
- Service pages rewritten so AI answers can actually quote them
- Every lead tagged: ad, post, checklist download, or email
Got trucks? Get a quote.
Tell us your market and your bread-and-butter jobs. We'll show you your first week before you commit to anything.
Get a quoteEighteen features. Seven loud competitors. One marketing person.
B2B software for vacation rental managers is a crowded room, and everyone in it is shouting about the same three things. Here's how Headcountish gets a lean software team heard without hiring a content squad.
- What they sell
- Property management software for short-term rental operators
- Features
- 18, and counting. Half of them nobody's posted about in a year.
- Competitors
- Seven well-funded names with full marketing teams
- Marketing today
- One person, a HubSpot login, and a trade show every six weeks
Example company. Built from a real pilot, names changed.
The problem
Software companies don't lack things to say. They lack the hours to say them, and a system for deciding which one comes first.
- Features launch, then vanish. The dev team ships something great. It gets one post. Then it's forgotten while the competitor promotes their version for six months.
- Competitors move fast. When one of them starts talking about direct booking, you want a take out that week. Not that quarter.
- Three networks, one caption. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram get the same paragraph. LinkedIn is confused. Instagram is bored.
- Thought leadership is a someday project. The toolkit that would generate leads for a year is "on the list."
- Operators ask AI which PMS to pick. If your feature pages don't say which problem they solve, the AI picks someone else.
Week one on the calendar
Every week, one feature gets the spotlight across all three networks. One deep dive shares a story across all three too, pointing at the blog or toolkit. The feature rotation makes sure nothing gets ignored for 90 days.
Draft ready
Waiting on you
Scheduled
Scheduled
Ideas ready
What it watches
Seven competitors' blogs, YouTube channels, and Instagram accounts. Industry podcasts and newsletters. And StayStack's own help center, so a new feature turns into a post idea the week it ships.
What it makes
Short-form always names the feature that fixes the problem. Long-form leads with value and earns the download.
Yet every month, operators export, reconcile, re-export, and email PDFs one at a time. That's not accounting. That's a hostage situation.
We wrote up how the best-run portfolios close their books in an afternoon, and where the time actually goes. Link in comments.
Templates, a monthly checklist, and the 5 numbers owners actually read
Exported as a branded PDF. Downloads land in HubSpot with a fit score, then feed the sales team's recommendations.
The specific ads beat the generic one. Budget followed. The generic one got benched.
What changes
Same one marketing person. Now they run a department instead of being one.
Before
- Features promoted once at launch, then never
- A competitor's big announcement goes unanswered for weeks
- One caption, three networks, no fit
- Toolkits that stay "on the list"
- Leads scored by gut feel
After
- Every feature promoted at least once a quarter, automatically
- A nudge the week a competitor moves, with a drafted response
- Three captions, each written for its network, one approval
- One gated toolkit a month, exported as a branded PDF
- Leads scored for fit and intent, with a recommended next step for sales
Got features nobody's heard of? Get a quote.
Send us your website and your competitors. We'll build your first calendar so you can see how it thinks before you decide.
Get a quoteThe cobbler's kids have no shoes. The SEO agency has no content.
You spend all day making clients rank. Your own blog hasn't been touched since the last algorithm update. We get it. Here's how Headcountish markets the marketers.
- What they sell
- SEO and AI-search optimization for mid-size brands
- Team
- 12 strategists who write brilliant content.. for other people
- Competitors
- Every agency with a LinkedIn account and a hot take
- Marketing today
- Referrals, a founder who posts when inspired, and a newsletter that "goes out monthly"
Example company. The irony is intentional.
The problem
Agencies sell expertise. Expertise that nobody sees is just an opinion. And the industry moves too fast for "we'll post when it's slow."
- Billable hours win. Every time. Your own content loses the fight for your strategists' afternoons, every single week.
- The industry changes on a Tuesday. A core update drops, AI Overviews expand, a new search engine launches. The agencies with a take out that week get the calls.
- Founder-dependent. If the founder's on vacation, the LinkedIn goes quiet. Prospects notice.
- You sell AI search readiness.. and don't show up in AI search. Awkward.
- Case studies stuck in a Google Doc. The proof exists. It's just never packaged.
Week one on the calendar
Heavy on LinkedIn, because that's where Rankly's buyers live. Light on Instagram. The cadence is theirs to set.
Draft ready
Waiting on you
Live Β· +20%
Scheduled
3 ideas ready
What it watches
The search industry publishes constantly. Rankly doesn't have to read it. The tool does, then ranks the topics by how fast they're gaining momentum.
What it makes
Fast takes when the industry moves. Evergreen proof the rest of the time. A gated audit that turns readers into calls.
We pulled 40 client pages that moved. The winners had one thing in common, and it wasn't word count.
Full breakdown on the blog. Link in comments.
The 20-point checklist we run on every new client
Every download is a warm lead with a website attached. Sales gets a recommended opener for each one.
Proof and tools beat slogans. The slogan got benched. The checklist got the budget.
What changes
Strategists stay billable. The agency finally practices what it preaches.
Before
- Content only when the founder feels like it
- Industry news reacted to.. eventually
- Case studies trapped in docs
- A newsletter that's "monthly" in theory
- Selling AI-search readiness while invisible to AI search
After
- Four LinkedIn posts a week, founder approves in five minutes
- A drafted take within days of any big industry move
- One packaged case study a month, chart included
- A newsletter that actually goes out, built from the month's top themes
- Rankly's own pages structured so AI answers cite them
Shoes for the cobbler's kids. Get a quote.
Send us your site and the agencies you keep losing pitches to. We'll show you what your first month looks like.
Get a quoteLet's talk numbers.
Every business is a little different, so pricing is too. Tell us the basics and our team will come back with a quote and a timeline. No discovery phase. No 40-slide deck.
What happens next
- We reply within one business day with a price and a start date.
- If you like it, we book the kickoff. Onboarding takes days to a couple of weeks.
- You approve your first week of posts with us sitting next to you.
- Then it's yours. A couple of clicks a week. More marketing. Same headcount.
Sent. π
A real human will get back with you soon.
And by soon, we mean faster than you'll beat the high score on this game. Prove us wrong.
Tap the game or press space to start and jump.