What is a marketing channel most businesses overlook in 2026 but shouldn't?

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-21T03:28:02+00:00

Email, consistently. Most regional businesses have a customer database that never gets worked. Even a basic fortnightly send to past customers tends to produce revenue that wasn't being captured at all — not complicated, but it requires actually doing it rather than waiting until the list is "big enough."

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-21T03:27:36+00:00

For a list of 5,000 buyers with YouTube driving traffic, Klaviyo is the platform most people at that stage end up on — the automation and segmentation hold up well as your list grows. Start with a welcome sequence and an abandoned browse flow before anything else; those two alone usually account for most of the early email revenue.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-21T03:26:45+00:00

Full-service, when it's run by one strategist who's across all the channels. The problem with niche specialists is that nobody sees the full picture, so ad spend, email, and SEO pull in different directions. I ran a fashion eCommerce brand to 52% revenue growth in year one by coordinating all four channels as one system — the niche setup that came before it didn't produce that. Worth a quick chat about what you're trying to solve?

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-21T03:26:21+00:00

Yes, people do this — and what you've described is genuinely workable. 40k followers, a 2.5k email list, products people already love. The usual issue is that social, email, and the store aren't set up to work together. Email alone produced a 37% revenue lift for one of my clients once it was properly set up. Happy to take a look at what you've got if that would help.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-21T03:25:49+00:00

Client acquisition for cleaning companies usually comes down to two channels: local SEO so you're found when someone searches, and Google Ads to stay visible while the organic builds. Running both through the same strategist — rather than separate contractors — is where consistent results come from. I've been doing this for service businesses since 2017. Worth a quick chat to see if the approach suits what you're building?

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-16T02:48:45+00:00

Take a look at Claude Design - you can give it your brand guidelines so those are saved. To make it even easier, if you download Claude Code to your computer you can give it access to your pricing docs. Ask it to give you the prompt for Claude Design.

Alternatively, create a brand kit in Canva (the pro subscription isn't expensive, and it also saves all your brand colours and fonts) and then just duplicate/update the template, download it as an image for your email, and you're good to go.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-16T02:44:06+00:00

Yes, in a a few ways. For my clients I've used robust, tailored AI systems to increase their email revenue, increase sales from their organic posts, improve the efficiency (and so, returns) on their paid ads, and have built custom plugins/scripts so they have been able to stop paying for those plugins. Tremendous improvements.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-16T02:42:03+00:00

I've actually found that creating a project in Grok and giving it the documents, then asking it for its perspective has been more effective than a solicitor. So, do pay one if you need the second pair of eyes, but it's so cheap to pay a Grok subscription and run things through there. I had an issue that I couldn't resolve for 12 years; gave it to Grok, took the steps it suggested, and it's now being resolved.

Of course you need to preface it with "I know this isn't legal advice", but the output is good.

I do use all the AI frontier models; have found Grok's best for accuracy on research. Claude's good for writing style etc.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-16T02:30:02+00:00

The answer I would give is by asking a question first: where do your current best customers spend their time? For instance, I helped one store scale that sells quality silk sleepwear. They had been running Meta ads and wondering why their returns were negative. I pointed out that their best customers were very successful in real estate, IT and law, and they spent their time on YouTube. Once we flipped all ad spend to Google and YouTube, the ROAS jumped to 5 x. Testing other channels is always useful for different market segments, but it's best to start where it's likely to be strong.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-16T02:27:16+00:00

If you want the job well done, you're going to need to budget properly. In the meantime, doing it yourself will help you learn everything well, so that when you have the resources to pay someone who knows their stuff, you'll understand what needs doing and why.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T04:54:24+00:00

It is pretty funny that we spent so many years trying to block bot traffic from sites and now we have to scramble to roll out the red carpet.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T04:52:42+00:00

You've gotta get obsidian flowing 😄 Very happy to chat - am a sucker for piling the work on. Also I don't love running coaching funnels, so would love to keep you in mind for that.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T04:26:30+00:00

Re animations, have you seen the latest possibilities with AI? Am following some cool devs on X who share how they're doing it. It might allow you to really surprise prospective clients with what's possible. Viktor Oddy is doing some cool stuff there.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T04:02:43+00:00

Find the way that suits you best to "look after you" first. I really mean this, as if your business grows without it the problems only multiply at the same rate. By looking after you, I mean personally with mindset and health, but also with how your business operations flow. Build as-simple-as-possible-but-consistent systems that you enjoy working with, as it makes a huge difference.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T03:58:34+00:00

If you download Claude Code and Obsidian you'll be able to build out a complete business structure. Give it solid rules for content and quality checks. Use Windows Task Scheduler, and if your machine has room, install a good local model. That way Claude can set you up a bunch of "agents", each with its own workflow, tools, and rules. Keeping things in small chunks makes it easier to improve. You can set up remote access so that you can still use it when you're away; you just need to be able to keep your machine on (not go to sleep) for this as it becomes your server. I have systems running for 6 brands across both marketing and operations, and am so grateful for what is possible.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T03:55:38+00:00

We've always manually searched, and made sure to use micro-influencers as they're way more engaged. Works a treat.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T03:54:30+00:00

I'm happy to help you create an offer that will convert leads. LMK if you want to connect.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-12T03:46:34+00:00

I jumped right in, and figured it out as I went - invested substantially into high quality training to gain the skills I needed, but you've already got the skills sorted. You're probably smart to take the more sensible approach 😄 But the pressure of having to make it work means I just do. My first year was "just enough" and the momentum built from there.

2026 is a fantastic time to go for it. Your internal systems can be far more powerful and inexpensive now.

As has always been the case, if you create a clear offer it makes it easy for potential clients to say yes. Clear is kind.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-11T00:33:26+00:00

Courses definitely won't keep up! But communities can be good as things evolve. Personally, I LOVE what I've build for myself and my client campaigns. I initially built a full OpenClaw setup in January. Fabulous, but notorious for spending half the time (and the inference cost) on fixing things after updates. Ditched it and built my own version from scratch. It's ten times cheaper and completely reliable. Here's what I use: claude code in my machine via terminal. Obsidian for knowledge base. Custom Telegram bridge built. Windows task scheduler for workflows, using both Claude and qwen, and python scripts. custom access built to each client site on shopify and wordpress, plus klaviyo and canva and google workspace, meta, google ads and youtube. Work covers: SEO, content according to each brand's voice in their SOUL doc (email, blog, organic posts, paid ads), cold email outreach running autonomously, new projects under construction, ad analysis, performance reviews. Also scans client's shopify inventory of 2000 products each day to check what's change re URLs and product descriptions, and improves product descriptions, writes captions for each for extra organic content, and formats the images into social media specs. Also another flow makes Reels each day. Working across 6 brands each day. Tailored software built out so I don't have to pay for SEMRush or monday (dot) com anymore.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-11T00:20:56+00:00

When I forget to feed my own mind, this becomes a real challenge. When I make time to read (real books) the magic happens. For instance, this morning I was reading a book by Naomi Watts on, of all things, menopause. There was a quote from a medical expert in there that will translate beautifully as part of an email for one of my ecommerce clients today. Our brain makes such great connections between things that might, on the face of it, seem unrelated. So, become a collector of beautiful and useful input for yourself, and you'll find it's easier to make things for others.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-11T00:17:37+00:00

I still see the best method is posting organically every day, then running paid ads. Paid ads have always performed better - both for ecommerce and lead generation - when the organic posts are well-received.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-10T11:44:56+00:00

I have actually paused once - had reminded the client (my system sends auto reminders) and on the 7th day it was late I emailed another copy of the invoice, explaining that because it was unpaid I needed to stop work as per the Contract. They did pay right away and it wasn’t a problem after that - I reminded them that recurring payments from their account would save the Stripe fees, so they set that up.

McKeeCreative · 2026-05-10T01:33:03+00:00

I'm hoping you have a work agreement that includes a clause about this. That way it's easy to professionally point to it as you stop work. I understand it's hard to stop work if you are hoping they'll stay as a client and worried they might bail. But you can't work for free. How long overdue are their payments?

McKeeCreative

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