Module 6: Your 90-day budget marketing plan

Choosing your two channels

Set one measurable goal per channel for the 90 days: "50 Google reviews" (not "more reviews"), "500 email subscribers," "10 guest appearances booked." Specific, countable, 90-day. Vague goals produce vague effort.

Review your channel choice at day 30, not day 90. If a channel is clearly wrong — zero traction despite real effort — swap it early; sunk cost is not a strategy. But don't swap at day 10 because week two felt slow. Thirty days of consistent effort is the minimum honest test. Most channels that work show some signal by day 30, even if it's small.

The weekly rhythm

Here's a sample 5-hour week. Monday (1 hr): create the week's content — write the post, shoot the video, schedule the social. Wednesday (1 hr): engagement — respond to every review and comment, be helpful in one community, follow up on partnership conversations. Friday (1 hr): outreach — 10 personal messages to past customers or prospects. Plus 2 flexible hours for the guest pitch, the GBP post, the email send — whatever the week's priority is.

The non-negotiable parts: the content ships weekly (consistency is the strategy), reviews get asked and answered (the flywheel), and outreach happens (the fast money). Everything else flexes. Put these as recurring calendar blocks — Monday 9–10am content, Wednesday 4–5pm engagement, Friday 2–3pm outreach — and defend them like client appointments.

Track weekly in one row of a spreadsheet: content shipped (y/n), reviews gained, outreach messages sent, new email subscribers, and — the only number that ultimately matters — new customers who mentioned a marketing touchpoint. Five minutes every Friday. What gets measured gets repeated.

When life disrupts the rhythm — and it will — don't try to catch up; just restart the current week. Missing one Monday doesn't require a makeup session, it requires showing up next Monday. The businesses that win at budget marketing aren't the ones with perfect streaks; they're the ones that resume fastest after a break.

Knowing when to spend

The typical graduation path: months 1–3, all free, prove the offer and the message. Months 4–6, tiny tests ($100–300/month) amplifying winners. Month 6+, scale what has measured ROI and keep the free engines running — they don't stop being valuable just because you can afford ads now. The businesses with the best ad performance are usually the ones with the strongest free foundations, because their messaging was battle-tested before a dollar was spent.