Happy Halloween! If you have a costume this year, send a pic. I love creative ideas. One year, I went as the Morton’s Salt girl (yellow raincoat and boots). It was raining so my mom came up with the idea. No one knew who I was supposed to be, but they still gave me candy, and I stayed dry!
Got a book to recommend? I’m compiling the annual book gift list for the Content Marketing Institute. Use this form to share your picks.
— Ann Gynn
The Hotline
Could Black Friday Work for My Solo Business?
🟩 ATTRACT → 🟧 CONVERT → ⬜ RETAIN → ⬛ AMPLIFY
Holiday shopping and Black Friday sales may seem like opportunities reserved for retailers. But solo entrepreneurs who sell expertise rather than merchandise shouldn't dismiss them so quickly.
Consumers are in a buying mood. And some business customers have year-end budgets to spend.
Better yet, taking advantage of that buying interest may not require creating anything new.
Jay Clouse, founder of Creator Science, shared a tale of two Black Fridays in a LinkedIn post this week. In 2024, he generated nearly $100,000 by selling his existing digital products with a personalized offer to each subscriber based on what they had already purchased.
In 2025, he took a different approach. He created a cohort-based course that he delivered the following month. That sale brought in about $33,000 — a two-thirds drop in revenue from the previous year.
Why the big difference?
Jay has a hypothesis: “Black Friday works better when you’re selling something your audience already knows exists. You’re not asking them to learn about something completely new AND make a purchase decision in a short window.”
It’s a good hypothesis for any time you want to generate short-term revenue — holidays or not:
Sell what you already offer. Remind your audience about services they know you provide. Don't require them to learn about something new before deciding to buy.
Start with existing customers. They already know the value you deliver. Could they benefit from another service, an additional project, or help with something they've been putting off?
Make it personal. Use what you know about a prospect's or customer's business to explain why your offer makes sense for them now.
For B2B service providers, that might mean offering a year-end strategy session, an audit, or a small project that helps a customer start the new year on stronger footing.
And don't forget the people who know about your services but haven't yet become customers. A smaller, clearly defined offering could make it easier for them to say yes.
Got a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition of The Hotline? Call or text Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.
The Challenge
This week: Choose one existing service and identify the customers or prospects most likely to benefit from it before year-end. Then create a short marketing campaign that gives them a reason to act now.
What I Did With AI This Week
I’m refreshing the marketing for my primary brand, G Force Communication. Claude and I are walking through all the components, and it creates documents to help. More importantly, I’ve asked it to create all the to-do lists and to schedule the time on my calendar.
Google Calendar now lets Claude add appointments marked as “free” time, so clients can still schedule calls during those blocks. A few months ago, it could create the appointments, but it couldn't designate them as “free.”
Have any AI tricks of your own? Hit reply, call, or text the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.
The Marketing Minute
Add a Feature
Don’t let your LinkedIn Featured section get stale. Add something new this week. Have something already published? Add the link, a headline, and a description. Don’t have anything new? Create an image highlighting something you’ve already done. Give your AI tool the relevant content and prompt it to generate an image. Then add a headline and description.
The Shortlist
🧭Simplified access: Linked is consolidating its menus into the Profile tab — analytics, saved posts, and settings — and the More tab — games, news, groups, events, newsletters, and video. Don’t see the change yet? The update is being rolled out.
🚀Startup partner: Harvard Business Review explores on how “a single individual enabled by AI can — at a very low cost — perform many activities needed to establish a startup quickly … generating product ideas, simulating customer interviews, building product prototypes …”
📉Traffic drop? No big deal: HubSpot lost about 80% of its organic blog traffic, yet revenue grew nearly 20% in 2025. Its CMO explains why the company is measuring success differently.
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Got a question you’d like me to answer in The Hotline? Email me or DM me on LinkedIn. Even better: Text or leave a message on the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.