The WordStream Blog

Free tools, calculators, and apps are incredibly useful for engagement and lead generation. But until recently, they were out of reach for most marketers and small businesses (unless you also happen to be an expert coder). Vibe coding changed all that. Now, a services business can spin up a professional project calculator. A yoga studio can create a one-off webpage to promote their latest new-client special.

Most businesses describe themselves differently from how their customers do. A roofing company talks about “comprehensive exterior restoration services.” Customers just search “roof leak after storm.” A dentist promotes “comprehensive orthodontic solutions,” while the patient on the phone is asking how much Invisalign costs. A marketing agency pitches “full-funnel demand generation.” The prospect just wants more leads.

Meta Ads’ reach is much bigger than it used to be. Originally, posts showed up in the right-hand rail of the desktop version of Facebook, and that’s about it. But now, after years of expanding placements on Facebook, adding Instagram, launching Threads, and expanding into the Meta Ads network, your ads can reach your target audience in tons of places across the web.

Apple introduced Maps ads in August of 2026, and it’s causing quite a shake-up in the online advertising world. Advertisers don’t get to be early adopters of a new advertising tool on an established platform like Apple Maps every day. If you’re in charge of marketing for a local business—whether you’ve been running search ads for decades or are new to the game—it’s worth getting to know more about this fresh advertising channel.

Meta Ads is right up there with Google Ads and Microsoft Ads when it comes to the pillar ad publishers businesses are taking advantage of. In fact, over 90% of small businesses we surveyed in our small business trends report said they use Facebook for marketing and advertising. But running ads via Meta Business Suite to reach audiences on apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger can be as confusing as it is rewarding.

The goal of every Google Ads campaign is to help your business grow and thrive. There are certainly different stages throughout the funnel that impact that result, but the one most folks are familiar with is a conversion-focused campaign. Despite having conversion tracking features in place for two decades now, it’s still not a clear-cut science on which portion of your marketing efforts drove the actual conversion. That’s where attribution models come into play.

Calling customer reviews powerful is an understatement. A few sentences in a review can influence consumers more than an entire website. A difference of one star—or even a half-star—can be all it takes for a shopper to choose a competitor over you. Not to mention that reviews are a top local SEO ranking factor, and they can boost your AI visibility! To get all those benefits, though, you need to ask your customers for reviews.

The businesses getting recommended by AI aren’t always the ones ranking highest on Google, and most businesses have no idea where they stand. When customers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity things like “best HVAC company near me” or “who do people recommend for emergency dental care in Tampa,” some businesses consistently appear in the answers, and others don’t. That’s because AI recommendations can pull information from more sources, and in a few different ways, than traditional search algorithms.

“Always be testing” is a great motto to live by when it comes to Google Ads. There’s almost always some new (or old) feature you can experiment with in your account to see if you get better performance. The problem is sometimes knowing what to test. Depending on your Google Ads account performance situation, there is a slew of answers. In this post, I want to help you find your way through the next phase of testing in your Google Ads account with some experiment ideas.

Google Ads work reliably for businesses that meet three conditions: commercial-intent search demand exists for what you sell, your unit economics support the cost per click in your vertical, and you can run the account with weekly discipline or pay someone who can. They don’t work for every business. Our in-depth 2026 benchmarking study of 13,474 US Google Ads campaigns found that the average conversion rate was 8.18% and the average cost per lead was $66.69.