Today, we’re taking you behind the scenes to share exactly how we do marketing here at Duo Collective. If you’ve been looking for a marketing plan example as you develop your own strategy, you’re in the right place.
Because yes, we teach SEO and branding, but we also live it — and we’re pulling back the curtain to show you what that actually looks like for a small team that’s growing, juggling motherhood, and building a brand rooted in creativity and connection.
Plus, you know we don’t keep secrets — we’ll tell you what works, what flopped, and where we’re doubling down in 2026.
This is by no means perfect—we constantly update and tweak our strategy, so don’t take this as “you have to do everything we do.” Because we all know not every strategy works for every business.
So feel free to pick and choose what you want to take away from this episode!
Let’s start with our workflow.
Here’s what’s tried, true, and consistent each week or month for us:
Podcast Drops Every Monday
We publicly said we’d have a new podcast episode every Monday, and for the most part, we’ve stuck to it. There have been a few times where we skipped a week because of a holiday, or we didn’t batch our episodes out far enough.
This is then repurposed into a blog post, a YouTube video, a YouTube Short, an Instagram Carousel, Stories (when we remember), and eventually a Pinterest Pin. We really make the most of this content!
But we don’t do it by ourselves:
- Blog Writer: Writes SEO optimized blog show notes (AKA what you’re reading right now!)
- Video Editor: YouTube & Shorts (the video you see embedded in this post)
- Podcast Editor + Podcast Audio (thanks, hubby!)
- Marketing Manager for Instagram and Pinterest
Always start at the top: What’s your long-form content going to be? YouTube video, podcast episode, blog post? Start there and repurpose for other platforms.
Emails Delivered Every Tuesday and Sunday
Our weekly newsletter is Tuesday Tips & Sips (soon to be changing!) You’ll still hear from us every week, but the format is changing.
We also have Sunday’s SEO Squeeze. You can get a sneak peek at this content in this blog post, and the emails are always reshared on Substack for the Archive.
We write all this content. Our Marketing Manager helps archive the Squeeze on Substack. We are not consistent at how we currently reshare our content here, but we should be!
Social Media… Which is basically just Instagram for us.
It’s our goal to post 3x per week on Instagram, but that doesn’t always happen.
We use Notion to track our content and schedule monthly or bi-monthly content planning meetings to think about our social strategy.
Our marketing manager creates posts, drafts copy, and publishes the posts. We show up in stories when we can or remember.
Pinterest… the easiest content to batch.
We repurpose everything we pin on Pinterest—nothing is ever unique for this platform. And that makes it really easy to batch content because we already have everything created.
Again, our marketing manager does all this for us. She batches content with Tailwind, and we are 2-4 weeks ahead.
We just started using Pinterest, so we’ll let you know how it goes for us!
Blogging…
We’re already posting weekly show notes on our blog, but we also sprinkle in extra blogs when we can. We’re constantly working to refresh relevant blogs, but right now our podcast is our shining star. It helps us stay consistent each week.
Things we are leaning into in 2026
Hopefully, that marketing plan example sparked some new ideas for you! Now we want to share what we’re exploring more in 2026.
- Paid Social Ads to our free content: We’ve done paid social ads for our launches and webinars, but not for our free content. We had great conversion rates when our ads were tied to launches, so we want to see how they do for normal freebies.
- Launch Windows and Webinars: We host paid webinars during our course launch window. We love doing them, but they’re usually thrown together at the last minute. We want to be more intentional with these moving forward.
- Guest Podcasts and Outreach: We were really good about this a few years ago and would love to get back into it.
- Dabbling in more PR opportunities: We want to find ways within our local community to be featured or work with the press—just finding ways to show up and get a little extra press.
- Quizzes: We love creating quizzes as freebies. Interact is our number one tool for this. Lately, we’ve struggled to think of good quiz topics, but we’re working with our team to brainstorm some good ones for you!
- Community: We’ve always loved being a part of our community in Minnesota. We always feel like we could do a little bit better, so we’ll be building off what we’ve already done in 2026.
- Mentorship: For our community and for ourselves! Find a mentorship program that’s truly going to help you in your business. We’ll have more to share on this later!
Things we don’t prioritize heavily
There are a couple of other things that are good marketing strategies if you like to do them, but we don’t prioritize them. Remember, this is just a marketing plan example!
- TikTok: Maybe we’ll change our minds one day, but we just are not into it.
- Reddit: We’re actually super interested in Reddit, especially Abbey, from an SEO perspective. It’s a very interesting marketing opportunity for small businesses and is really overlooked.
- LinkedIn: We haven’t prioritized it since our corporate days, but it’s something we \hope to dabble in 2026.
- Affiliate Marketing: It’s nice to have, but we don’t depend on it. Our affiliates are out there, but we don’t push it.
Why did we make these marketing decisions??
It wasn’t because we “felt like it.” We leaned into the data.
At the end of the day, we market Duo to build community, not just visibility. Our goal isn’t to grow for growth’s sake — it’s to connect with the right people and make marketing feel fun again.
ALSO… One of our biggest planning takeaways this year was remembering that just because something works for others doesn’t mean it’s right for us.
Here’s what the data told us:
Favorite ways to engage are email and the podcast.
“Tips & Sips” and “SEO Squeeze” are the most mentioned touchpoints. “Duo On Air” is consistently referenced as how people found or connected with us.
When people mentioned social media, it was almost always Instagram — but not as a discovery tool. It’s where they stay connected once they already know us.
What this means: Instagram is for nurturing, not acquiring.
When asked what they love most, people consistently mentioned:
- Our storytelling
- Actionable, educational content
- Our resources
- And the “realness” — the way we blend expertise with authenticity
What this means: Brand personality is our marketing differentiator.
People Want To Know Where to Start
This is what we hear all the time:
- “There’s so much to do — I don’t know where to start.”
- “I’m not sure what’s most important.”
- “It all feels like too much.”
What this means: There’s a huge opportunity for us to create content that simplifies, organizes, and prioritizes next steps — exactly why we are leaning into a quiz to help solve this.
Moving forward, this data is telling us…
- Clarity > Complexity (think: guided experiences like a quiz)
- Depth > Reach (keep nurturing our loyal base… it’s not always about growth and new.)
- Consistency > Volume
- Connection > Perfection (more storytelling, behind-the-scenes, and relatable Duo energy)
So, what’s next for you?
If you don’t have any data… get some. Quiz your audience. Look at what’s actually working instead of what everyone else says you “should” be doing.
Lean into what you love—the platforms, content, and rhythms that feel natural.
Lean out of what you hate—if it’s draining, it’s probably not working.
Marketing should feel good, not like a chore. Simplify your focus for the new year: do less, better.
Remember: your best marketing strategy is the one you’ll actually stick to.
We hope you enjoyed seeing behind the scenes of how we do marketing here at Duo and that it gave you a good marketing plan example to work from as you create your own!
Listen to us chat through our marketing workflow!
Apple Podcasts | Spotify
If you loved today’s episode of The Duo On Air Podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on your favorite platform and hit subscribe for those new episodes dropping every Monday — it helps more small business owners find us (and let’s be honest, that’s good SEO 😉).
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Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts with over 20+ years of combined experience working with big brands. They are educators and co-founders of Duo Collective; a boutique organic marketing agency specializing in SEO, branding, and custom websites for women-led small businesses and creative entrepreneurs.
Ready to grow your visibility and become unforgettable?
Learn more or work with our team here.
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