For the $2M–$10M business that's exhausted from marketing overwhelm
Refreshed Edition
The 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success
You've tried the tactics. None of them stuck.
New website, better agency, more content, a new AI tool. And still the same flat results. At some point the question stops being "which tactic" and starts being "why isn't any of it adding up."
The 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success is a complete operating picture of small business marketing, condensed into a single afternoon of reading.
Instant digital download & start reading today.
Written by John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing, and Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, from 20 years of watching small businesses actually grow.
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The book that gave small businesses a system.
Now refreshed for 2026.
The original 7 Steps worked because it gave founders something almost nobody was offering at the time: a complete system they could actually run. One that connected the pieces instead of adding more of them.
This refresh adds what was missing from the first version, names what was left implicit, and tells you the truth about where AI belongs in your marketing.
Here's what most founders are actually dealing with:
You're running ads and doing SEO and posting on LinkedIn and maybe a podcast. You have opinions about each tactic. You have a history of what worked and what didn't.
What you probably don't have is a clear answer to 3 questions.
Who exactly are you for? What do you do that your competitors don't? What's the single message that ties those together?
Without those answers, every tactic you're running is doing its own job. They're not compounding.
Duct Tape Marketing calls this Random Acts of Marketing. It's the most common condition in small business marketing. Budget and effort won’t fix it, but a system will.
Inside the book:
50 pages of concentrated
no-fluff content focused on actionable steps.
The Founder Portrait
Four questions that surface what's actually working in your business and what you've been carrying that you should drop.
The Marketing Hourglass
The complete customer journey framework, from first discovery to loyal referral.
The Random Acts of Marketing diagnostic
A fast gut-check on whether your tactics have a strategy underneath them or not.
One specific action per chapter
you can do before the week is out.
The truth about where AI belongs
in your marketing and where it'll make things worse.
What you'll read (and use):
Twenty years of small business marketing, distilled into a system any founder can run.
The founder gets clear first
The upstream variable in every working marketing system is the founder's clarity. Before you touch strategy, there's work to do here. Most marketing skips it entirely. This book doesn't.
Strategy before tactics
Three things have to exist and be in alignment. Most businesses have one. Some have two. Almost none have all three working together.
Build a presence worth being found
AI assistants are now answering your customers' questions before they ever get to Google. Most businesses have no idea whether they show up in those answers, or how they're described when they do.
Create content that earns trust
Content for its own sake produces noise. Content mapped to how buyers actually make decisions produces leads.
Generate leads from channels you own
Rented platforms amplify. They don't replace the channels that belong to you.
Turn customers into the growth engine
Most businesses over-invest in acquisition and leave the back half of the hourglass empty. That's where most of the growth is.
Run it like an operating system
Marketing is three systems running in parallel on a shared strategic foundation.
Instant digital download. One afternoon of reading.
What happens when businesses run the system.
"Our visibility skyrocketed almost immediately. We now have a clear picture and roadmap for the future and our business is booming."
Jake Schloegel
President & CEO, Schloegel Design Remodel
"[Duct Tape Marketing's teachings] have given me a clear view of my business, what I needed, how I could move forward, and what was working and what wasn't."
Leigh Shulman
Founder, The Inspired Writer Community
"Duct Tape Marketing is a big part of my firm's success. First it was the books, then an assessment, then a long-term coaching relationship. I would not be where I am today without their insights and focused counsel."
Jack McGuiness
Relationship Impact
From the team that has been doing this for 20 years.
John Jantsch wrote the original Duct Tape Marketing more than two decades ago. Sara Nay has spent 15 years inside the methodology, applying it and refining it with real businesses every week.
The tactics have changed. The tools have changed. The channels have changed. What hasn't: a small business without a system can't be saved by any of them. One with a system can use almost any of them.
John Jantsch
Founder, Duct Tape Marketing. Author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Ultimate Marketing Engine, and more. Host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Twenty-plus years helping small businesses build systems that stick.
Sara Nay
CEO, Duct Tape Marketing. Author of Uncahined: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. Fifteen years inside the methodology; applying it, stress-testing it, and refining it with real small businesses every week. The practitioner behind the system.
Read it in order the first time. Use it as a diagnostic after that.
Every chapter ends with a single honest signal, one question designed to tell you, without flattery, whether that step is installed in your business or leaking.
And one specific thing to do before the week is over.
Seven honest actions to build a real system.