Social media marketing that actually makes money

Your social media is fine. That’s the problem. Here’s what you got wrong:

You hired someone young because they’re fluent in social media, and they are. Platform-fluent. What nobody taught them is what makes social media actually work: the difference between a post that gets likes and a post that brings in customers. That’s a different skill, and it’s the only one that matters. Not a knock on them. Nobody taught them, and nobody was going to. We make them fluent in results.

That’s us. One video call a month with your marketing person, recorded and transcribed. They walk out knowing exactly what to post, what to say, and why. Nobody outside the building knows we’re there. They just see the posts start working.

One flat monthly number. No contract, cancel anytime. And if we’ve already talked about this in person, everything we said is on this page.

Why What You’ve Tried Hasn’t Worked

The hire on their own. You gave a smart young person the login and said “do our social.” They’ve done what they know: the trends, the sounds, the formats. Six months in, the posts are fine, and the business hasn’t moved. Fluency in the platforms was never the missing piece. Knowing what makes a post bring in a customer was.

The agency. You paid someone to make content about a business they’ve been inside twice. It looked great and it sounded like nobody. The person who actually knows your regulars, your Tuesdays, and your specials was already on your payroll, and nobody was helping them.

The online course, the YouTube videos, asking ChatGPT. Your marketing person has tried all three, and they all teach the same thing: how to use Instagram and TikTok. Your person already knows how to use Instagram and TikTok. What they teach is how to get views. Views aren’t customers. What none of them teach is how a local business turns a post into someone walking through the door. That’s the thing businesses all over the country pay us to do for them every month, and fly us out to film. Same playbook. This time it lands in your employee’s head instead.

Hiring a niece. She’s smart, she’s on her phone all day, and she’s family, so she was easy to say yes to. She’s in exactly the same spot as any other hire: she knows the apps, and nobody has taught her what makes social media bring in customers. It’s not a knock on her. It’s the same gap, with a harder conversation attached.

Why It’s Called Secret Agent

Three reasons, all literal.

Nobody outside the building knows we’re there. We’re not in your feed, your captions, or your credits. Your marketing person runs the account, and whoever’s on camera is someone from your building, not ours. Your customers and your competitors see your posts getting better, and that’s all they see. When they ask how it got so good, you get to smile.

We work through your marketing hire, not around them. An agency replaces the insider with outsiders. We do the opposite. Once a month we brief the person who’s already inside your business, and they carry it out the other thirty days. They get the skill, it stays with them, and you get the credit.

Your business sets the agenda, not the trends. Every briefing starts with how business is actually going: what’s slow, what’s coming, what you wish more people knew you did. Your marketing person brings that in, because they’re there every day. If you’d rather tell us yourself, a text is all it takes, and if you’d rather never hear from us, that works too.

Every great marketing person has a secret agent. Now yours does too.

What A Secret Agent Actually Does

One video call a month with your marketing person. The briefing. That’s the whole thing, on purpose. You’re welcome on it, and you never have to be. We look at what went out, what it did, and what it should have done. Then we work out the next month together, specifically: what to post, what to say, who should say it, what to film on the busy Saturday, which questions customers keep asking that should become videos. When the call ends, your person knows exactly what to do, and they go do it.

Recorded and transcribed, every time. The recording and the transcript are theirs. That’s the plan, in their own words and ours, and nothing we cover has to be remembered. Six months in, they have a searchable archive of everything they’ve learned. You can read it, too, whenever you want to know what’s happening.

The stuff nobody teaches them. What actually makes social media work for a business, which is a different thing from what makes it work for an influencer. How to get anyone in the building to talk to a camera like a person, whether that’s them, you, or the cook. One real question per video, answered in the first sentence, because that’s what makes a stranger trust you. Why the same three things, posted every week, beat twenty ideas posted once. How to use your regulars, your street, your Saturday. How to tell whether a post did something for the business, not just for the account.

How business is going is the compass. Not followers, not a dashboard. Every call opens with the real state of the place: slow Tuesdays, a catering season coming, a new hire you need, the thing you wish more people knew you did. Your marketing person knows most of it because they’re there, and anything they don’t know, they ask you before the call. That’s the month’s assignment, and it’s what keeps the posts about your business instead of about the algorithm.

What we don’t do. We don’t post for you, edit for you, or run your account. Your marketing person does the work, and they get good at it. That’s the point. If you would rather we did all of it, that’s MAVEN Top Banana, and it’s a different thing at a different price.

Why We Can Teach This

We’ve planned, filmed, edited, and posted more than 20,000 videos for local businesses all over the country, in the past three years alone. We’ve been building businesses for clients since 2009. We run our own hometown media platforms, where the whole game is knowing what a town actually wants to watch and read. We built the scheduling tool we post with, Unbusied. And all of it comes down to one thing we’ve learned over and over: what makes a stranger trust a business they’ve never walked into.

Your marketing person gets all of that, one call at a time, and gets to keep it forever.

The Number

MAVEN Secret Agent is $999 a month. One flat number, no contract, cancel anytime.

For scale, here’s what we charge to do it for you: MAVEN Top Banana, our done-for-you social media, is $4,444 a month, and it’s the right answer when you don’t have the person. Secret Agent is the same know-how at $999, because your marketing person does the work. This is for when you have the person.

You’re not buying an hour. You’re buying everything we’ve learned since 2009 pointed at your business, landing in the head of the person who’s there every day, and staying there in a transcript they can search forever.

The Only Guarantee

We don’t promise followers, and you should run from anyone who does. Here’s what we promise instead: no contract, ever. If a call wasn’t worth it, cancel before the next one. That’s the whole guarantee, and it’s the one that keeps us honest every single month, because we have to earn the next call on this one.

Let’s Handle The Objections

“I’m already paying someone to do this.” Right. You made the big investment, the person. What nobody’s paying for is direction, and without it the investment sits there posting trends. This is the part that makes the person you already pay actually pay off.

“Can’t they just learn this on YouTube?” They can. Have they? Six months in, has anything changed? There’s no shortage of advice out there, and almost all of it is about getting views. Views aren’t customers. What we bring isn’t advice. It’s 20,000 videos made for local businesses in the past three years alone, and businesses we’ve been building for clients since 2009. That’s what shows up on the call.

“My marketing person will think they’re being replaced.” The opposite. We’re on their side, in their corner, and the recording is theirs. Most hires are relieved. For the first time someone’s telling them what the owner actually wants, in language they can use, instead of “just make it pop.”

“One call a month? That’s it?” That’s it, and it’s plenty, because it’s specific. Your marketing person leaves with exactly what to post and why. A month of doing beats a week of talking, and the transcript means nothing gets lost between calls.

“We tried an agency and it didn’t work.” Agencies make content about you from the outside. Your marketing person is inside the building every day. We don’t replace them with outsiders. We make the insider good.

“I don’t have time for this.” You don’t need any. The call is with your marketing person, not you. If you want to sit in, sit in. If you want to text us “how’s lunch looking” some week, text us. If you want to never think about it, that’s what most owners pick, and it works fine.

“My business isn’t a social media business.” Every business is now, like it or not. It’s where your town decides where to eat, who to call, and who to trust before they ever walk in. And every business has a Saturday, a regular, a question customers keep asking, and a thing you wish more people knew you did. That’s the content. We show your marketing person where it is.

“What if we get good enough that we don’t need you?” Then cancel. That’s the plan. We’d rather you leave good than stay stuck, and if you ever want a tune-up, you know where we are.

How It Starts

Month one. A kickoff call with you and your marketing person together. What you want to be known for, who your customer really is, what your town already thinks of you, and what’s actually working right now. By the end of the hour: three things to post about, a rhythm your person can actually keep, and what needs attention first.

Every month after. The call. What shipped, what it did, what changes, what’s next. Then they’re off.

Any time. The transcripts. Every briefing, on file. If you want to know what’s happening, it’s all there

Make Every Post Permanent

Here is the part most people miss. A post is gone in about two days. AI can’t watch a reel, it can only read, so when someone asks their phone where to go, the engines get your caption and not a word of what anyone actually said on camera. And what they said is everything.

MAVEN Gravity fixes that. It turns what gets said in every video into permanent pages on your own website, where search and AI can read it and quote it for years. It’s a separate thing with its own price, $199 a month, and you don’t need it for Secret Agent to work. But once your videos are good, it’s the difference between content that disappears and content that keeps working. Learn more here.

Who We Are

MAVEN is our local marketing agency. MAVEN Secret Agent is where we coach the person doing your social media. MAVEN Top Banana is where we do it for you. MAVEN Gravity is where we build and run your website. Our own hometown media platforms run on all of it, so everything we teach is something we do ourselves every week.

There’s no sales team here. It’s me (Jeff) and Amara, and we answer our own email.

FAQ

Do you post for us?

No. Your marketing person posts, and they get good at it. They’ll post with Unbusied, the scheduling tool we built and use ourselves for everything we publish. It’s $33 a month, it posts everywhere from one place, and it’s what we recommend to every business we work with. If you want the whole thing done for you, that’s MAVEN Top Banana at $4,444 a month.

What if we don’t have a marketing person yet?

Then the person is you, or whoever on your team already has their phone out. Plenty of owners are the best person for the job and just need someone to tell them what to say. If nobody on the team can do it, hire someone first, or talk to us about Top Banana.

Is there a contract?

Nope! Month to month, cancel anytime. Most people stay because their marketing keeps improving and showing better results, not because anyone makes them.

Can our marketing person reach you between calls?

The call is the whole thing, on purpose. Everything we have to say gets said there, it’s recorded, and your marketing person walks out knowing what to do for the month. Anything that comes up in between goes on the list for next time. That’s what keeps it a coaching call and not a group chat, and it’s why the price is what it is.

What if our marketing person leaves?

We pick up where we left off with the next one. Every call is recorded and transcribed and it’s yours, so the new hire starts with the whole archive. Marketing people come and go, for many small businesses we are the constant in their lives. It’s why we’ve worked with some of the same businesses for over 15 years.

How do I know if it’s working?

By how business is going, which is where every call starts. Your marketing person points the posts at whatever needs attention, and next month we look at whether it moved: the slow night, the catering calls, the thing you wanted people asking about. Followers and likes are nice, and they’re not the point.

How much does a social media consultant cost?

We can only tell you what we charge. Done for you, that’s MAVEN Top Banana at $4,444 a month. Coaching the person you already have, that’s MAVEN Secret Agent at $999 a month, flat, for one recorded and transcribed call a month, and your person does the posting (we recommend they use Unbusied for that).

Do you work with businesses outside Chicago?

Yep! A video call works anywhere, and we’ve made hyperlocal content for businesses all over the country. If you’re close enough for us to walk in and see the place, we will.

What does “Secret Agent” mean?

It means nobody outside the building knows we’re there. Your marketing person runs the account, everyone on camera is from your building, and our name is nowhere. We brief them once a month, they carry it out, and you get the credit. Nobody will know why your social media got so good, and that’s the point.

If We Talked, This Is What We Said

A quick recap, so you can check it against your notes.

• Nobody will know why your social media got so good. You get the credit.
• You keep your marketing person. We coach them.
• One video call a month with them, the briefing. That’s the whole thing.
• Recorded and transcribed, and the transcript is theirs. That’s the plan.
• Nothing in between. Whatever comes up goes on the list for next month.
• Every call starts with how business is going, not follower counts. What needs attention gets the posts.
• $999 a month, flat. No contract. Cancel anytime.

Want In?

MAVEN Secret Agent is by invitation. It’s me (Jeff) and Amara on every call, so we take these on a few at a time, in person, over coffee or across the counter. The first conversation is where we find out whether your marketing person needs a coach or your business needs something else entirely. If we’ve already talked, just reply to the email. If we haven’t, there’s no form here on purpose, and if you know someone we work with, that’s the way in.

Billing Question?

If you see MAVEN on your statement, that’s us, and it means we coach your social media. Questions about a charge? Just reply to any email from us.