01What to do yourself first
Some marketing only you can do. Nobody knows better than you what customers ask on the phone, what makes them hesitate and which job they were glad they booked. A few months of doing it yourself is how you learn that, and any agency will ask you for exactly those answers on the first call. It also costs little. Google's help page for Business Profiles says you can add or claim your business at no charge. Set the profile up, ask happy customers for a review, answer every review you get, and keep your website plain about prices and services. Our posts on getting more Google reviews and on a local SEO checklist for a one-location business cover the steps. Before you spend on anything, be able to say in one sentence what you sell, at what price and to whom. Our marketing page says it bluntly: more content does not fix an unclear offer, and we have turned down marketing engagements where the business was not ready.
- A Google Business Profile that you set up and keep current yourself
- A review request after each job, and a reply to every review
- A website that states prices and services plainly
- One sentence: what you sell, at what price, to whom
02When doing it yourself stops working
The ceiling is not skill. It is time and consistency. Marketing that works is mostly repetition: posts, articles and ads checked every week. Owners who do it between jobs often do it in bursts, then nothing for a month. The test is not how good your posts are. Count the hours you spend in a normal month, multiply them by what an hour of your own work earns you, and put the result next to a fee. FOUND is 297 EUR a month and covers Google Business Profile management, local SEO on five keywords and two blog posts a month. If your hours already cost more than that, or marketing is the task you always postpone, doing it yourself is costing more than it looks. We give no standard figure for hours a week, because we have not measured it. Your own month is the better number.
- Posting has lapsed for a month or more, and not for the first time
- You cannot say which channel brought last month's customers
- You want paid ads, but nothing would track what they produce
- The hours you spend are worth more than the monthly fee
03What to hand over and what to keep
Hand over the repetitive production and keep the judgment. Monthly posts, video, ad creative, tracking and reporting are production. The offer, the price, who you serve, real enquiries and replies to reviews stay with you. PROOF48's marketing plans are built that way. They start with a strategy call and a brief about what you sell and who buys it, then content built to your brand and a monthly calendar so you see the plan before it runs. You approve, we publish. BROADCAST is 597 EUR a month for four blog posts and 12 AI videos, ready to post. GROWTH is 1,497 EUR a month and adds Meta and Google ad management, with ad spend billed separately. We do not run ads on their own: ad management sits inside GROWTH, together with the content that gives the ads something to learn from. Our posts on what a monthly plan includes and on the monthly strategy call spell out the details.
- Yours: the offer, the price and who you serve
- Yours: answering real enquiries and replying to reviews
- Handed over: monthly posts, video, ad creative, tracking, reporting
- Ad management comes only inside GROWTH, never on its own
04Where PROOF48 is the wrong choice
Stay on your own if the work fits in your week and you are doing it. We are also the wrong choice when the offer or price is still being defined, when there are no photos or brand assets to build from, when advertising rules are strict (medical claims, financial advice), or when you need content within 24 hours for a live crisis. If you need someone in the building every day, that is a hire, and our post on a full-time marketer or a monthly plan draws that line. A narrow one-off task you can judge yourself, such as a logo or a set of edited photos, is not an agency job either, the same logic as in our post on a Fiverr freelancer or a web agency.
- The work fits in your week and you keep doing it: stay DIY
- The offer or price is not settled yet: settle that first
- Strict advertising rules or a 24-hour crisis: not our fit
- Someone needed in the building daily: that is a hire
A site that was hurting the business, before any marketing
SCP Shine & Style, a beauty salon in Sector 3, Bucharest, already had a website, and it was hurting them: built badly, ranking badly, not reflecting the work. PROOF48 rebuilt it with a page per service, redirected every old WordPress URL and shipped blog posts signed by the owner. The order is the lesson. Marketing effort, yours or ours, lands on the site, so a weak site comes first. We do not publish the salon's revenue or booking counts, because we do not measure them.
See the build: SCP Shine & StyleQuestions, answered
Can I start on my own and hand it over later?
Yes, and it is a sound order. Your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your site carry over, and FOUND includes Google Business Profile management, so it picks up from where you are.
How many hours a week should DIY marketing take?
We give no standard figure, because we have not measured it. Count your own hours for one normal month and compare them with a fee.
Can I write the content and let PROOF48 run only the ads?
No. Ad management is part of GROWTH, which includes the content foundation, and we do not offer it on its own.
Where PROOF48 fits
Start by doing the marketing only you can do: a free Google Business Profile, reviews and a clear offer. Hand over the production when your hours cost more than the fee or the work keeps slipping. PROOF48's marketing plans start at 297 EUR a month, and you approve, we publish.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.