If you’ve ever spent money on marketing and watched it disappear without producing customers, this book is for you.

After nearly three decades in radio, journalism, and digital marketing — most of it working with small business owners across Canada — I wrote the book I wish had existed when I was starting out.

It’s called Marketing That Works, and it’s a practical, fill-in-as-you-go workbook for the owner-operator running a real business in a real town with a real budget. No hype. No funnel-bro nonsense. No “you have to be on TikTok.” Just the questions that matter, the frameworks that hold up, and the space to actually do the work.

You can get it on Amazon, as a PDF directly from my site, or use the interactive ChatGPT version that walks you through every chapter as a conversation. More on all three formats below.

Why this book, and why now

Most marketing advice isn’t written for you.

It’s written for venture-backed startups with growth budgets, for agency clients with full marketing teams, or for the influencer economy where attention is the product. The advice assumes scale you don’t have, time you can’t spare, and a tolerance for trend-chasing that no real business can afford.

Meanwhile, the small business owner — the plumber, the accountant, the renovation company, the family law practice, the dental clinic, the catering business — is told to be everywhere at once, post daily, run ads on six platforms, write a newsletter, start a podcast, and somehow also run the business.

It doesn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work isn’t that small business owners aren’t trying hard enough. It’s that the marketing environment has changed faster than the advice has.

The shift no one is talking about

Twenty years ago, advertising was a relatively simple equation. You bought reach, you got attention, you converted some of that attention into customers. Reach was the lever.

Today, reach is still available — but it doesn’t convert the way it used to. Customers hear your ad, search your name, read three reviews, scan your website, ask a friend, glance at a competitor, and then decide. The ad still ran. Something else now decides whether the phone rings.

That something else is trust.

Trust is no longer a soft brand idea. It’s part of conversion. A business can get noticed and still fail. It can generate clicks and still lose the sale. It can attract interest and still create hesitation. In a low-trust market — flooded with AI-generated content, sponsored posts, and fluent-sounding strangers — visibility without credibility is a leaky bucket.

That’s the shift this book is built around.

What this book is designed to do

Marketing That Works is not a theory book. It’s a workbook. By the time you finish the last chapter, you will have built something real — not just read about it.

Specifically, you’ll have built the four things most marketing skips:

• A clear picture of who you’re actually talking to — not a demographic, not an avatar template, but a real customer profile rooted in psychographics, fears, and the language they use themselves.
• A core message that sounds like you — not the recycled “quality service, trusted excellence” phrases that make every business sound interchangeable.
• A channel strategy built on where trust is won — radio, email, content, search, social, reviews, your website — chosen on purpose, not out of habit or guilt.
• A 90-day plan you can start on Monday — realistic enough to execute, focused enough to produce results.

That’s the spine. Nineteen short chapters, each one ending with an activity that asks you to apply what you just read to your own business. Skip the activities and the book becomes another marketing read. Do them, and you walk out with a working marketing foundation.

The question that runs through every chapter

Does this make it easier or harder for someone to trust us?

That’s the question I keep coming back to. It applies to your homepage, your ads, your reviews, your follow-up, your social presence, your Google profile, your intake process, your phone greeting, your proposal template, your response time, your photos, your bio.

Everything your business shows the world is either building confidence or creating doubt. This question helps you see which is which, faster than any audit or agency report. Answer it well across the touchpoints that matter, and the rest of marketing gets a lot simpler.

Who this book is for

This book is written for:

• Owner-operators running service businesses — trades, professional services, local clinics, agencies, consultants
• Small business owners who’ve spent money on marketing and aren’t sure it worked
• Marketers and in-house staff at small businesses who want a framework that holds up across channels
• Entrepreneurs in year one through year ten who are tired of guessing
• Anyone who’s been told to “just do more” marketing and suspects that’s not the answer

It’s not written for venture-backed startups, enterprise marketing teams, or people looking for growth hacks. The frameworks are practical, the budgets are real, and the advice assumes you don’t have a full content team in the back room.

How the book is structured

Nineteen chapters across five parts:

Part One — The Ground You’re Standing On. The trust shift. Who you’re actually talking to. The problem you actually solve. Foundations most marketing skips.

Part Two — What You’re Saying. Why story still sells. How to build a core message. How to turn that message into one story you can use everywhere.

Part Three — Where the Trust Is Won or Lost. The customer journey. Where trust breaks down. Building trust on purpose. Your web presence. Reviews and reputation.

Part Four — The Channels That Carry It. Radio and audio. Email and first-party data. Content. Social media without losing your mind. AI for your marketing.

Part Five — What to Do With All of This. Choosing your channels. What to spend. Your 90-day plan.

Each chapter is short enough to read in one sitting, with an activity at the end that asks you to apply what you learned to your own business. The book is designed to be written in.

Three ways to use the book

Different people work in different ways, so I’ve made the book available in three formats.

1. Paperback on Amazon

The full workbook in print, designed to be written in. Activities, frameworks, space for notes, and the five-part structure laid out the way it was meant to be used. Order it on Amazon →

2. PDF direct from this site

The same content, delivered as a digital workbook you can fill in on a tablet, print at home, or share with your team. Get the PDF →

3. The interactive ChatGPT companion

This is the version I’m proudest of. The Marketing That Works Workbook Companion is a custom GPT trained on every chapter of the book. It walks you through the activities as a conversation, helps you think out loud, drafts language for you, and refines what you write. Try the interactive version →

The print and PDF versions include access to the GPT companion. They’re designed to work together — the book gives you the framework and the space to write; the GPT helps you push your thinking when you’re stuck.

About the author

I’m Jodi Morel. I’ve spent nearly three decades in radio, journalism, and digital marketing, working with small business owners across Canada from my base in Calgary.

My background is in disciplines where a story only works if the trust behind it holds. Journalism teaches you that credibility is the asset — once you lose it, you don’t get it back. Radio teaches you that voice, consistency, and presence build relationships over time. Digital teaches you what doesn’t scale, what does, and what business owners are quietly wasting money on.

I help small businesses build the foundations most marketing skips: clear goals, real benchmarks, an honest understanding of who they serve, and a precise grasp of the problem they actually solve. From there, the work is communicating that story in a way that is engaging, honest, and earns trust.

If you want to talk about any of this — your own marketing, the workbook, what you found when you did the activities — I read every email. jodi.morel@shinefm.com.

What’s coming next on the blog

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be publishing a 19-post blog series — one post for each chapter of the workbook. Each post stands on its own if you arrived from a search, and connects back to the chapter it draws from if you’re reading the book alongside.

The series will cover, in order:

• Why attention isn’t enough anymore
• Your customer isn’t a demographic — they’re a feeling
• Stop describing your service. Name the problem.
• Why story still sells — and what The Wizard of Oz can teach you about your marketing
• Your core message isn’t a tagline. It’s a spine.
• One story, every channel — and how to stop writing from scratch every time
• …and 13 more, taking you all the way through to your 90-day plan.

Subscribe, follow along, or just bookmark this page — every post will be linked from here as it publishes.

Ready to start?

Pick the format that fits how you work.

• Buy the paperback on Amazon
• Download the PDF workbook
• Open the interactive ChatGPT companion

Or if you want a taste before you commit, start with the first chapter activity — the Trust Snapshot. Ten quick questions about where your business stands right now. Most owners learn something they didn’t expect.

Either way, write me. I’d love to hear what you find. jodi.morel@shinefm.com.

Marketing that earns trust isn’t a campaign. It’s a system you keep refining.