Oct 5, 2026 By Sue Borst | Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, Texas Nobody starts a business because they dream of writing LinkedIn captions at 10:45 p.m. You started it because you're good at something. Financial planning. Accounting. Law. Insurance. Building homes, fixing teeth, keeping other people's businesses running. Then one day you looked up and realized you were also the marketing department. Nobody hired you for the job. Nobody trained you. And there's certainly no

It’s the end of September. Your calendar is about to fill with October posts, holiday messages, year-end emails, and ideas for “something fresh” on LinkedIn. Before you plan any of it, pause and ask a better question: What did your marketing actually do this quarter? A content marketing review doesn’t have to involve a complicated dashboard. For most small and mid-sized businesses, the useful clues are already there—in your inquiries, customer conversations, website visits, a

Brand strategy sounds complicated. It conjures up images of lengthy presentations, complicated diagrams and meetings where someone inevitably says “brand ecosystem.” But it is much more practical than that. A brand strategy is the roadmap that defines who your business serves, what makes you different, what you want to be known for and how you communicate that value to your customers. Every business needs one; not just startups preparing to launch, but established businesses

How Child Advocates San Antonio increased volunteer inquiries 54% in 90 days and grew sworn-in Advocates 200% in a year, through a messaging strategy, not more marketing activity.

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Can AI Replace Your Marketing Strategy? I get asked some version of this question almost every week: “With AI, can’t I just create my own marketing now?” Yes, you can. You can also buy a treadmill and call yourself an athlete. Owning the tool and knowing what to do with it are two very different things. AI can draft a homepage in 30 seconds and a website in 3 hours. It can produce 100 social media posts before you’ve finished your coffee. It can write blogs, emails, captions

Sue Borst | Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, TX We used to worry about whether our businesses appeared on the first page of Google. Now there is another question to keep marketing people awake at night: Will AI recommend your brand? People are no longer using search engines simply to find a list of websites. They are asking ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and other AI tools complete questions: Who is the best person to help me clarify my brand messaging? Which financial

Sue Borst AI has made it super easy to create content. In a matter of minutes, you can write a blog, produce a month of social media posts, draft an email campaign, and generate seventeen alternatives for the phrase “Let’s connect.” Brilliant! There is just one small problem: everyone else can do it too. As more businesses use AI platforms and similar prompts to create similar content, something important gets lost: The distinct, recognizable brand voice that makes a business

Sue Borst At some point this month, you've probably asked AI to write something for your business, a LinkedIn post, a blog introduction, an email, maybe even an entire content plan. The result may have been perfectly polished. And completely forgettable. Here's the problem: AI can produce words in seconds. But unless you give it clear direction, those words could belong to almost any business. And there's a second problem most people haven't considered. Your potential clients

Sue Borst | Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio If your website isn't converting, the problem usually isn't traffic. Its website messaging clarity. More visitors won't fix confusing messaging, weak offers, or a poor customer experience. Discover why improving your website's clarity can generate better results than simply chasing more traffic. Everyone wants more website traffic. More visitors. More clicks.More rankings. More impressions. But here's an uncomfortable truth many b

People often assume that marketing products from the United Kingdom to the United States should be relatively straightforward. After all, both countries speak English. As a British marketer who began her career working for a UK electronics manufacturer before moving to the United States nearly 30 years ago, I can tell you that's far from the truth. One of my earliest marketing challenges involved helping position electronic security products for the US market. At first glance

Googling Sue Borst Marketing - when I should be looking at what the AI platforms say By Sue Borst | Founder, Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, Texas At some point this month, you’ve Googled your own business. We all do it. But here’s the problem: your next client probably didn’t Google you. They asked ChatGPT. Or Gemini. Or Claude. And whatever the AI said — accurate or not — became their first impression of your business before you ever got a say. In an earlier post, I aske

By Sue Borst | Founder, Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, Texas June 2026 Let’s be honest! You’ve invested in your business brand. You have a logo. A website. Maybe a color palette you agonized over. And yet, when someone Googles you — the person behind the business — what do they find? A LinkedIn profile you haven’t touched since 2022? A headshot from a previous job? Nothing at all? Here’s the truth: Your personal brand isn’t separate from your business brand. It IS your

Not long ago, a company's website was often the first place a potential customer learned about their business. Today? Not so much. Before someone contacts you, they may Google your company, check LinkedIn, read reviews, browse your social media, and increasingly, ask an AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude for information. In many cases, potential customers are forming an opinion about your business before they ever visit your website. Which raises an important question: I

AI creates content. People Create Connection Let's address the elephant in the room: I use AI. In fact, I've fully adopted AI into my workflow because it makes me more efficient, helps generate ideas, and speeds up parts of the content creation process. But here's what many people misunderstand. AI creates a first draft. The final draft is still human. Every blog, social media post, website page, article, or piece of content goes throu

(Even If You Already Did One Five Years Ago) Most marketing people don’t wake up one morning and dramatically announce: “Our messaging no longer reflects who we are.” It is usually far less dramatic. Your website slowly starts sounding outdated. Your LinkedIn posts sound different from your proposals. Your social media says one thing, your team says another, and somewhere along the way, your business quietly evolves, while your messaging stays stuck in 2019 quoting “we should

By Sue Borst | Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, TX If you’ve ever looked at your website, your LinkedIn page, your brochure, your elevator pitch… and thought: "Why does this all sound like five different companies?" You’re not alone. Most growing businesses don’t have a marketing problem. They have a messaging problem. And no—changing your logo, posting more on social media, or sprinkling in a few trendy buzzwords won’t fix it. Because if your brand message isn’t clear, yo

Marketing Lessons Behind One of the NBA’s Strongest Brands By Sue Borst | Founder, Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, Texas May 2026 As someone who spends every day helping organizations clarify their messaging, strengthen their brand, and create content that actually connects, I notice when a brand becomes bigger than the product it sells. And here in San Antonio (where I have lived for the past 30 years), there may be no better example than the San Antonio Spurs. Five NBA c

By Sue Borst | Founder, Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, Texas May 2026 If you’re a business owner, marketing leader, or the person on your team who somehow became “the marketing department,” you’ve probably heard a few new acronyms flying around lately. SEO AIO GEO And if your first thought was “Great. Another acronym I’m supposed to understand.” Fair. But here’s the good news: These aren’t three separate marketing strategies. They are three parts of the same conversation

By Sue Borst | Founder, Sue Borst Marketing | San Antonio, Texas April 2026 Brand consistency is not about being rigid, repetitive, or dull. It’s about being recognizable, reliable, and remembered. These are three things your business absolutely cannot afford to skip. Think about the brands you love. You know their look. You recognize their tone. You feel their presence before you even read a word. That’s not luck. That’s consistency. And if your brand feels a little… all ove