Liberatory Marketing: A 6-Week Analysis

Thursdays, starting November 5, 12:00–1:30pm ET

Week 1 (Nov 5) — Learning: What's already working
Start with an honest look at where your clients actually come from now. Referrals, existing relationships, word of mouth, past clients — the stuff that's already paying off, whether or not you've been calling it "marketing."

Week 2 (Nov 12) — Learning: The trust-building channels
Email and your website. The two places you have the most control over the relationship, and the one place potential clients actually go to decide if they can trust you.

Week 3 (Nov 19) — Integration, no new material
No new content this week. Time to sit with what came up in weeks 1 and 2, apply it to your own business, and bring questions.

Week 4 (Dec 3) — Learning: The visibility channels
SEO and paid ads. What they can be good for, what they're not, and how to use them should you choose to, without turning your whole business into a numbers game.

Week 5 (Dec 10) — Learning: In-person and social
Networking, in-person relationship building, and the social media conversation — including whether you even need to be there, and what it's costing you if you are. This is also where you land on your one new channel, if you're adding one.

Week 6 (Dec 17) — Integration, no new material
No new content. Pull it all together into an actual plan you can use, not a to-do list you'll abandon in January.

marketing is often a loaded topic.

Most small business owners don’t actually hate marketing. They hate what it’s become. They hate the pressure to perform. The urgency. The pretending. The sense that you have to strip your work of context and politics and humanity in order to sell it.

And honestly? Good.

A lot of what passes for marketing is gross. It asks you to treat your business like it exists outside of the world — outside of genocide, climate collapse, layoffs, rent hikes, childcare costs, grief. It asks you to optimize instead of relate. To convert instead of connect. To separate your values from your strategy.

Of course that feels bad!

this series is about doing marketing differently.

It’s about finding your voice in a sea of panic and noise — not to shout louder, but to speak clearly. It’s about knowing you have something real to offer and believing that sharing it, in right relationship, might actually be part of the antidote to this moment.

We’ll focus on websites and email because they can be a good alternative to social media for many. You mostly own them. They don’t cost much. And the underlying strategy isn’t shifting every 72 hours because some tech platform changed the rules without telling you. This course isn't advocating that any one way of marketing is best. It's an honest assessment of all the marketing strategies out there and an opportunity to ask questions about the pros and cons of each. It's also a chance to explore whether social media is helpful to your business as a tool and whether its impact on your mental health is a fair trade-off. 

For some of us, social media is a "necessary evil," and for some of us we're done with it and want to move on to something else. But regardless, this series is designed to help you assess what is right for you and your business right now. 

wherever you are — brand new, crispy, mid-pivot, quietly rebuilding — this series is here to help you build marketing infrastructure that pays the bills without asking you to abandon your humanity.

why anti-capitalist-rooted support is different

Most marketing support is built around growth. The assumption is that you should always be expanding, increasing revenue, reaching more people, optimizing more systems. Profit becomes the primary metric, and everything else is secondary.

Anti-capitalist-rooted support starts from a different premise. It assumes your business exists inside real relationships — to your community, to your labor, to the broader political and economic systems we’re all operating within. It assumes sustainability matters. Capacity matters. Right relationship matters.

That doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter. It does. You need income. But income isn’t treated as the only measure of success, and you’re not asked to suspend your values in order to generate it.

In this series, we won’t pretend your marketing is neutral. We won’t treat your business like it exists outside of what’s happening in the world. And we won’t default to tactics that rely on pressure or extraction simply because they’re common.

We’ll build systems that support your livelihood while staying aligned with what you actually believe.

👋 A Little About Me

Hey, I’m Emily Eley—an anti-capitalist business coach, activist & organizer, parent, and firm believer that business can be a tool for liberation, not exploitation. I help small business owners build values-aligned businesses that center care, community, and sustainability—not hustle, urgency, or endless growth.

If you ever find yourself wanting deeper support—whether you're overwhelmed, in transition, or just craving thoughtful partnership—my 1:1 coaching might be a good fit. I offer financial aid because I believe this work should be accessible, and I’m proud to be a VSAC-approved non-degree course provider here in Vermont.

No pressure, no funnels, just honest support when you’re ready.