Get found
People searching for what you sell need to land on you, whether they ask Google, Maps or an AI assistant.
- Local SEO
- Google Maps
- Content
- AI visibility
Palm Desert, California · working with businesses nationwide
Your marketing department. Without hiring one. Thinglet Marketing, Palm Desert, CA. Working nationwide.
Website, social, video, search and practical AI, run every month by one team you can actually call. Priced for owners who have a business to run: from $350 a month, month to month, anywhere in the United States.
Since 2011Fifteen years running marketing for small businesses
Since 1999Building websites and hosting them on servers we run ourselves
Month to monthNo long contract. Cancel and the website is still yours
Owner runLed by a Navy vet who owned restaurants for twenty years
Your business doesn't need more random marketing. It needs a system.
A new website one year. A social push the next. Somebody's cousin ran ads for a while. Each piece was fine on its own and none of them talked to each other, so nobody could tell you which one brought in a customer. That's the gap Thinglet closes: one team, one plan, every month.
The Thinglet Growth Engine
What does a marketing department actually do every month?
It runs five stages, in order, every month: get found, get trusted, get the lead, get the customer, get them back. Every service we sell maps to one of those five. If a job doesn't move a customer from one stage to the next, we don't sell it.
Get trusted
Being found is worth nothing if the site, the reviews or the photos make a buyer hesitate for even a second.
- Website
- Reviews
- Brand
- Proof
Get the lead
Turning a visitor into a call, a form or a booking, then tracking which channel actually produced it.
- Conversion
- Landing pages
- Offers
- Tracking
Get the customer
Speed closes. The business that answers first usually wins the job, and most small businesses answer hours late.
- Fast response
- Follow-up
- Automation
- Booking
Get them back
The cheapest customer you will ever get is one who already paid you once and liked it.
- Reviews
- Referrals
- Remarketing
Why Thinglet
Why hire Thinglet instead of a big agency, a freelancer, or your nephew?
Because one team owns the outcome, and that team has run businesses of its own. A big agency hands you a channel specialist and a portal. A freelancer disappears when the next gig lands. Here the same people build the site, run the server, write the posts, film the video, place the ads and read the numbers with you each month.
One team owns the outcome
No pointing between the web guy, the social person and the ad rep. One plan, one number to call, one monthly conversation about what actually moved.
Marketing, tech and AI under one roof
Most agencies stop where the code starts. We build the site, host it on servers we run, wire the automation and market the result, so nothing falls into the gap between vendors.
Run by an operator, not an account manager
Patrick Albert served in the U.S. Navy, owned restaurants for twenty years, has built on the internet since 1999 and has met a payroll. The advice comes from operating, not from a template.
Priced like a line item, not a department
$350, $500 or $1,250 a month, all month to month. A single in-house marketing hire costs more than our biggest plan before benefits.
Location doesn't change the work
Our home office is in Palm Desert, California. Everything we do for a client down the street we do the same way for one in Peoria: the site, the posts, the video and the reports all ship over the wire.
We wrote it down
Pat's books on practical AI and small-business systems are on Amazon. What we recommend to clients is what we published under our own name, so you can check our thinking before you spend a dollar. See the books.
What we do
Organised by what you're trying to fix.
The same work most agencies list as thirty services, grouped by the problem it solves. If you would rather see it by industry, start here.
Nobody can find us
Stages 1 and 2- Local SEO and search visibility
- Google Business Profile and Maps
- AI search visibility
- Content and authority pages
Our site doesn't sell
Stages 2 and 3- Website design and development
- Conversion and speed work
- Landing pages and offers
- Analytics and call tracking
We need more leads now
Stage 3- Google and Meta advertising
- Social media and short-form video
- Streaming TV, radio and billboards in markets we can buy
- Seasonal campaign planning
Leads come in and die
Stage 4- AI-assisted lead response
- Follow-up sequences and CRM setup
- Online booking and instant replies
- Missed-call text-back
Customers don't come back
Stage 5- Email newsletters and offers
- Review generation and reputation
- Referral programs
- Remarketing to past visitors
We can't tell what's working
Every stage- Free Growth Score to see where you stand
- Call tracking and form attribution
- Plain-English monthly board brief
- One report, one number to call about it
Three plans, month to month
Pick how loud you want to be.
Every plan is fully managed: we write it, design it, film it, schedule it and report on it. Move up or down any month. Cancel any month, and if your plan included a website, it stays yours.
Plan 01 · Get Seen
Starter Social
Stay active and top of mind on the two feeds that matter most.
$350/ month
Facebook + Instagram
- 5 posts a week, written, designed and scheduled
- Captions, hashtags and a consistent look handled
- 1 hour a month of updates to your existing website
- Monthly check-in on what went out and what worked
Most popular
Plan 02 · Get Moving
Growth Social
Three platforms, weekly video, and a website we build or take over and keep running.
$500/ month
3 platforms + website included
- 5 posts a week across 3 platforms
- 1 short-form video a week on each platform
- 1 website included: built new or taken over, with hosting, SSL, security updates and backups
- Up to 5 hours a month of website updates
- Monthly plain-English report
Plan 03 · All-Inclusive
Full Coverage
Your outsourced marketing department. Every platform, every week, ads included.
$1,250/ month
Any platforms + up to 3 websites
- Up to 10 posts a week plus multiple videos a week
- Up to 3 websites included, hosted and maintained
- Unlimited website updates within reasonable business use
- $200 a month in paid ads included and managed
- Monthly report on reach, engagement and results
Bigger than that? Multi-location, franchise, or a business with its own in-house marketer who needs a bench behind them: tell us what you're running and we'll price a custom plan. Not sure which plan fits? The free Growth Score will tell you.
Tools we built
Not ready for a plan? Start with something you can use today.
We build the software we use for clients, then put it where any small business can get at it. Three are free, the rest cost less than lunch. Every one of them is a Thinglet product, so it looks and behaves like the rest of the family.
$29.99 / month, domain included
AI Websites
A done-for-you small-business website, $29.99/mo, cancel within 30 days for a full refund. Then hosted and kept current for a flat monthly fee. The do-it-yourself step below our plans.
Free
Social Scorecard
Enter a business name and website, get a 1 to 10 marketing score and a ranked fix list in about a minute. Reads only public pages. Keep the report either way.
Free tier, plans from $29 / month
fakeserver
Ready-trained AI helpers that hand you finished work: blog posts, research reports, meeting recaps, review replies. Tell one what you need and get it back in about a minute.
Free to browse, $19 playbook
ForgeDaily AI
One AI tool worth knowing every day, a directory of 120-plus sorted by the job you're trying to do, and a Stack Architect that builds your shortlist from five questions.
Free tier, Pro $29.99 one time
Analytics Simplifier
Drop in the exports you already get from Google, Facebook and Instagram. Get back a one-page, plain-English board brief: what went up, what went down, what to do about it.
Security review
Thinglet Recon
An outside look at how exposed your business is: website, email, accounts and the things an attacker checks first, written up in plain English with the fixes in order.
The books
What we tell clients, we put in print first.
Patrick Albert writes the practical books on AI that other agencies quote. The Implementation Files follows five composite small businesses over two years as they put AI to work where it earns its keep and leave it out where it doesn't. Read a chapter before you hire us. That's the point.
Book 1
AI That Earns Its Keep
Where AI actually fits in a small business, and where it does not. Ten chapters, ten tables, five businesses, no hype.
For everyone
AI for Regular People
Simple, practical ways to use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity and more, even if you've never used AI before. A beginner's field guide, ten short chapters.
Standalone
The Small Business Owner's AI Playbook
Twenty chapters of plain-English AI for people who run a business, not a lab. The book Thinglet started with.
Practical AI
How can a small business actually use AI in marketing?
For speed and volume, not for strategy. Most of your competitors still haven't done it: the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey found overall business AI use running at 17 to 20 percent between December 2025 and May 2026, and under 20 percent among firms with four or fewer employees. Every plan we sell has AI built into the workflow, and the AI products themselves live with our sister brand, Thinglet A.I.
Answering in under a minute
A form filled at 9pm gets an intelligent reply immediately instead of a callback two days later, once the customer has already booked someone else.
Sorting the inbox
Real inquiries separated from spam and tire-kickers, tagged by urgency and job type before anyone on your side opens them.
Content at volume
One substantial piece a week turned into an article, a video, three shorts, social posts and a newsletter, then edited by a human before it goes out.
Getting cited by AI
When a customer asks an AI assistant for a recommendation, the businesses with clear, structured, useful pages are the ones it names. That work sits inside every plan.
Answering the phone
An AI receptionist that takes the call at 7am or on a Sunday, books the appointment, and texts you the summary, so a ringing phone no longer means a lost job.
Reading the reports
The Google, Facebook and Instagram exports you already get, turned into a one-page brief in plain English. What went up, what went down, what to do about it.
Home turf
Headquartered in the Coachella Valley. Working nationwide.
We've marketed Palm Springs restaurants, Indio contractors and Rancho Mirage medical practices since 2011, and we know each of these cities block by block. If you're here, start with your city. If you're anywhere else in the country, start with the Growth Score; the work ships the same way.
Palm DesertMain office since 2011
Palm SpringsTourism and hospitality
Rancho MirageMedical and professional
Indian WellsResort and events
La QuintaReal estate and home services
IndioTrades, gaming and events
Cathedral CityIndustrial and gaming
CoachellaAgriculture and bilingual market
Desert Hot SpringsCannabis and industrial
ThermalFarms, polo and the airport
BanningThe pass and the 10
Morongo ValleyHighway 62 gateway
Yucca ValleyMorongo Basin hub
Twentynine PalmsMarine base and the park
GlendoraOur second office
Everywhere else75 U.S. cities and beyond
Straight answers
Questions owners actually ask us.
What does an outsourced marketing department actually do? +
It takes ownership of the whole growth system rather than one task. The website, search visibility, Google Business Profile, reviews, content, social, video, advertising, lead capture and follow-up all sit with one accountable team, on one monthly plan, with one monthly conversation about what moved.
Do you work with businesses outside the Coachella Valley? +
Yes. We're headquartered in Palm Desert, California and work with small businesses anywhere in the United States. Every plan is delivered remotely: the website, the posts, the video, the reporting and the monthly call all happen over the wire, the same way for a client in Palm Springs as for one in Ohio.
How much does it cost? +
Three plans, all month to month with no long contract: Plan 1 Starter Social at $350 a month, Plan 2 Growth Social at $500 a month with a website included, and Plan 3 Full Coverage at $1,250 a month with up to three websites, more platforms, multiple videos a week and $200 of managed advertising. Custom plans are available for larger or multi-location businesses.
How much should a small business spend on marketing? +
The two benchmark surveys land either side of 8 percent of revenue. Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey put marketing budgets at 7.8 percent of company revenue; The CMO Survey, run by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association, reported 9.0 percent. For a business doing $500,000 a year that is roughly $3,300 a month across everything, which is why our plans are priced as a line item rather than a department.
Who actually does the work? +
Our own team, led by founder Patrick Albert. Nothing is handed to an offshore content farm. The same people who write the posts build the website, run the server it sits on and read the numbers each month. Pat is a U.S. Navy veteran who owned restaurants for twenty years, has been building on the internet since 1999 and wrote the books on practical AI for small business.
Can AI replace a marketing team? +
No, but it changes what a small team can cover. AI is good at speed and volume: answering an inquiry in under a minute, drafting first versions, sorting leads, summarising data. It still needs someone who knows the business to decide what to say, check it, and own the result. That's the job we do for clients.
What is the Thinglet Growth Score? +
A free assessment of the nine areas that decide whether a business gets found and converts: website and conversion, Google Business Profile and Maps, local SEO, reputation, social and content, advertising, lead response, follow-up and AI readiness. It checks your website live, asks nine short questions, and returns a 0 to 100 score with the specific fixes ranked by impact. No sales call attached.
Do we have to sign a long contract? +
No. Every plan is month to month. If you cancel a plan that included a website, the website is yours, no strings, and you can stay on hosting only at $19.95 a month. If the work isn't producing, a long contract only protects us, and that isn't a relationship worth having.
Reviewed and updated . Budget figures cited from the Gartner CMO Spend Survey and The CMO Survey.
From the blog
Short reads you can act on this week.
Get found
How to get your business cited by AI assistants
Customers are starting to ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI for recommendations instead of scrolling results. What gets a small business named in that answer, and what gets it skipped.
Get them back
One email a week: what to say when you have nothing to say
A weekly email to past customers is the highest-return marketing a small business can do, and most quit after three because they run out of ideas. Here is a year of them.
Get the customer
What an AI receptionist can and can't do
An AI receptionist answers every call, books the appointment and texts you the summary. It also has limits. Here is the honest version, from someone who runs one.
Find out what your marketing is costing you.
The Growth Score checks your website live, then looks at your Google presence, reputation, content, advertising and follow-up. Free, no obligation, and you get the results on the spot.
Get your free Growth Score