About

More than a freelancer. Closer than an agency.

Franklin Marketing is T.J. and Kelli Miller and a trusted collective of specialists — doing, connecting, and teaching better marketing for the small businesses at the heart of their communities. It starts where marketing always should: with the people you serve.

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Why we exist

We kept watching good businesses get bad marketing.

As career marketers, we saw the same story on repeat — small businesses overcharged by agencies, let down by freelancers who overpromised, or boxed in because another salary on the books was never going to pencil out. Good owners, serving real people, with no good option for marketing help.

So we built a different one. We exist to be your marketing expert — in whole or in part. From a single project to a full strategy, we do the work, connect you with the right people, and teach you what we know as we go.

T.J. and Kelli volunteering with downtown businesses.

The collective model

Why we say “we.”

“We” isn't a vanity plural. Franklin Marketing is led by Travis (T.J.) and Kelli, and it grows from there into a collective — a network of specialists we bring in by need, not by org chart. They aren't anonymous contractors. They're people we know and trust, members of the same community, whose expertise we leverage only where it genuinely serves you.

That's how you get the range of an agency, the reliability a lone freelancer can't promise, and far less overhead than either — because the model is built around your work, not around keeping a building full of people busy.

What we believe.

A few convictions we keep coming back to.

Marketing is for a community, not the masses.

You don't need everyone. You need the people already like you — and there are more than enough of them.

Influence and inspire. Never manipulate.

Convincing is something you do to people. Influence is something you earn with them — through values, story, and a vision of better.

Aim, and the results follow.

Stare too hard at the result and you lose the front sight. Tend to your aim — the people, the craft — and the numbers come.

Strategy is the why. Plans are the how.

A plan without a strategy is just motion. We start with why you do what you do, and who you do it for.

Know your customer the way you'd know someone you're buying a gift for.

The Latin cūra — care — is the root of the word accurate. Marketing done with care is marketing that fits.

Marketing isn't a trick or a hack.

There aren't a hundred kinds of marketing. There's marketing: creating, communicating, and delivering real value to real people.

Marketing is truly an art and science, and T.J. is the embodiment — a creative and skilled technician. He keeps people front and center of marketing efforts and looks to his craft as an act of service and meaning for customers and organizations. If you are looking for a marketer who can stimulate your marketing efforts and optimize the digital landscape, I would recommend T.J. without hesitation.

Reggie Ordonez

Founder — Forward Brands

T.J. is a talented marketer with particularly good skills in the digital space. More importantly, he has a consistently positive, forward-moving attitude that infects those around him and makes everyone more productive. He's also one of the fastest moving guys I've seen when it comes to execution. I recommend T.J. without reservation!

Mason Yaffee

Founder & CEO — New Directions in Computing

T.J. is a marketing wizard! We have worked on a handful of branding projects together and they are much more organized, polished and strategic when I am working with T.J. as opposed to working with a client alone. T.J. is an amazing strategic marketer who really knows his stuff and he helps take my designs to the next level when working together.

Nate Farro

Illustrator, Graphic Designer & Art Director — Nate Farro Design Co.

T.J. is a highly talented and hard working leader who has an insatiable appetite for raising a company's game to keep the competition guessing. A team player who motivates those around him and gets the best out of them. A great asset!

Gerry Lamberti

Founder & CEO — SuperSprings International, Inc.

Community —

Small businesses are the heart.

We believe that, so we put money behind it: we give 5% of our revenue to community organizations — ours or yours. Work with us from anywhere in the country, and if there's a local organization you'd want supported, we'll give there. Closer to home, we're in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville — a small town with a lot of history — where we support small business education and development, historic preservation, and local schools.

Our collective model keeps our costs low, so this giving never raises your fee. We teach that marketing is about profit. This is us leading by example.

Enough about us — tell us about you.

Tell us about your business and the people you serve. We'll tell you honestly whether we can help, and where we'd start.

Let's connect