Marketing & Promotional Services

You can think of our Listing Service as a foundational marketing element. It is designed to deliver key info and details to an audience seeking a solution. In this way, your listing may introduce you to a searcher who was previously unaware of you or reinforce you as a solution to a searcher who was already familiar with you. Or a combination of the two, such as the case when your listing informs your existing customer about a part of your offering that they weren’t aware of.

In either case, your listing serves as a funnel to help move a potential customer to your website or social media pages during this critical Decision or Action stage of their solution journey. But your marketing efforts need to extend beyond that. Unfortunately, for many small, local businesses and nonprofits, the most valuable and hardest marketing comes in the Attention and Interest stages, especially before they have a problem needing to be solved.

That’s where McHenry Life’s Marketing & Promotional Services comes in. Which we mostly offer for free…even if you only have a free listing. These services are about building a connection between you and your audience…current and future.

Snapshot Marketing

Our Snapshot Marketing Program is an amazing free (included with Premier listing subscriptions) offering as part of your premier-level Directory listing. It is a mini-photo shoot that will provide you with a dozen photos that you can use on your website, social media accounts, etc. In addition, we’ll feature your Snapshot in our Magazine and promote it across our social media accounts. Check out our Snapshots Marketing Program.

Spotlight Story

Have a great story to share? Let us put you in the spotlight and help you share your story. Whether you are a startup or an established business, a nonprofit, or you have an event, our Spotlight Story is a great way to share your story or get the word out. Out Spotlight Story is like Snapshot Marketing on steroids. We’ll sit down with you for an interview, take some photos, and then we’ll put this all together in a full-feature article in our Magazine and promote the article across social media. What could possibly make this any better? We do all of this for free. Learn more about our Spotlight Story.

Sponsor a Sweepstakes

A popular add-on to Spotlight Stories, sweepstakes can also be done on their own. While you put up the prizes, we do all the rest. Our sweepstakes are web-based and software-powered to ensure accurate tracking of participant actions as well as properly insuring a completely random, unbiased selection of winners. And there are many different actions to choose from that we can use to construct the sweepstakes to drive toward your goals while also staying within the bounds of compliance. We’ll also work with you to pair this up with your own events and milestones, such as an anniversary, a new location, a new product launch, or something else you have going on. Learn about sponsoring a Sweepstakes.

Guest Contributor

Our Magazine is the primary vehicle for serving up Snapshots, Spotlight Stories, Sweepstakes, and all kinds of other articles we feel may be of interest to the McHenry County audience. Of course, producing content like that for a whole county is a full-time job alone. So we’re also open to opening up our digital pages to community experts who may have something to share. Whether you have historical expertise, subject matter expertise, or are a photographer who has a passion for sharing photos from around McHenry County, if you’re looking for a publishing platform, be sure to check out our Guest Contributor information.

Hosted or Sponsored Experiences & Event Promotions

Do you host or produce events? Big events or small ones, as an event manager, you know there are a million things that can go wrong. But it is exponentially painful to have under-attendance at an otherwise flawlessly executed event. We want to help make sure that doesn’t happen. After you’ve added your event to our event calendar, we can add it to one of our guides (if applicable) and share it across social media. But we can also help before and/or after the event by taking photos (if applicable) and including an article in our Magazine.

Hosted or Sponsored Experiences, which could include events, are anything that has a cost associated with it that you agree to waive or pick up. Like the other programs, this would include taking a series of photos and publishing an article in our Magazine, except, in this case, it is more focused on sharing an account of our experience. If this sounds like something you are interested in, be sure to see our Hosted of Sponsored Experiences & Event Promotions section.


Of course, all of these can be mixed and matched to provide a more expansive marketing and promotional campaign. The only limiting factor is availability, so whenever possible, reach out to us as early in the process so that we can, hopefully, accommodate your full request and timeline.

Wings, Chicken Philly Cheesesteak, and Vegetarian Lentil Tortilla soup from Just Crock It.
Spotlight Story and Sweepstakes with Just Crock It.