Ever wondered why some small businesses outperform their peers?
A 2018 study by Deloitte revealed that small businesses that mastered online marketing and ecommerce earned twice as much per employee as those who didn’t—and yet, only 20% were really taking full advantage of these technologies.
If this sounds like your business, this article is here to help jump-start your online marketing efforts.
The best part?
You don’t need to be a digital marketing expert to implement lucrative online marketing strategies for small businesses, you just need the right tools in your toolkit.
What Is Online Marketing?
Online marketing, or digital marketing, is all about using digital platforms to promote your products or services—it's everything you do to make your business visible online.
This includes a variety of tactics, such as:
- Digital advertising
- Email marketing
- Online promotions
- Blogging
- Social media marketing
- And a lot more
Unlike big businesses with deep pockets, small businesses often can't always afford expensive marketing tactics
Therefore, we’ll focus on budget-friendly options that are both effective and useful for small businesses.
Setting the Stage for Your Online Marketing Approach
Before you execute online marketing for your small business, develop a game plan.
Outline what you want to achieve, who you’re trying to reach, and how to go about doing this online.
This ensures your marketing actions are targeted and impactful.
Identify Your Business Goals
A successful marketing campaign starts with a clear set of goals.
Goal setting should be clear and actionable, with measurable results. Start by defining what you want to achieve online—for example, boosting website traffic, increasing social media followers, or building your reputation.
Consider the SMART method of goal setting.
Measuring Success: The Role of KPIs
Once you've set clear goals, the next step is to establish how you'll measure them.
This involves setting baselines and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) that align directly with your objectives. KPIs provide a clear path to evaluate your progress and adjust your strategies as needed.
Examples of a small business online marketing KPIs could be:
- Appointments made through the website
- Online orders/purchases
- Website traffic
- Search engine rankings
- Social media engagement
Google is an excellent starting point for tracking your website’s performance. Google Analytics and Google Search Console are free tools that provide valuable insights into your site’s traffic and user behavior.
Think about what’s most important to your business. How do you get more leads and customers? Your KPIs should reflect these priorities.
Consider an example bakery that offers online ordering. If the bakery wants more orders, it can aim to increase website traffic by 20% in the next quarter. Then the business owner could focus on improving the store’s online presence to get more online orders.
Semrush has numerous free tools to get you started on website visibility, such as On-Page SEO Checker. This tool can help you monitor and support your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) to get more website traffic from search engines.
Further reading: How to Set, Track, and Reach Digital PR Goals
Understand Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience informs your small business strategy. It’s not just who they are but also how they spend their time, what they value, and how they behave online.
In our bakery example, this means determining not just that the audience is locals who enjoy baked goods but also preferences that can guide niches.
For example, do they like gluten-free and organic options, or are they interested in elaborate decorations? Understanding these preferences can help you drive market strategy and fill gaps in consumer demand.
Google Analytics can go a long way in helping you understand your consumer’s behavior online. If you need help configuring Google Analytics, check out Google Analytics for Beginners: Getting Started with GA4.
Or, if you want even deeper demographic and psychographic isnights, theAudience Intelligence app can help you.
Tap into your audience’s online behavior and preferences by diving into demographics, interests, content engagement, online habits, purchasing behavior, and more.
Once you have an understanding of your target audience, it should be easier to select your online marketing channels.
Further reading: Target Audience: What It Is & How to Find Yours [+ Examples]
Choose Your Business’s Online Marketing Channels
Before considering the digital marketing strategies for your small business, let’s review the digital marketing channels that can be leveraged to reach your audience.
Video Marketing: Social Media and YouTube
Create and share videos to showcase your products or services, demonstrate usage, share customer testimonials, or tell your brand's story. Video content can significantly boost your visibility on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more.
This accessibility makes it possible for small businesses to compete with larger ones by showcasing their products, sharing tutorials, or customer testimonials, all of which can amplify local and global reach without substantial investment.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool for small businesses because it provides a direct line to customers at a relatively low cost.
Using segmented lists and personalized emails can improve customer retention and encourage repeat business.
Small businesses can leverage cost-effective email marketing tools to automate campaigns, track engagement, and drive conversions, making it an excellent choice for those with limited marketing resources.
Search
SEO improves your website and content's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This involves optimizing both the technical setup and the content itself to improve rankings and visibility on platforms like Google.
Local SEO extends this concept by focusing specifically on geographic-specific results. Google My Business profile and incorporating city or state-specific keywords are examples of local SEO optimization techniques.
Together, these strategies ensure your business ranks well both broadly and locally.
Social Media
Social media marketing incorporates social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn in promoting your products or services. Use these platforms to promote offerings and to communicate with your customers directly.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising involves investing in search engine marketing or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to place ads on search engines and social media, increasing immediate visibility and traffic.
A mix of these channels, aligned with your audience's preferences and habits, can significantly enhance your digital presence and drive business growth
Further reading: 7 Effective Digital Marketing Channels & How to Use Them
Implementing Online Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business
Clearly, committing to a small business digital marketing strategy is a worthwhile step to reaching your business objectives. By understanding your goals and identifying your target audience, you can tailor strategies to yield results that improve your bottom line.
And the best part? Business owners can leverage many online marketing tools for free or at low cost.
Let’s look at four essential strategies using a hypothetical bakery business as an example.
1. Create a Content Marketing Strategy to Establish Your Expertise
Content can be a game changer, but not all content is created equally. Quality content offers genuine value to the readers, providing a connection with consumers.
This connection contributes to engagement, ultimately increasing lead generation, trust, and sales conversions.
Quality content begins with a solid content strategy.
Consider the following:
Define Your Objectives
Defining your objectives involves zeroing in on the intent of the content. Your goals will guide your content type choices, which helps select the appropriate type and format..
Audience Preferences
Understanding your target audience’s content consumption habits is critical for tailoring your content strategy effectively.
Different formats like emails, blogs, videos, podcasts, e-books, white papers, and infographics cater to diverse preferences and needs.
Using multiple formats will help you connect more effectively with your audience and enhance engagement.
Content Audit
Conducting a content audit involves reviewing the performance of your existing content. If you already have content, it’s important to review its performance.
Content auditshelp refine your strategy, identify content gaps, and optimize future content to better meet the needs of your audience and achieve your marketing goals.
Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is essential for planning the publication schedule across different platforms.
Draft a content calendar, marking when and where you’ll publish. This consistency keeps your business visible and top-of-mind for your audience
Promotion
Promoting your content ensures it reaches a broader audience. Ensure your content reaches a broader audience by sharing it across platforms, collaborations, or email newsletters.
Analyze and Iterate
Regularly monitoring content performance allows you to gather insights and make data-driven adjustments.
This continuous evaluation helps ensure that your content remains aligned with your business objectives and resonates with your audience
Need help getting started? Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool can help you generate topic ideas based on your main keywords.
You can use the Keyword Magic Tool for free. Simply type in a main keyword (or “seed” keyword) and hit search. You can review modified phrases, questions, and related keyword groups from there.
Creating Content: Do It Yourself or Hire Help?
Authoring content can be cost-effective but time-consuming, especially across different platforms. If your time as a small business owner is too limited for content creation, Semrush’s App Center offers various tools for small businesses to streamline production.
Here, you can choose from apps to generate video, social media, or website content at scale for your business.
For example:
- ContentShake AI: Create unique, engaging content at scale with AI.
- AI Video Marketing Automator: Automatically convert blogs into engaging videos in seconds.
- AI Writing Assistant: Create quality content with an AI-powered writing companion in seconds.
A successful content strategy involves understanding your audience, offering value, and balancing quality and cost. Once your content is ready, remember to advertise it across social media platforms.
Tracking the impact of your content marketing can be measured by new website traffic, content downloads, and engagement when sharing content on social media.
Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing
2. Leverage Social Media
Social media can promote your brand and offer the ideal forum for businesses to showcase products, engage with customers, and get instant feedback.
Choosing the right platform depends on your audience. Researching where your target demographic spends most of their time is key.
Planning posts is another important step, and consistency in posting keeps your brand top-of-mind. Using scheduling tools can help maintain a regular posting rhythm, ensuring you never miss an engagement opportunity.
For an additional $29.99/month, Semrush Social tools can manage, schedule, and analyze your social media on various platforms, allowing your business to gain traction.
And if you need the work done quickly, the AI Social Generator can help you generate captions, hashtags, and videos at scale for social media usage.
For our bakery, Instagram could be the answer. Regular posts of freshly baked goods, behind-the-scenes glimpses of the baking process, and interactive stories or polls about the next flavor can not only engage but also drive customers to the physical or online store.
As a KPI, the bakery could track its website traffic from social media or total engagement levels over time.
Further reading: Guide to social media for small businesses
3. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
SEO makes your website more visible to search engines, helping drive traffic to your website naturally. And if your store has a physical location, local SEO is also pivotal in being found.
A great starting place with SEO is to set up your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts. These tools will help you gain a baseline for your current website traffic and visibility.
Another initial step is to identify search terms your potential customers use by referencing keyword research. Incorporating these keywords into your content optimizes your website for user searches, allowing it to rank well on Google.
For our bakery, that might include trending dessert-related keywords like “bread bakery” or "gluten-free bakery near me.” The goal here is to choose keywords with traffic volume (volume) that are not highly competitive (keyword difficulty or KD%).
Next, ensure your site structure is easy to navigate. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content. Regular site audits can pinpoint issues like broken links or slow-loading pages, ensuring optimal user experience.
Link building is another necessary component. Quality backlinks from reputable sites signal to search engines that your website is trustworthy and can lead to higher rankings on Google.
There are a few easy ways to grab backlink opportunities as a small business. These include:
- Linking from social media profiles: Link back to your website from your social media bios.
- Enlisting in local directories: List your business in local directories like Yellow Pages or Yelp.
- Local collaborations or guest posting: Partner with local businesses to advertise each other’s services.
Another way to build links is by monitoring mentions of your brand online. Apps like Media Monitoring can track these mentions and convert them into backlinks, further boosting your SEO.
To track your SEO success, you can measure KPIs like organic traffic and keyword rankings for the most important pages on your site.
With a solid SEO strategy, your online visibility will increase naturally. However, it’s worth considering paid advertising campaigns to supercharge your traffic and conversions more quickly.
Further reading: Small Business SEO: 14 SEO Tips for Small Businesses
4. Consider Paid Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a method where businesses pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. But when is it ideal?
PPC is beneficial when you want quick results. While SEO is a long-term strategy, PPC can provide immediate traffic. It’s especially beneficial for seasonal promotions or new product launches.
However, without a proper strategy, PPC can be costly without guaranteeing desired outcomes.
By setting clear objectives and budget constraints, businesses can ensure they’re not overspending for the traffic they receive.
When starting a PPC campaign, choose the right platform for your target audience. For our bakery, Google Ads targeting local baked goods enthusiasts could be impactful.
Ads Launch Assistant is a free app that can help launch campaigns in collaboration with Google Ads. This app combines Semrush keyword data with AI to assist in campaign creation and monitoring through AI-powered keyword and copy suggestions.
For a local bakery, targeting ads for “fresh pastries near me” or “best local bakery” can attract nearby customers searching for a satisfying treat.
After launching, use tracking tools to measure the campaign’s effectiveness, ensuring you get value for your investment. You can adjust the strategy as needed based on performance metrics.
KPIs for this strategy would include conversion rates, sign-ups and payments from ad traffic, and click-through rates.
Further reading: 12 Paid Advertising Mistakes & How You Can Make Your Ads Better
Measure Success with Key Performance Indicators
KPIs are specific metrics used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns against preset objectives. They’re like scorecards for your marketing efforts and will show you if you’re achieving your goals or if you need to adjust.
You can use tools like Google Analytics for website performance or to see information from specific social media sites. These tools offer valuable data like website traffic, traffic sources, user engagement, and conversion rates.
For more streamlined reporting, My Reports in Semrush can gather metrics from different sources into a single PDF view.
Consider our hypothetical bakery. If they launch a new pastry and see a surge in website visits and social media activity, these indicators suggest strong customer interest in the new product. Conversely, if a promotion fails to boost visits or sales, it may indicate the need for revised marketing tactics.
Important KPIs include website traffic, social media shares, and the conversion rate of their Google Ads. These could all be included in a simple monthly report.
By regularly monitoring these metrics, the store ensures they’re moving closer to the goals, adjusting their approach as required.
Further reading: SEO KPIs: 12 KPIs for SEO to Track & Measure
Getting Started with Semrush Digital Marketing Tools
These online marketing strategies are designed not only to extend your reach but also to build trust and enhance your website's authority—all within a budget-friendly framework.
With the right digital tools, your small business can tap into customer preferences and fine-tune your strategies for optimal results.
Remember that you don’t need to be an online marketing expert to gain traction in the digital space; it’s all about having the right tools at your disposal.
Try out a free trial of Semrush to see if these tools are right for your small business.