Digital Marketing for Small Business: A Practical Guide for 2024

Marketing your small business online can open up unique possibilities—more website traffic, increased brand awareness, and higher sales.

The good news? You don't need years of expertise or a large team to grow your digital presence.

Having worked with various small businesses throughout my career, I can confirm this firsthand.

In this guide, I’ll share 13 effective digital marketing strategies for small businesses, with actionable steps and examples for each.

What Is Digital Marketing for Small Businesses?

Digital marketing for small businesses means promoting your products and services online.

It lets you reach customers through channels like websites, social media, and email instead of traditional methods like printed ads or billboards.

What makes it especially powerful for small businesses is that you don't need a huge budget to get started.

You can compete effectively with larger companies by being smart about how and where you reach your customers online.

Why Your Small Business Needs Digital Marketing

Digital marketing lets small businesses like yours become industry leaders and grow in their target markets.

With marketing tactics like SEO, email marketing, influencer partnerships, and more, you can connect with high-intent customers at scale.

Here are the key benefits of digital marketing for small businesses:

1. Lower Cost Per Customer

Instead of spending $2.000 on a local radio ad, you could invest $200 in Facebook ads and reach customers who actively search for your products.

A small coffee shop can appear at the top of local Google searches just by optimizing their Google Business Profile.

A brand no one has heard of can go viral within hours by uploading an engaging video to TikTok or Instagram.

In other words, digital marketing can generate better results at a lower cost. As simple as that.

2. Effective Data-Driven Decisions

Every digital marketing action gives you immediate feedback.

You'll see which products people view most on your website, which email subject lines get opened, and which social posts drive sales.

For example, a local bookstore owner can notice that posts about children's books at 3 PM get 3x more engagement than other content, and adjust their strategy accordingly.

The best part? You don't need a lot of experience to work with digital marketing data, as many tools present it in a simple, digestible way.

3. 24/7 Sales Without Extra Staff

Your digital presence works even when you don’t.

A booking plugin can handle appointments for a beauty salon. An automated email sequence can nurture leads while you focus on crafting products. And a social media ad can attract 5 new buyers every hour.

Digital marketing allows you to create a better customer experience without additional costs or resources.

4. Compete With Bigger Brands

Small business digital marketing changes the way brands compete online.

Anyone can go viral and find their voice using various digital channels.

These platforms allow you to build an organic audience that connects with your brand and its values.

Let's look at a real-life example.

Going Solo, an app for finding travel buddies, used Instagram to expand their reach and grow their business.

They currently have over 140K followers on Instagram and use this channel to engage with their audience and drive more traffic to their app.

Can you imagine how many new users they attract every day with this free, organic channel?

Now let's explore the top 13 digital marketing tips and tactics for small businesses.

Top 13 Small Business Digital Marketing Tips and Strategies

I've curated these digital marketing strategies to suit all types of small businesses, whether you run a B2B consultancy, an ecommerce store, or a local business. 

Some of these strategies are universally applicable, while others are tailored for specific business types. 

Let's dive in.

1. Always Start with Your Digital Marketing Goals

As a small business owner, kickstarting your digital marketing efforts can be daunting. 

Create a blog, get on TikTok (or maybe Instagram), run email marketing campaigns—it’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the endless marketing channels and opportunities.

Spoiler alert: You don’t have to be present on all those channels just because others are.

A simple goal-setting exercise can help you determine the direction of your marketing strategy and decide on the necessary tactics.

• For instance, if you’re after quick sales, it’s better to focus on paid ads as they provide quicker results than SEO.

• On the other hand, if you’ve already created the foundation for your business, it might be time to build your industry presence and invest in SEO.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Here are the main steps you can take:

🚀 Determine your business goals: Define your main focus for the foreseeable future. For example, it could be testing a business idea, generating sales, or growing brand awareness. 

🚀 Define your high-level digital marketing goals: Translate your business objectives into digital marketing KPIs that digital channels can directly influence. 

Look at historical data, research industry benchmarks, and make educated assumptions. For example, if increasing revenue is a priority, a digital marketing goal could be to grow online sales by 20%.

🚀 Break these goals into objectives: Break your high-level goals into smaller, actionable objectives. For example, if you want to increase online sales by 20%, you could set specific KPIs for various activations like ad campaigns and email marketing.

🚀 Ensure a focused approach: Start by investing in a few tactics that you’re confident will yield results, and don’t try to do everything at once. 

Run experiments to test different channels (e.g., ads vs. influencer marketing), track the results, and double down on those that deliver the most ROI.Get a Clear Understanding of Your Audience 

2. Get a Clear Understanding of Your Audience 

The success of your small business digital marketing efforts hinges on how well you resonate with your target customers. 

If you don’t know who your customers are and what they want, it can be tough to create marketing campaigns that engage them effectively. 

You can win over your customers and gain their trust through marketing efforts when you know:

• Where they spend their time
• How they make purchasing decisions
• What their preferences and habits are
• How they consume information 

For example, Eternal Muse is a brand that sells heatless curlers online. They have a stunning Instagram presence with over 300k followers, creating a powerful base for selling their product.

The brand creates reels on relatable topics engaging their female audience. Knowing the right pain points to highlight in their content is key to this success.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Before investing in high-stake tactics like paid ads, perform comprehensive audience research. 

Some ways to research your target audience:

• Surveys: Use tools like Google Forms and SurveyMonkey to collect data directly from your target audience.
• Social media analytics: Analyze your social media to learn about your followers' demographics. You can use native analytics in each platform or use specialized social media analytics tools to do it at scale.
• Market research reports: Read industry-specific reports to get a broad understanding of your target market and audience. 
• Website analytics: Tools like Google Analytics can show you how visitors find your site, which pages they visit, and what content they enjoy. This data helps you understand your audience's interests.
• Customer feedback: Talk to your existing customers and review their feedback to learn what they like or dislike about your products/services/business.
• Audience research platforms: Platforms like Audience Intelligence and One2Target provide detailed insights into your audience's online behavior, which is a great option for beginners and those looking to save time.

For example, One2Target gives you various insights about your online audience in just a few clicks. 

Simply enter any domain and check useful data about your audience, including demographics, socioeconomics, behavior, and more.

Once you’ve collected the data, group your customers by common characteristics and create customer profiles representing each customer segment. 

Use the buyer persona framework to summarize the key traits of each user group and clearly present them to all team members. 

The free Semrush Persona tool can help you do this with ease. You can add relevant points about each persona—like pain points, jobs to be done, etc.—and save them for future reference.

3. Analyze Your Competitors’ Marketing Performance 

Let’s face it, small business owners are reluctant to invest in marketing campaigns because they’re unsure of the return on investment (ROI). 

Analyzing your competitors is a great way to learn whether your marketing tactics are worth betting on. It also helps you learn which activities resonate with your audience and work best for other players in the sector.

Wondering how to do it?

Check out their website, social profiles, emails, ads, and other channels. Look at the content they create, the channels they use, and how their audience engages on different platforms. 

You can also dig deeper and use specialized competitive intelligence tools.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Here are some tools to automate competitor research for your small business:

Organic Research: Get a complete overview of a competitor’s organic presence with insights like their current organic traffic, highest-ranking pages, and top organic keywords.

Keyword Gap: Compare your site against multiple competitors to find high-traffic keywords they’re targeting and you’re not. This lets you identify untapped keyword opportunities to improve your SEO performance.

Traffic Analytics: Monitor your competitors’ total web traffic and analyze how many visitors they attract, their key traffic sources, their most successful pages, audience profiles of their visitors, and more.

4. Create a Visually Appealing, Conversion-Driven Website

Before you start running ads or sending emails, prepare the foundation: a website that does its job—converting visitors into leads and customers.

Remember, you won’t get value from any traffic without optimized landing pages featuring product details, forms, calls-to-action (CTA) buttons, and banners, etc.

A successful website isn't just about looking good; it needs to provide the information and tools required to engage your audience, blending user-friendly design with functionality.

Here are the essentials to focus on when building your website:

• Clearly explain your business and what you offer
• Have specific pages for each separate offer, product, etc.
• Address potential customer concerns or objections
• Make it easy for visitors to make a purchase
• Provide social proof (e.g., customer reviews) to build trust
• Ensure technical optimization, including high loading speed and mobile friendliness  

For example, it’s very common to struggle with converting blog post visitors.

But how can you convert someone without a CTA? This bit often gets forgotten.

Simple measures like adding a blog banner can help you further engage and convert your visitors.

Here’s how page banners help convert Semrush’s blog readers:

It’s also important to make sure your website is designed to rank well on search engines from day one. This will help you avoid the frustration of publishing great content that never gets organic traffic.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Follow these steps to create a high-quality, functional website:

🚀 Choose a website type: Do you need an ecommerce store, multi-page site, portfolio, or a single landing page? Pick a website format based on the nature of your business. This will also determine your choice of content management system (CMS) or website builder. 

For example, if you’re building an ecommerce store, pick Shopify as your CMS. For standalone landing pages, use the Landing Page Builder available on Semrush’s app store. 

🚀 Decide how you’ll build it: If you’re on a tight budget, take a DIY approach to building your website using tools like Wix, Webflow, or Framer. Or consider hiring a web developer/agency if you have the budget to outsource this part.

🚀 Create website content: Decide which pages you want to have and add the necessary content for each page within your website architecture.

🚀 Optimize your site: Make sure your site is secure, loads quickly, is mobile-friendly, and offers smooth navigation. Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to identify technical SEO issues that might be impacting your site’s technical performance or work with a freelance SEO specialist.

5. Deliver a Stellar Customer Experience

Customer experience is the overall perception and feelings that customers have when interacting with a brand across different touchpoints. 

Creating positive customer experiences helps you build trust and encourage people to come back to your small business. It can also set you apart from larger competitors. 

There are many digital marketing channels that can aid you with this task.

For example, Brewery X, a California-based craft brewery, has enhanced its customer experience by implementing an online ordering system. 

In contrast to its competitors, it lets customers browse the brewery's beer selection, place orders for pickup or delivery, and even schedule brewery tours through the app. 

Brewery X also engages customers through social media, sharing updates on new releases and events, which encourages community involvement and keeps customers informed. 

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Here are some ideas for implementing digital customer experience techniques:

🚀 Offer multiple contact channels: Provide different ways for customers to reach you, like phone, email, and live website chats.

🚀 Maintain consistency across all touchpoints: Whether it's in-store, online, or over the phone, deliver a consistent experience. This includes uniform branding, messaging, and quality of service. 

🚀 Listen to and act on customer feedback: Regularly ask for customer feedback and act on it. For example, check customer reviews and analyze direct feedback form submissions and customer support requests. 

You can also use tools like Brand Monitoring to automatically collect and analyze online mentions of your brand. 

🚀 Provide self-service support: Make the buying process smoother by offering resources like FAQs or a knowledge base.

🚀 Add personalization: Use specialized marketing tools to personalize customer experiences. For example, you can send targeted email nurture tracks using platforms like HubSpot. 

Or, you can use tools like Bloomreach to showcase personalized product recommendations if you manage an ecommerce site.

For example, sites like Gymshark use the "people also bought" strategy to provide personalized product recommendations.

6. Invest in Content Marketing 

Content marketing involves creating and sharing useful content (blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.) to attract and engage your target audience. 

It’s a way to attract website traffic without spending thousands on digital ads. This is especially important for small businesses with tight budgets.

Take inspiration from Flowrite, one of Semrush’s many customers. 

The AI startup grew its monthly organic traffic to 1 million after two years of consistent content marketing and SEO efforts—with just one marketing person on the team.

How did they get there? By first identifying their customers' broader pain points and then creating relevant content to tackle them.

Source 

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

You’ve probably heard about the rise of AI content marketing. It’s true, small businesses can now create more content at scale, even with limited resources. 

However, content still requires a lot of human input.

The best solution? Combining AI with human expertise and oversight.

Let’s look at a sample workflow.

🚀 First, go back to your audience research and list your customers’ key pain points. For example, if you’re selling cat toys, your audience personas might be concerned about their pets getting bored or depressed.

So, pet mental health can be one of the topics you would cover. Make sure to grow your knowledge of this topic, talk with experts in the field, and gather data.

🚀 Next, head to an AI writing tool. It’s best to use software like Semrush’s ContentShake AI because it combines real-time competitive data with AI (unlike chatbots like ChatGPT).

🚀 Add details about your business, generate your brand voice, and choose your target location—up to city level. 

🚀 Select a content idea suggested by the tool (you can also add your own).

🚀 From here, the tool will generate an article written in your individual tone of voice. It will be optimized for your target keywords and your audience’s search intent. 

You can now open the blog editor to further enhance the piece with your ideas and expertise. Add expert quotes, statistics, infographics, and more.

Consistently publishing relevant and high-quality content will help you attract leads organically and convert them into loyal customers.

7. Plan and Execute a Winning SEO Strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving a site’s visibility on search engines like Google and Bing.

By optimizing your website to rank in search results, you can attract target customers with different types of intent. 

It can be people asking questions you can answer with your content (e.g., “how to improve mental health in cats”) or searching for products you can sell (e.g., “innovative electronic cat toys”).

Your SEO strategy will always be closely connected with your content strategy. It requires thorough research and the creation of high-quality, relevant content.

For example, Hepper—a pet furniture brand—achieved a 2,964% increase in product sales revenue and 90,000 daily visitors thanks to content-driven SEO.

How?

By finding relevant keywords and creating over 5,000 articles tackling their customers’ questions!

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Keyword research is the ideal starting point for your SEO efforts. 

Use Semrush’s Keyword Strategy Builder to find high-intent keywords (keywords that are more likely to drive conversions) for your business.

First, launch Keyword Strategy Builder and add a few seed keywords. A seed keyword is a broad term related to your business/product/service/industry. 

For example, we could use a “cat toys” seed keyword.

Select your location country and hit “Create list.”

Semrush will then share a detailed dashboard for your keyword(s). 

Here’s an example of a topical overview listing six topic clusters for our seed keyword. Each topic cluster includes one main keyword with several secondary keywords.

Further down, you’ll find exact keywords to target within each specific topic. For example, the keyword “silver vine vs catnip” for the “silver vine for cats” topic.

Next, you will collect all the keywords you’ve saved, create a content plan, and start writing articles targeting each of them.

You can also use specialized AI SEO tools to do so.

8. Establish a Strong Social Media Presence

Fact: 42% of Americans use social media platforms to discover new small businesses.

While this data is limited to the United States, it highlights the power of social media for your small business.

Start by selecting the best social media platforms to focus on.  

Remember, you don’t need to be everywhere. Choose channels where your customers are likely to make purchasing decisions.

For instance, if your target audience includes professionals, even though they might be active on Instagram, they are more likely to make purchasing decisions on LinkedIn. 

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

There are many ways to find social media ideas. Use social media to promote the content you publish on your website, discuss company news, and feature your product.

It’s also a good idea to create native social media content. These could be posts and reels reflecting on your target audience’s pain points.

For example, Turn Up, a music dating app, regularly posts funny reels that talk about such pain points as finding a concert buddy.

Overall, it’s best to build your social media strategy with real-life data in mind. 

For example, Semrush’s suite of social media tools helps you track your competitors, find content ideas, create posts, publish them, and analyze results—all in one place.

9. Invest in Email Marketing

Email marketing uses email as an online marketing channel to reach and communicate with your target audience. It's affordable, easy to implement, stable, and can yield great results. 

Do you think email marketing doesn’t work anymore? Think twice.

Around 60% of consumers have made a purchase as a result of receiving a marketing email. 

And 81% of small and medium business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention and helps acquire customers.

There are several types of emails you can send:

• Transactional emails: Automated emails for order confirmations, shipping updates, etc.
• Nurture sequences: Automated emails that educate and engage users once they become part of your CRM. For example, a diet app could share emails with tips for selecting foods and creating a meal plan based on each user’s preferences. 
• Newsletters: Regular educational emails that engage your audience, position you as an authority, and drive traffic back to your site.

For example, Henneke Duistermaat runs Enchanting Marketing—a place where you can learn about copywriting, purchase courses, and buy Henneke’s books.

To keep her readers engaged, Henneke sends regular newsletters with copywriting tips that link back to the latest articles.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Here are the key steps you’ll take when building an email marketing strategy:

🚀 Build your email list: Add your existing customers and come up with a way to motivate new website visitors. For example, offer discounts or create a newsletter with exclusive deals.

Check out this example from & Other Stories:

🚀 Choose the right email service provider: For example, Mailchimp for beginners, Klaviyo for e-commerce businesses and ConvertKit for creators.

🚀 Segment your audience: Group your email subscribers based on interests and behavior. For example, you could send targeted emails to users interested in hiking clothes and those shopping for gym attire.

🚀 Run experiments: Email marketing platforms let you A/B test different email elements, from subject lines to send times. Continuous experiments and optimization will help you get better results without extra investment.

Here's what it might look like:

10. Run Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Influencer marketing involves partnering with influencers or online creators to increase your reach and generate sales. 

Research shows that influencer endorsements are one of the most influential marketing tactics for small businesses. 

However, influencer marketing is often perceived as an expensive digital marketing strategy because well-known influencers can charge thousands of dollars for collaborations.

Source

But don’t let this discourage you from running influencer marketing campaigns.

If budget is a concern, consider working with smaller influencers who cater to a niche audience. They charge significantly less than large-scale influencers and often bring more authenticity to their content. 

For example, Magic Molecule, a small skincare brand, collaborated with a nano-influencer with fewer than 10,000 followers to create an Instagram reel. 

While the reel received only just over 100 likes, it attracted genuine comments from people appreciating the product recommendation. 

Source 

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

🚀 First, consider your goals and what you’d like to achieve with influencer marketing. For example, is it to generate sales online, reach a specific audience, or attract social media followers?

🚀 Next, outline your ideal influencer profile and budget. Your ideal influencer should be relevant to your niche and the brand story you want to translate.

🚀 Finally, use influencer marketing platforms like Influencer Analytics to find relevant creators who meet your requirements. Spend some time shortlisting and vetting multiple candidates before onboarding the best-fit influencers. 

🚀 You can also conduct manual analysis using Google search and social media platforms. 

For example, search for profiles posting about relevant topics on Instagram and shortlist accounts that could be a good option for your campaign.

11. Run Paid Ads

Paid advertising is a marketing strategy where businesses pay to promote their products, services, or content on digital platforms.

Unlike organic marketing, paid advertising involves continuous financial investment to reach your target audience.

Here are some types of paid ads you can explore:

• Search ads: These ads appear in search engine results when you bid on specific keywords. They are ideal for local digital marketing with target keywords like “buy electronic cat toys.”
• Display ads: These ads appear on websites and apps, mainly as part of retargeting campaigns. You can include images and videos to reach a broad audience. 
• Social media ads: Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn let you run paid ads to reach a broader audience. Here’s an example of a paid ad on LinkedIn:

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

🚀 Competitive analysis is essential when building a paid advertising strategy. It helps you understand what works well for other players in your niche. Here are some tools you can use:

• Semrush’s Advertising Research lets you gather insights on your competitors' ad spending, top-performing ads, and targeted keywords

• Social media ad libraries like Facebook’s Ad Library showcase the types of ads your competitors are running on social media. 

🚀 Then, use platforms like Semrush’s Ads Launch Assistant to create and manage your ads in one place.

12. Tap into Video Marketing

Video marketing has been getting more popular each year.

According to Wyzowl's 2024 video marketing survey, 89% of customers want to see more videos from brands this year. 

The best part: Your video content can go viral. This means reaching thousands of potential customers without investing in paid promotion.

One such example is the "Squatty Potty" video campaign.

Squatty Potty is a company that sells a toilet stool designed to improve bathroom posture. They created a humorous video featuring a unicorn pooping rainbow-colored ice cream to explain the benefits of their product.

This video alone generated over 40 million views.

But is it always about viral content?

Of course not.

Remember, while viral hits are great, consistent, targeted video content can also drive steady growth for your small business.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to break the bank to experiment with video marketing.  

For example, you can use your smartphone to shoot high-quality video.

AI video generators like Synthesia and Veed.io and editing apps like Canva will also simplify the process. Here's what it looks like:

Here are other budget-friendly tools to level up your video strategy:

• AI Video Marketing Automator: Generate AI videos based on prompts or repurpose existing videos into short clips. Publish directly to your social profiles. 
• Video Marketing Platform: Edit videos like a pro without the expertise needed to use advanced video-editing tools. Get access to a live-streaming studio to host live sessions and webinars. 
• Rank Tracker for YouTube: Track rankings for 200 keywords on YouTube to optimize your videos for higher rankings. Monitor real-time position changes to grow your channel. 

13. Implement Local Search Optimization (for Local Businesses)

If you run a local business (salon, restaurant, or retail store), you need to establish a solid local presence. 

This is where local SEO comes in. It helps you show up in local search results.

Lets imagine you run a restaurant. Here's how it works:

🚀 Local neighborhood search: Imagine your restaurant is in New York and specializes in Italian cuisine. You’ll want your business to show up when locals search for "Italian restaurant new york" or just "Italian restaurants near me."

🚀 Outside neighborhood search: If someone from a different part of town or a visitor searches for "the best italian restaurant new york," you want your restaurant to appear in those results as well.

How to Implement It in Your Small Business

Some local SEO tactics include:

• Setting up a Google Business profile (GBP) and regularly updating it
• Distributing business information through directory listings 
• Targeting location-specific long-tail keywords (like “best salon in Washington”) when optimizing your profile

It’s best to use specialized tools like Semrush’s Listing Management tool to automate this process.

It’ll help you access a complete collection of local directories to list your business, including Yelp, Foursquare, and Tripadvisor, and optimize your presence accordingly.

You can also use it to grow your local rankings, enhance your profile, and manage online business reviews.

Create a Powerful Small Business Digital Marketing Strategy 

Digital marketing has always been a tough nut to crack for small businesses.

Many business owners hold themselves back for the fear that online marketing campaigns will cost a fortune. 

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Follow this process:

🚀 Start by documenting your business goals. 

🚀 Pick one or two channels that align with your goals and your target audience’s preferences.

🚀 Choose AI tools and marketing automation tools to simplify your processes.

🚀 Analyze your audience and deliver content that resonates with them using those digital channels.

Over time, you’ll be able to scale your efforts and start seeing real results.

Remember, creating quality content is key when building your small business digital marketing strategy. It fuels all channels, from organic to ads. 

Start your digital marketing journey with ContentShake AI. It will generate unique, engaging content that’s set to attract the right customers to your website.