Grow Your Business
- By Mike Purvis Co-founder of NH Strategic Marketing
- October 6, 2019
- October 6, 2026
How To Market Your Business Online Effectively
Learning how to market your business online starts with a few practical decisions. Who do you want to reach? What would you like them to book or buy? And how much new work can your business take on?
We work with businesses of all shapes and sizes, in all industries, and in over 36 different states across the country. The truth of the matter (despite what you may have been told) is that when it comes to online marketing and building awareness for your business, the tools and methods used across various industries and business sizes are very similar.
To market a small business online, define your customer and offer, prepare a website that explains the services you offer, the locations you serve, and makes contacting you easy, and choose martketing channels that match how your customers buy.
The Tools And Methods To Get You In Front Of The Right People
The style of communication, the design aspects of your website and ads, and the verbiage you use when speaking to your ideal prospects change. But the online marketing methods and tools do not. And this is great news for your business.
NH Strategic Marketing has always taken a No BS approach to marketing. We never use smoke and mirrors to command higher prices, and our team of digital marketing experts always focuses on one primary objective. And that objective is to make our clients’ lives easier (and better), by acting as a ‘filter’ when it comes to building your brand and marketing your business online.
One of the things we hear day in and day out is a sense of frustration from small business owners who are constantly bombarded with offers from marketing agencies promising to solve all of their problems with some new solution.
These agencies are always pitching some service designed to “bring in more customers.” And in many cases, they can do it for very little money (or so they say): “For just $100/mo you can be increasing your online visibility, and getting found online more frequently.”
Here is the truth (which we suspect you already know)!
Smart Online Marketing Will Make You Far More Money Than It Costs You
If that idea still feels fuzzy, re-read the previous section before moving on. If it clicks, congratulations: you are on your way to growing your business with smart online marketing.
The question we hear most is some version of how to market your business online and earn a real return. Our answer starts in the same place for a landscaper in Concord and an online store in Florida.
There are three very important areas you must consider when looking at any marketing program.
1. Your Online Appearance: How Prospective Customers See You When They Find You Online
Here is what we consider (and work on) in our marketing packages:
We start here because you don’t want to invest in driving any traffic to your website until you stand a high chance of converting that traffic into new business. No amount of investment can grow a business if you’re spending money driving to a property that doesn’t convert.
It would be like a realtor showing prospective buyers a house that’s about to fall down, and telling them that it will be perfect for their new family, and they should buy it now. Not only are they not likely to buy it, but they’ll probably tell all of their friends that they should stay away from that realtor as well.
Here’s what we consider (and work on) in our marketing packages.
- Your online “curb appeal” and visible presence.
This covers how your website looks and how fast it loads (here is why site speed matters so much), most importantly on mobile devices. In most industries we work with, 60 to 80% of your visitors will come from mobile devices. - The security of your website.
We make sure your site serves all content through SSL (HTTPS). Google has used HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014, and browsers label sites without it “Not secure,” so it doubles as a trust signal for visitors. - Solid, reputable hosting.
We can act as your on-call web development team if you run into problems or need help updating your site, adding fresh content, or recovering if your site gets hacked. We have your back. - A website, if you are starting from scratch.
We can help you there as well with custom small business website design, and websites cost less than most people think. - Conversion-focused key pages.
We design your key pages to turn the right visitors into inquiries (and ultimately customers). In many cases we suggest (and help build out) new pages dedicated to growing specific areas of your business. - Clean organization and structure.
Finally, we make sure your site is organized to promote your business with good organic listings, a good user experience, and easy navigation. - Your online reputation (reviews).
Through our review generation and management service, we work with you on strategies so you have more (and better) reviews than your competition. This is a critical factor in building trust with your newest prospects.
We also make sure your key pages are conversion focused, use high-quality images, and are designed in such a way that they are likely to turn the right visitors into inquiries and, ultimately, customers. In many cases we may suggest new pages dedicated to growing specific areas of your business.
Claim And Polish Your Google Business Profile
For local businesses, your Google Business Profile often gets seen before your website does. It is the listing that appears in Google Maps and the local “map pack,” complete with your hours, photos, reviews and a call button. Here is the short version of our setup routine.
- Claim and verify the profile, then pick the most specific primary category you can (“Roofing contractor” beats “Contractor”).
- Fill in services, service areas, hours, attributes and a simple and optimized description of what you do and where.
- Add real photos of your team, trucks, storefront and finished work, and keep adding them through the year.
- Post updates and offers a few times a month so the profile looks active and cared for.
- Match your business name, address and phone number (NAP) on your website, Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, the BBB and other online directories so Google trusts the details.
If you want the detailed walkthrough, here is our step-by-step guide to setting up your Google Business listing. And if you prefer to hand it off, our team handles Google Business Profile management for clients as well.
All of this sets you up with a rock solid foundation and allows you to achieve the highest return on investment as you start driving traffic to your web property and GBP. And this brings us to the second area of focus.
Send us your website and we will grade your mobile experience, Google profile and reviews against your top three competitors.
2. Your Traffic Streams: How New Customers Find You Online
Time to get real for a moment. An amazing web presence pays off when people see it, and a website earns its keep when it brings you new business, right? Of course. This is why the next area of focus, once your website is dialed in, is quality web traffic. Getting new visitors to your site and new customers calling your phone.
There are a lot of strategies we use to drive awareness and traffic for our clients. The strategies vary slightly by industry, level of competition, whether or not the business is limited by geography (like a local service business, a landscaper, roofer, etc.), if it’s an internet-based business (like an e-commerce store), etc.
The important thing to realize, however, is that of the 10,000 ways you’ve probably heard of to build awareness for your brand and bring in new customers online, there are really only a handful of tools and traffic streams that deliver any significant result. The 80/20 rule is definitely in effect when it comes to driving traffic and awareness online.
Here is the approach we take when laying out your business’s traffic strategy.
Competitor Analysis
The first thing we do is a competitor analysis. Here is the hard truth.
“There are only so many people looking for the products and services you sell each month; realize that this ‘customer inventory’ is limited.”
Think of this as your “customer inventory.” Your goal is (or it should be) to capture as much of that inventory as possible and convert it into new business. Plain and simple. This is how your business beats the competition.
Even more important, you need to establish your position in the marketplace when business is good, when you are already busy and things are going well. When the economy takes a dive, businesses ramp up their online efforts to get more customers.
That drives up costs for advertisers (supply and demand at their best), except for the businesses that already have solid footing. Those are the businesses that stay on top.
So, if you want to economy-proof your business, start establishing your online presence now, while things are booming. Wait until later, and you will be fighting for scraps with the crowd that waited.
Okay, so once we have the competitor data, we use it to decide how to position you to rank higher in paid search, organic listings, and even in the business listings and social channels by using targeting campaigns in the following order.
1. Brand Targeting Strategy
This is where we make sure you show up at the top of the page anytime someone searches specifically for your brand or company name. The last thing you want is your competition showing up above you when someone is searching for you directly, right? We see it all the time, and honestly it hurts us to see a company that lets their competition capture their referral and branded search traffic.
2. The Best Marketing Investment: Remarketing
Once we are certain you show up at the top of page one when people look for you by name, we focus on retargeting (also known as remarketing). If you have ever wondered how retargeting works, it means you continue to show up and stay top of mind for people who have visited your website but have not yet taken the next step with your business.
That step may be filling out a form, buying a product, or giving you a call. Remarketing campaigns are very often the most profitable form of online traffic, and we recommend them for nearly all of our clients. It is one of the best marketing investments you can make. Every business should be running remarketing campaigns.
3. Crush The Competition
Next, we focus on getting your business showing up when people are searching for your competition. You absolutely want to make sure your business is ‘in the running’ when people are searching for your competition. And you need to show up in a creative and intelligent way, with a strong offer. Many of our clients generate a lot of new business with competitor targeting.
4. Search And Display Strategies
From there, we outline and plan strategies for search and display campaigns. Search campaigns put you in front of people displaying “buyer intent”: people raising their hands and asking for the products or services you offer.
You definitely want to get in front of these prospects. Display advertising is a more disruptive form of advertising, but we can run it with very high relevance, which is why it is a close runner-up to our search campaigns.
For many home service businesses, we also test Google Local Services Ads. These pay-per-lead listings can appear above standard search ads, which makes them a strong fit for plumbers, roofers, cleaners and similar trades.
5. Get Social And Go Wild (Well... Within Reason)
We then look at the best social media strategy for your business. The days of “lots of free traffic from Facebook” ended a while ago, but Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is an amazing traffic stream when its paid campaigns are run properly.
We are incredibly proficient at managing high-performance video, brand awareness and conversion-focused campaigns on Meta, and some of our clients see a lower cost per conversion there than through any other medium. We can certainly evaluate it as a fit for your business as well.
Quick tangent on organic posting: pick the one or two platforms your buyers use, post consistently, and show your real work. In our experience, before-and-after photos and short behind-the-scenes clips shot on a phone beat polished stock graphics most days of the week.
For paid campaigns, our Facebook advertising services focus on a defined target audience, promotional offer, and measurable action.
6. SEO Campaigns: #Winning
SEO is the long game, and we treat it that way. We review your current SEO (organic search) results and formulate a plan to tackle “easy wins” as well as long-term, higher-value targets. SEO campaigns are typically longer-timeline strategies that require higher investments, but they pay dividends over the long term. Our first page playbook for local businesses shows what goes into it.
Our SEO services for small businesses can support that work. For a local company, our guide to planning SEO for a service-area business adds location-specific detail.
Paid search and organic search can contribute at different points in the plan. Give SEO time for pages to be discovered and evaluated, and review paid campaigns using their own lead and sales data. Our article on using Google Ads and SEO together explores that combination.
7. Use Email, Referrals, and Partnerships to Stay In Touch
Your existing relationships also belong in the plan. Invite interested customers to subscribe, explain what you will send, and use an email platform that handles preferences and unsubscribe requests. You can also automate this task as there are multiple good email marketing tools available now.
A monthly maintenance tip, promotions, discounts, a product guide, or an update about appointment availability gives someone a reason to read.
For referrals, choose complementary businesses that serve similar customers. A landscaper and an irrigation specialist might exchange relevant introductions. Agree on the handoff, record the source, and follow up with the referred customer. Local associations, useful workshops, and community publications can also provide suitable places to share expertise.
At A Glance: The Traffic Streams That Bring In Customers
| Traffic stream | Who it reaches | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor analysis | Your whole local or online market. | Sized up your “customer inventory” and shows where you can win. |
| Brand targeting | People searching your business name. | Keeps you at the top for your own name and protects referral traffic. |
| Remarketing | Past visitors who have yet to call, buy or fill out a form. | Keeps you top of mind and brings warm prospects back. |
| Competitor targeting | People searching for your competitors. | Puts you in the running with a strong, creative offer. |
| Search ads | People asking Google for what you sell. | Captures buyer intent at the moment of the search. |
| Display ads | People browsing related websites and apps. | Earns awareness through highly relevant placements. |
| Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) | People scrolling social media platforms. | Video, awareness and conversion campaigns with a defined audience and offer. |
| Organic social | Followers and your local community. | Shows your real work through photos and short clips. |
| SEO | Searchers clicking unpaid Google results. | Grows search engine rankings that keep paying over the long term. |
| Email, referrals and partnerships | Past customers and partner audiences. | Keeps relationships and network warm and brings in trusted introductions. |
Get Recommended By AI Search Tools
Here is the newest traffic stream, and it is growing fast. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey, 45% of consumers said they use AI tools like ChatGPT for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before.
Google’s guidance on generative AI features in Search says AI Overviews and AI Mode pull from its core ranking systems, so learning how to market your business online for AI search mostly means doing good SEO, plus a few extra habits.
- Write from experience. Google says a unique point of view and first-hand expertise stand out over summaries of what others already published.
- Answer real customer questions.Write the answers in plain language, with a direct answer near the top of the page (like the quick answer at the top of this guide).
- Keep your business data clean. Google names Business Profiles as one way local businesses show up in AI responses, and other AI tools lean on listings and reviews too.
- Skip the gimmicks. Google states you need no special AI text files, extra markup or “chunked” rewrites to appear in its AI features.
- Measure it. Google Search Console now includes a Generative AI performance report, so you can see when your pages appear in AI features.
Want help showing up in these answers? Our AI search visibility services are designed for local businesses that want to be the name these tools recommend.
Turn Visitors Into An Audience You Own
Ads and algorithms rent you attention. Your email and text list belongs to you. A simple welcome email for new leads, a review request after the sale, and a monthly note with a useful tip or seasonal offer keep past customers coming back and referring friends.
In our experience, repeat and referral business is the cheapest revenue a small business can earn. (Get written consent before you text anyone, since the rules on marketing texts are strict.)
This is a brief picture of our traffic and remarketing approach. The blueprint for your business might be unique, yet the tools that drive 95% of the results for businesses fall within this list. These strategies have proven time and time again (when deployed correctly) to grow businesses and increase profits, so we keep our clients focused right here.
So, now that you have a solid online appearance and you are regularly driving new, qualified visitors to your site, the remaining job is to measure and improve your results. Here is how that works.
3. Tracking And Reporting: How You Know Your Advertising is Working
Visibility into what is working (and what is falling flat) means the difference between success and failure when it comes to marketing your business online.
We have lost count of the times we have taken over a new client’s accounts and discovered there was literally zero chance for the client to see which efforts were driving results from their marketing investment.
We launch a media campaign after tracking is in place. Always. How else will we know what is working? How will you know what to do more of, and what to stop doing? Marketing without tracking is like throwing money into a hurricane and seeing what blows back your way.
We set up dedicated phone, web and conversion tracking for the paid traffic campaigns we launch. You will love the peace of mind that comes from knowing with 100% certainty which campaigns are working (meaning you should put more money into them) and which ones are lagging (meaning that money belongs somewhere else).
The best way we have found to improve ROI from a marketing campaign is to track properly and shift strategy based on those reports.
The Analytics You Should Be Watching
Our standard tracking stack is Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads conversion tracking, call tracking numbers, UTM tags on campaign links, and Google Search Console. We also add a “How did you hear about us?” question to forms and phone scripts, because it fills gaps that software misses. Then we review these numbers monthly.
| Metric | What it tells you | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Leads (calls, forms, bookings) | Is marketing filling the pipeline? | GA4, call tracking, your CRM |
| Cost per lead | What a new inquiry costs by channel. | Ad platforms plus call tracking |
| Lead-to-customer rate | Lead quality and how well your team follows up. | CRM or job management software |
| Customer acquisition cost | What a new customer costs, all in. | Total marketing spend divided by new customers |
| Return on ad spend | Revenue earned per ad dollar. | Revenue from ads divided by ad spend |
| Google Business Profile actions | Calls, direction requests and website clicks from Maps. | Google Business Profile performance |
| Search and AI visibility | Clicks and impressions, including AI features. | Google Search Console |
Real, Lasting Results Need More Than One Tactic
We’ve looked at the results from many of these “$100 offers,” and in reality, they deliver zero return. When contacting us for help after these strategies haven’t moved the needle, clients have told us time and time again that they’ve seen no increase in business and don’t even really know what’s being done.
If there’s one thing that all business owners need to know about marketing their business, it’s that no one thing is going to drive real, lasting results for your business. In order to have a truly successful and effective online marketing strategy, you have to be willing to make a real investment.
A Smart Combination Of Strategic Activities Delivers Long-Term, Sustainable Growth
Online success requires a real person looking at your business goals and helping you plan your marketing strategy. It requires someone who knows all of your options and which combinations of tools and marketing strategies will work for you.
This is what we do, day in and day out, for our valued clients. We can do the same for you.
It Will Probably Cost Less Than You Expect
Unlike typical agencies, NH Strategic Marketing keeps the pricing out in the open. Most newer business clients fit nicely into one of our standard packages. These programs are designed for businesses just getting started and looking to grow with smart, multi-channel online marketing.
And of course, we offer more tailored, integrated services as well. In all cases, the focus is on turning your marketing dollars into revenue (and profit) for your business.
Many of the most successful businesses we work with (the ones who are as busy as they want to be) spend less than $5k/mo, all in, on their online marketing strategy. When you think about it, that is less than the cost of one employee in your company.
You are hiring an entire virtual marketing team, always current on what works and focused on growing your bottom line, for less than the cost of a single in-house person. You also skip the employee-related overhead that comes with bringing it all in-house. It is a no-brainer.
We only work with clients who are serious about wanting to grow their business, and who understand that to be successful, you absolutely must invest in marketing. We suggest most businesses invest a minimum of 10% of their gross sales back into marketing to improve their position in the marketplace and maintain their visibility and competitive advantage.
For a reality check, Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey puts the average marketing budget at 7.8% of company revenue. In our experience, growth-minded small businesses land at or above that line. And if you want to run your numbers, our breakdown of how much to spend on marketing walks through the math.
Your Marketing Dollars Should Be Scaling Your Business. Period.
We’ll never offer a business a service that we aren’t 100% sure will improve the bottom line. We’re a small business as well, so we understand that investing in your online marketing is a serious decision.
We also understand that with all of the noise and false promises swirling around nowadays, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out the best way to invest online. Well, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be.
And if you work with a digital marketing agency that understands fair pricing and the real needs of your small business, you should be able to do all of the things that matter with a reasonable budget.
Online Marketing Is An Investment in the Growth of Your Brand
This is such an important point. Doing a few random services that each cost $50 or $100 each, but don’t yield any real results, is like burning money. When you’re doing things right, online marketing is an investment for your business, not an expense. The point of marketing is to yield a higher amount of revenue from it. If that’s not the case and the ROI isn’t great, there’s no point in marketing.
Are You Trying To Spend As Little As Possible, Or Trying To Grow Your Business?
It’s easy to lose track of the real purpose of online marketing if you’re only focused on cost. ‘Cheap’ doesn’t equal effective. So ask yourself: “What am I really trying to do? Spend as little as possible marketing my business, or am I trying to grow my business by investing intelligently in online visibility?”
If you look at your mindset through this lens, you’ll understand that in the first case, you’re simply wasting money, and that’s an expense. In the second case, you’re investing and that’s how you grow a business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What’s the best way to advertise my business online for free?
Start with the free foundations: claim your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect listings, ask happy customers for reviews, post real photos and short videos on one or two social platforms, and email your existing customers. Free tactics cost time, so pick two or three and stick with them for some weeks.
Q: Can I market my business online before I have a website?
Yes. An eligible Google Business Profile, relevant directory listings, and a suitable social profile can help customers discover you. Give people a reliable way to contact you. A website gives you more room to explain services, show evidence, and measure the path from a visit to an inquiry.
Q: How do I market a service business in several towns?
Describe your service area accurately and create location pages when you have useful, distinct information for those towns. Include relevant projects, service details, and local logistics. Keep your Business Profile compliant with its location rules, and make the area you cover clear on your main service and contact pages.
Q: Can using social media help a business with a small following?
Yes. A useful post can support conversations with existing customers, referrals, or people researching your work. Share relevant examples and give interested viewers a clear next step. Track inquiries and sales alongside audience growth so you can see the role social content plays in your business.
Q: How do I find out which online platforms my customers use?
Ask recent customers where they first heard about you and what they checked before contacting you. Compare their answers with your website traffic and inquiry records. A potential customer might discover you on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, read your reviews, then call through your website. Record that path when possible.
We would love to review your business’s online presence and help you uncover the hidden potential in your online marketing strategy. Helping small businesses grow through smart online marketing is our passion, and you will feel it within five minutes of talking with us.
If you are still mapping out how to advertise your business online, schedule your call today. We will look at your website, your Google profile and your current traffic, then show you where your next marketing dollar should go.