Attract New Customers
Running a small business is no easy task. As a small business owner, you likely find yourself constantly searching for new ways to attract new customers to your business. Whether you’re looking for help running your pay-per-click advertising campaigns or you’re looking for some ideas to engage with customers, we’ve compiled a list of small business marketing ideas to attract new customers to your business.
- By Mike Purvis Co-founder of NH Strategic Marketing
- January 18, 2020
- September 28, 2026
What Has Changed About Marketing A Small Business This Year
A quick note before the list. The ground under local marketing shifted in the past eighteen months, and a few numbers explain it better than a paragraph of theory can.
- 45% of U.S. consumers surveyed said they use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before.
- 71% use Google when researching local business reviews.
- 97% read reviews before choosing a local business.
- 35% of small businesses have claimed a Google Business Profile.
By looking at the data, there can be two conclusions The first is that the places people look for a recommendation have spread out, so your business name needs to appear in more spots than it used to. The second conclusion is that the bar is lower than most owners assume. If roughly a third of small businesses have claimed their Google Business Profile, doing the basics properly puts you ahead of a large share of your competition before you spend a dollar on ads.
How To Pick The Right Small Business Marketing Ideas for Your Business
I have talked about 28 marketing ideas but I know that nobody has time for all of them. Here is the filter we use with clients when we sit down to plan a quarter.
- Does it put you in front of people who are already looking? Capturing existing demand beats creating new demand when cash flow matters.
- Can you keep it going for 90 days? A channel abandoned in week three costs money and teaches you nothing.
- Can you trace a customer back to it? A lead source you cannot measure is a lead source you cannot defend at budget time.
Score any tactic against those three questions and the list gets short in a hurry. To save you a step, here is how the heavy hitters compare. These small business marketing ideas carry different price tags and very different timelines, and mixing fast channels with slow ones is what keeps the phone ringing while the long plays mature.
| Marketing idea | Cost to start | Ongoing effort | Strongest fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Free | 2 to 3 hours, then 20 minutes weekly | Storefronts and service area businesses. |
| Asking for reviews | Free | 5 minutes per customer | All local businesses. |
| Google Ads | Ad budget you set | Setup, then weekly tuning | Urgent, high-intent services. |
| Website refresh | Project fee | 4 to 10 weeks to produce | Websites that are slow, difficult to navigate, or no longer aligned with the business. |
| SEO and AI visibility | Monthly retainer | Continuous | Owners playing a long game. |
| Email newsletter | Free to low | 2 hours per send | Repeat purchase and referral businesses. |
| Short-form video | Free | 1 to 2 hours weekly | Visual trades, retail, food, fitness. |
| Referrals and networking | Membership fees | 2 to 4 hours weekly | B2B and premium services. |
| Facebook and Instagram Ads | Ad budget plus creative | Setup, then weekly tuning | Awareness, events, ecommerce, remarketing. |
| Lead follow-up system | Free to low | 30 minutes daily | Anyone with quotes sitting unanswered. |
The marketing budget is the question that follows a table like that one, and the honest answer has more range in it. We wrote a full piece on how much a small business should spend on marketing that works through the math for local service companies, and our traffic services page shows where that money tends to go.
The Best Marketing Ideas for Small Business Growth
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is one of the most important pieces of the online presence for your business. It’s one very important way that Google knows who, what, and where your business is and who your customers are.
Claiming and verifying the profile allows the business to correct information, select categories, upload media, respond to reviews, and monitor performance.
If you don’t claim and fully optimize your GBP, you are missing on this traffic channel. Adding a post to your page, asking a happy client to leave a review, maximizing the categories that you’re in, and adding new photos are some examples of ways to optimize your GBP.
Our step-by-step Google Business Profile optimization guide covers the categories, services and photo settings that move the needle on Maps and search engine rankings. Or, if you want help, NH Strategic Marketing also provides GBP management and optimization services.
Run Optimized Google Ads Campaigns
Google Ads can place your business in prominent paid positions when someone searches for a service you offer. Placement is not automatic. Google considers your bid, competition, the person’s search, ad quality, landing-page experience, and expected impact of your ad assets when determining whether and where an ad appears.
Start with a narrow service area and a small group of high-intent searches. Set up call, form, booking, or purchase tracking before spending heavily. Review actual search terms, add negative keywords, exclude locations you do not serve, and send each ad to a page that closely matches what the person searched for.
A campaign can generate traffic quickly, but the useful number is not clicks. It is the cost of qualified calls, appointments, estimates, or sales. Our guide to Google Ads for small businesses explains what to measure before increasing the budget.
We recently did a webinar event for “The 5 Biggest Mistakes We See Small Businesses Make With Their Campaigns.” We’re allowing people who missed it to watch the replay by clicking the button below.
Launch a Facebook Ads Campaign
Facebook and Instagram ads can work well when customers are not actively searching but can be reached through a strong offer, useful content, or visual proof. This makes Meta advertising different from Google Search Ads, where the customer is already expressing intent.
Campaigns are managed through Meta Ads Manager and may run across several Facebook and Instagram placements. Test the offer and creative rather than assuming the same image or video will work everywhere. Track leads or purchases after the click, review lead quality, and give the system enough conversion data before making large budget changes.
Educational content may work for a service business, product demonstrations can work for e-commerce, and remarketing can bring previous visitors back. The right approach depends on what you sell, how long customers take to decide, and whether your website or follow-up process can convert the attention.
Redesign Your Website
54% of consumers head to a business website after reading positive reviews, up from 32% when BrightLocal last surveyed in 2019. The review does the introduction. The website closes it. Your website should really be one of the best business generating assets for your business. It’s the “home base” of your entire Internet presence.
There are a lot of important considerations to keep in mind when redesigning your small business website including, but not limited to, the platform you build on (we prefer building on WordPress but have built on other solid platforms too), the content on your site, the messaging, how easy it is to contact your business, the Search Engine Optimization foundational elements “baked into” your website, the images on your site, video on your website, and more.
Whether you’re looking to redesign your existing small business website or looking to create a new website, our team of web experts are here to help. Book a free discovery call with a member of our team today to learn more about how we can help grow your business.
Improve The SEO Of Your Website
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is a way of helping to optimize how well your website ranks in the search engines like Google and Bing. Properly done small business SEO consists of three things: Technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.
Google is always updating its algorithm on how it ranks websites, so it’s important to fully understand the different factors that go into getting your business to rank on Google.
While the rules change all the time, adding high-quality content to your website is always a good idea. Not only will quality content improve your user experience, but it also gives you the opportunity to work in keywords that Google will use to decide when and where to show your business when users search for the goods and services that you offer.
Part of properly done SEO is not only adding great content to your website but also optimizing your Google Local presence and getting other websites to link to your website (which is like a vote of confidence in Google’s eyes).
SEO is a tricky minefield to navigate and, if you’re going to do it, you should do it intelligently and with guidance. Our playbook on how to rank on page one of Google shows the sequence we follow.
Get Referrals From Existing Clients
Referrals are absolutely one of the best ways to get new clients. Customers referred to you tend to be higher-paying, better all-around customers for a variety of reasons. However, referral programs do have a downside: you can’t always count on, or predict, just how many referrals a month you will be getting.
Here are 6 tips on how to get more referrals for your small business:
This should be a given, but you must do a great job delivering on what you promised and always try to overdeliver. If you’re just good enough and don’t really impress your customers, the chances of you receiving referrals are pretty slim.
Give referrals to get referrals. Humans tend to want to help those that help them. One of the best ways to get more referrals for your business is to go out of your way to try and help other small business owners.
It’s a simple request, but very effective and it sets the expectation upfront, inviting your customer to want to refer you once the job is done.
If a customer is pleased with your work, thank them, and state, “I’m so glad to hear that you are happy with the work that we have done! Would you happen to know of other people like yourself who could benefit from our services?”
When asking for a referral, the more specific you can be the higher the likelihood of you actually receiving a referral. If you’re looking to be connected with affluent homeowners in a specific town, ask for that. If you’re seeking business relationships with a certain type of business, say it specifically. The more clear and specific you can be the better your referral results will be.
Keep your referral partners in the loop and thank them. When you get a referral from someone recognize it for what it is: an important gesture of trust. You absolutely must take care of that customer who was referred to you at an even higher level than normal. If you don’t do a good job taking care of that referred customer you run the risk of turning off that new client and the client who referred them to you.
Send a Hand-Written Note
Sending a hand-written note or postcard is a nice touch. In this digital age where you can send an email or a text message, it’s even more powerful to take the time to send a hand-written note. There are lots of situations where you may want to send a hand-written note but the important thing is to make sure that it feels personal and to reference some things that you spoke about, or something that makes it feel like more than a “standard” note.
Pick Up The Phone
There are lots of ways you can use the phone to generate new opportunities for your business. They range from calling existing customers all the way to cold calling.
- Cold Calling. Dialing for dollars is an old school way of generating new customers for your business. While more people are just opting to send an email, if you pick up the phone some magical things can happen.
- Call A New Referral Partner. You can introduce yourself to a prospective referral partner and see how you might be able to work together. This could be a non-competitive business where you both share the same type of customer. A strategic partnership like this could go a long way.
- Call On A Prospect to Set A Meeting. You can call and ask a prospective customer for a discovery meeting so you can hear about their needs and see if you can work with them.
- Call An Existing Customer. You can call an existing customer to check in on how they’re doing and see if they have any other projects in mind. Maybe they even have a referral in mind for you.
- Call A Cancelled Customer. Customers sometimes have to cancel for a variety of reasons. You might consider calling a cancelled customer and trying to reactivate them.
If you’re struggling to keep your marketing funnel full and generate more leads for your small business, give us a call. Our team of online marketing experts can help you determine which marketing channels your business could benefit from and work to get marketing campaigns up and running to generate new leads for you. Remember, part of owning a business is surrounding yourself with people who will help your business to succeed.
Reply to Comments On Your Social Media
You can, and absolutely should, keep a close eye on your social media channels. Every comment could be a potential customer opportunity; you should respond to every comment and answer every question.
If you don’t, then you’re basically ignoring potential customers trying to communicate with you. It doesn’t matter if you don’t consider yourself a “Facebook person.” If you’re a business owner who chooses to have a presence on Facebook (or any other social media platform for that matter) then it’s your responsibility to monitor those channels and respond to anyone commenting there.
If the daily monitoring is what trips you up, our guide to using social media for a small business has a workable weekly routine.
Attend a Networking Meeting
In every city, every single week there are opportunities to network with hundreds of like-minded business owners looking to grow their businesses. Some of these networking groups are paid groups, while some of them are free groups. Almost all of them you can visit for free at least a couple of times before deciding if you want to join or not.
There are Rotary meetings, BNI meetings, Chamber of Commerce meetings, and even informal small group networking meetings. These meetings take place at coffee shops, libraries, restaurants, and various meeting facilities in your city.
Important point: These groups are all about building relationships. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. The more you can proactively build relationships, help others, make friends, and deliver value the more likely it is that you may get some business as a result of those relationships.
Host a Live Event and Teach Something
In order to be successful in your industry, you have to prove that you are the expert in what you offer. One way to do this is to host events, whether in-person or virtual, that give you the chance to teach something.
For gym owners, this may be a free weight loss seminar; for dog trainers, this could be a puppy training event; for realtors, it could be a first-time homebuyer seminar. Whatever your industry, there’s something that you can teach that will not only help you prove that you’re the expert, but also allow you to interact with prospective customers.
Record a Video and Send It To An Existing or Prospective Client
People like the multimedia nature of these videos. You can record a short video delivering some value, reporting on some positive results, and doing any kind of “show and tell” that would benefit your client. Clients love the personal touch that these videos provide and it keeps you in the front of their mind.
Video is quickly becoming one of the most powerful marketing tools for small business owners. Whether you’re looking for a compelling sales video or to record client testimonials, video is a great option. To learn more about how our professional video services can help your business grow, book a time to chat.
Host a Webinar
This is similar to teaching a live class but completely virtual. You can create a live webinar people sign up for and attend with a service like Zoom.
Come up with a topic your potential customers may like, put together a presentation, set a date, promote it on Facebook using Facebook Ads, spread the word on your LinkedIn profile, and promote it in any way that you can to get people to sign up. Webinars can be a great way to grow your email list and establish yourself and your business as the experts in your field.
Create An Email Newsletter
A great way to stay top of mind with prospective customers is by routinely sending an email newsletter to your target audience. Building up an email list and sending out a regular email newsletter with training, education, helpful tips, new ideas, and more can help drive more business your way.
7 ways to grow an email newsletter
- Have a pop-up on your website.
- Add an in-line email newsletter sign-up form to your website.
- Offer a lead magnet on your website or a landing page. This could be a white paper, a free report, a checklist, a webinar, or even a video that your prospective customer may want to get their hands on in exchange for their name and email address.
- Run a giveaway contest.
- Run Facebook Ads to a newsletter sign-up landing page.
- Manually add subscribers to your email list.
- Add customers to your email newsletter at checkout.
Volunteer or Donate To a Local Non-Profit
Just being associated with some of those nonprofits, meeting other volunteers, etc. can lead to generating more leads for your small business. Even one key relationship you make from helping out may lead to a lot of new business plus it’s a great way to give back to your community.
Post a Video on Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn has become a very productive social media network for business to business connections. If connecting with other business owners makes sense for your business, then connect with them on LinkedIn and post great content to your profile (like a video showcasing your knowledge, sharing a helpful tip about your product or service, or showing off a recent project you participated in). You never know who will see it and what may come from it.
Host a Facebook Live On Your Facebook Business Page
A Facebook Live is a streaming video cast from your phone or computer. It’s a great and cost-effective way to engage with prospective customers in your geographic area. You can teach something to your audience, you can live stream an event you’re hosting at your business, you can share a case study, a walkthrough of a new project you just finished and more.
Here are some tips on how to make your Facebook Live an effective one.
- Plan your Facebook Live broadcast.
- Be natural and be yourself.
- Write a compelling description of your video.
- Tag your business and tag your geography.
- Periodically get new-comers up to speed on what you have already covered.
- Engage with your audience.
Give Out a Unique Coupon
People love coupons and discounts and they can be a great way to attract new customers to your business. Whether you’re offering a percentage off, free shipping, or a service at a reduced price, it’s a great way to get a prospective customer to reach out. Plus, you can require that they register their email with you to get the coupon, which will help you grow your email marketing list.
Give Out Practical Swag
Everyone has gone to some sort of event where they’ve been given a “swag bag.” In this bag, there’s usually different sorts of branded items that can be put to good use. If you give out items that people will actually use such as pens, notepads, lens cleaners, etc., they’re more likely to actually use the items and think of your business when they do.
Follow Up With Your Prospects
The money is in the follow up. If someone reaches out to you once, you reach out to them and don’t hear back, you should absolutely not give up on that prospective client.
You should keep track of those leads, when you followed up with them last, the notes from those conversations, and if they turned into a client or not. The amount of leads business owners waste because they never follow up more than once is staggering.
A simple pipeline solves most of this, and our article on why a marketing funnel matters covers the stages worth tracking.
Show Up In AI Search Results
When somebody asks ChatGPT for a good plumber in New Hampshire, the answer gets assembled from a handful of sources: your website copy, your Google Business Profile, your directory listings and your reviews. Businesses with clear service descriptions, a named service area and consistent details across those sources get mentioned by name. Vague copy gets skipped.
So, write plain answers to the questions customers ask on sales calls, put your services and towns in readable text rather than inside images, keep your name, address and phone identical across listings, and find out what AI tools say about you today.
NH Strategic Marketing also offers a free AI visibility check if you want a baseline. Search Engine Land also published a useful guide to generative engine optimization for the deeper background.
Post Short Videos Where People Scroll
Phone footage beats polished footage for reach. A thirty-second clip of a finished driveway, a before and after, or a quick answer to a question you field daily will travel further than a stock photo with a quote laid over it.
Pick one platform your customers use, post twice a week, and reuse the same clip on your website and in your ads. Once the clips start earning attention, that is the moment to bring in professional video production for the pieces that carry weight, such as a homepage brand video or a set of client testimonials.
Set Up A Review Engine That Keeps Running
74% of consumers care about reviews written in the last three months, and 47% will pass on a business with fewer than 20 reviews. A stack of five-star reviews from 2022 does less work for you than eight fresh ones from this quarter.
Set a trigger instead of relying on memory: at job completion, at invoice, or at delivery, a text goes out with a direct review link. Then reply to all of them inside a day, in your own words. Eighty percent of consumers say they are more likely to use a business that responds to all its reviews.
If keeping up with that is unrealistic while you are running crews, we also handle online review management and reputation management services.
Claim The Listings That Feed AI Answers
Apple Maps use for reviews nearly doubled in a year, from 14% to 27%. Bing feeds Copilot. Trade-specific directories feed niche recommendations. The average consumer now checks six review sites before choosing a business, so a strong Google profile with nothing behind it leaves gaps a prospect will notice.
Claim the majors first, then the ones specific to your trade, and keep the details identical across all of them. We covered the reasoning in why online directories matter for SEO and AI search.
Reply To New Leads Within Five Minutes
A form filled out at 9:02 and answered at 9:05 lands very differently from the same form answered at 4:30 the following afternoon, because by then the homeowner has called three other companies and booked one of them.
Set up text notifications for form fills, put a call-back promise on your thank-you page, and give one person ownership of the inbox during business hours. This is the cheapest conversion gain available to most businesses and it costs nothing to turn on. You might also be interested in our article on 5 reasons you may be losing customers.
Partner With A Business That Shares Your Customer
A painter and a flooring company serve the same homeowner at different moments. A wedding photographer and a florist work the same Saturday. Co-hosted events, shared offers and simple customer referral program move customers between two businesses at close to zero cost, and both sides borrow trust from the other.
Start with one partner, one offer and a clear split of who does what. Forming strategic partnerships will beat eight handshake deals nobody follows up on.
Turn One Good Idea Into Ten Pieces
The reason content marketing feels exhausting is that owners treat pieces as separate projects. One solid answer to a customer question becomes a blog post, three social posts, a short video, an email to your list, a Google Business Profile update and a slide in your sales deck. Same thinking, seven placements.
Our post on how to increase website traffic for small business websites walks through the publishing side of this, including which formats tend to pull the most search traffic.
Put One Clear Offer On Your Busiest Page
Most small business homepages ask a visitor to do four things at once. Choose the single action you want most, place it above the fold, repeat it near the bottom, and make the phone number tappable on a phone.
Wording moves this number more than owners expect. A button that reads “Get my free estimate” outperforms “Submit” because it names what happens next. Our website and copywriting services cover this in detail, and the client case studies show the before and after.
Action And Activity Create New Business Potential
The more activity you have going on, the more ways you’re able to generate leads for your business. You should never stop working to keep your marketing funnel full and keep new customers coming to your business. With a multichannel marketing approach for your small business, you’ll see your business driven to success.
Pick three small business marketing ideas from this page, give them a fair ninety days, and measure what comes back. That single habit, repeated four times a year, is what separates the businesses growing steadily from the ones starting from scratch again next winter.
Small Business Marketing Ideas: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the best small business marketing ideas for a business with a small budget?
The strongest free options are a fully completed Google Business Profile, a steady review request habit, replying to reviews and comments within a day, short-form video filmed on a phone, and partnering with a business that shares your customer.
Q: What is the fastest way to get new customers for a small business?
Call or text the leads already sitting in your inbox who never got a second follow-up, and launch a small paid advertising campaign against high-intent searches in your service area. Both put you in front of people who have already signaled they want what you sell.
Q: What are some low-cost marketing strategies for a small business?
With a modest budget, run a small Google Ads campaign on high-intent local searches, boost a social post that is already performing well, show retargeting ads to recent website visitors, print a unique coupon so you can track offline response, and hand out practical swag at events. Start with one and measure the return before adding the next.
Q: What are some offline marketing ideas for small businesses?
Hand-written thank-you notes, direct mail postcards to a targeted neighborhood, vehicle wraps, yard signs at job sites, door hangers on streets where you already have a job, and referral cards handed over at the end of a visit all bring in customers. Add a QR code or tracked phone number so you can see which ones pay off.
Q: What are the best marketing ideas for a brand-new small business?
Start with the people who already know you. Tell friends, family and past colleagues what you offer and ask for introductions. Then run a grand opening offer, attend two networking events a month, and ask your first ten customers for a review. Early reviews make the next customer much easier to win.
Q: What are the best social media marketing ideas for small businesses?
Share work in progress, post before and after photos, answer a common customer question in a 30-second video, introduce a team member, run a giveaway with a local partner, and go live for a short Q&A. In our experience, posts showing people and finished work earn more community engagement than polished graphics.