Key Highlights
- A digital marketing strategy depends on the size and stage of the business running it, and this guide sets out a version that suits a small business with limited resources.
- One article gets reused across email, the website, and social media, so a single piece of content does the work of three.
- Write content that answers real customer questions, including the ones AI search tools are now surfacing directly in results.
- The strategy includes a monthly review, so results from one month shape the topic and channel choices for the next.
Marketing used to be optional for a small business. It isn't anymore.
But if you're just starting out in digital marketing, it can be overwhelming. There are a lot of channels, a lot of types of content, and a lot of agencies all telling you something different.
You can start with a few free or low-cost channels and run them on your own schedule. You don't need all of them. None of this has to be complicated. A strategy that repeats well and scales is usually the simplest, most affordable one to run.
This guide sets out 8 steps built around how a business owner actually has time to work, not agency hours. Each step fits into a single sitting, and the full cycle runs once a month.
What Is a Digital Marketing Strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is a plan that sets out three things:
- Your goals, for example, attracting 10 new leads per month
- Your target market, for example, business owners in a specific industry
- The channels you will use to reach them, such as email, social media, and search engines.
Most small businesses know they want more leads and revenue. Where they get stuck is the execution. This guide sets out a repeatable process for generating both.
What You Will Need
- Two hours of writing time per month
- A business email account
- Email marketing software
- A camera or a photographer
- Business and personal social media accounts with an existing audience
- A website where you can publish blog articles
What Are the Types of Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing covers several distinct channels, each suited to a different part of the buyer's journey. The main types are:
- Search engine optimisation (SEO) improves a website so it ranks higher in organic search results.
- Content marketing publishes articles, guides, and resources that educate a target audience.
- Email marketing sends content and offers directly to a list of past or prospective clients.
- Social media marketing builds an audience and shares content on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
- Paid advertising places ads on search engines or social platforms to reach a target audience quickly, at a cost.
- Video marketing uses video content to explain products, services, or ideas.
- Influencer marketing partners with people who already have an audience in a target niche.
This guide focuses on four of these channels: content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and SEO. Paid advertising, video, and influencer marketing are valid channels, but they sit outside this particular strategy. They usually make more sense once the four channels above are running well, since they involve direct ad spend and a different setup process.
Here are the 8 steps you can follow with minimal spend and no dedicated marketing team.
Step 1: Determine Your Target Market
Before running any marketing, work out who your ideal customer is. Write down their characteristics, including:
- Individual consumer (B2C) or business (B2B)
- Age bracket and gender
- Education level and industry
- Job title and business size
- The platforms they use, such as LinkedIn or Facebook
- Their priorities, interests, and the challenges they face
For example, a target persona for an accounting-focused service might look like this:
- Business (B2B)
- 40 to 55 years old
- Tertiary educated
- Works in accounting, in an owner or senior accountant role
- Runs a business with 0 to 10 staff
- Active on LinkedIn and Facebook
- Wants to provide a high-quality service and use digital marketing to attract new business
- Struggles to know where to start with digital marketing execution
You may find you have more than one target persona. Map out each one separately. This information shapes what you write and where you publish it. Using the example above, a business selling digital marketing services to accountants might write an article called "Digital Marketing for Accountants" and publish it on LinkedIn, where that audience already spends time. If you want a tool to help you generate your personas, you can check out HubSpot Make My Persona.
Step 2: Write Content Your Target Market Finds Useful
With your target market's characteristics in mind, write a 500 to 700 word article that demonstrates your experience and knowledge. Focus on your audience's biggest pain points. Answer the questions you hear most often from customers, in plain language.
The best source for content ideas is the questions your team already answers on calls, in emails, and in meetings. Sales and customer service teams are usually sitting on a list of recurring questions that make excellent article topics.
This step also matters for a newer reason. Google's AI Overviews now answer many search queries directly on the results page, often without the reader clicking through to a website. Content structured around a clear question and a direct answer, backed by specific detail, has a better chance of being picked up by these AI-generated summaries and cited as a source. Structuring your article around one clear question in the heading, followed by a direct answer in the first sentence or two, supports this without requiring a different writing process.
Keep headlines direct and specific. Naming your target market in the headline, such as "Digital Marketing for Accountants," performs better than a generic title.
Step 3: Take Quality Photos to Accompany Your Content
Large blocks of text are hard to read. Break up your article with your own photos of your business, your products, and your team.
Most modern phone cameras produce images good enough for a blog article. If you need a professional photographer at short notice, freelance photography marketplaces such as Snappr can connect you with one in most Australian cities. Confirm current pricing and availability before booking.
If original photos are not possible, royalty-free stock photography from Pexels or Unsplash is a reasonable alternative, though original photos of your own business will always perform better for building trust.
Step 4: Email the Content to Past Clients
With your article and images ready, distribute it through your first channel: email.
Choose email software that lets you send to your full list at once. Mailchimp is a common starting point, though its free plan is now limited to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, a significant reduction from previous years. Check current pricing before committing, and consider alternatives if your list is larger than that.
Import your past client emails from your accounting software, online store, or address book. Where a database does not already exist, you may need to build one manually from past correspondence.
Draft a short introduction that tells the reader what they are about to learn, then include the article underneath. Send a test email to check formatting before sending to your full list.
Example email template to send your content
Subject line:[use your article title]
Body:[Add an introduction paragraph to introduce your article and what they will learn]“Hi Name, in today’s article I’m going to share with you…”.[Copy and paste your content underneath]
Step 5: Publish the Content as a Blog on Your Website
Once your email has gone out, publish the same content on your website.
In WordPress, go to Posts, then Add New. Add your headline as the title, your body text as the content, and a feature image at the top of the article.
A few SEO fundamentals will help the article rank:
- Identify the main topic or keyword the article is about
- Include that topic in the URL, meta title, meta description, and image alt text
- Link out to other relevant pages on your own website and to authoritative external resources, such as industry or government sites
- Write a meta description that includes your topic and gives the reader a reason to click
- An SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO can help structure these elements correctly if you are unfamiliar with them
Preview the article before publishing to check formatting and image placement.
Step 6: Share the Blog Link on Social Media
With the article live, share it on the social platforms where your target market spends time.
This step only works if you have followers on those platforms. Before sharing, connect with past clients on LinkedIn and invite them to follow your business page on Facebook. This builds the audience that will actually see your post.
Write a short introduction and share the article link. Respond to any comments or questions the post receives, since engagement signals to the platform that the content is worth showing to more people.
Step 7: Ask Other Website Owners to Link to Your Article
Search engines weigh the quality and number of backlinks when ranking a website. A well-written article will not rank well on its own if no other website links to it.
Resource page link building is one practical way to earn these links. It works by finding websites with a resource page on your topic, checking that page for broken links, and offering your article as a replacement.
The process:
- Search Google using the query "[topic] intitle: resources", for example "accounting intitle: resources"
- Find a resource page that links out to content similar to your own article
- Check that page for broken links using a broken link checker tool
- Find the website owner's contact details
- Email the owner from your business email address, let them know about the broken link, and offer your article as a replacement
This outreach takes time. Expect to send 10 to 20 emails to secure one link, so treat it as an ongoing task rather than a single afternoon's work. A successful link delivers two benefits: direct traffic from the linking site, and a stronger position in search rankings.
Step 8: Review, Adjust, and Repeat
Once you have run through all seven steps, check what worked. Which article got the most opens, clicks, or shares? Which channel drove the most traffic back to your website?
Use those results to guide next month's topic and channel mix. A strategy that generates leads in one month is not guaranteed to perform the same way the next. Search behaviour, algorithms, and your audience's habits all shift over time, so treat this as a cycle you refine each month rather than a script you repeat unchanged.
Bringing It Together
This 8-step strategy gives a small business a repeatable way to stay in front of past clients and attract new ones, using content, email, social media, and search engine optimisation together rather than as separate tasks.
Businesses that want support building out a full digital marketing strategy, from keyword research through to ongoing SEO execution, can see what's included in Digital Treasury's SEO packages. Contact Digital Treasury today.
