How to Choose Marketing Channels for Your Small Business (Without Betting It All on Social Media)
Key takeaways
Marketing can't fix a business that hasn't nailed its identity and offer. Get those right before you spend money getting in front of people.
Small business marketing channels fall into three groups: traditional (print, PR, letterbox drops), relational (networking, referrals, partnerships) and digital (social media, SEO, email).
Organic social media builds awareness, but on its own it rarely turns into sales. Don't rely on one channel.
SEO is still the foundation for being found, including by AI search tools. Being specific about who you help makes it easier for both to recommend you.
You own your email list. You don't own your social media followers.
Kate told us about a client she'd worked with, a business owner "having spent $60,000 on a failed marketing campaign and didn't return a single sale."
That story kicked off our conversation about marketing channels for small business: what they are, which ones actually bring in clients, and how to pick a mix you can keep up. It's the fourth episode in our series on the Thriving Business Wheel, and it sits in the Earn quadrant, right after we talked about business identity and building an irresistible offer.
Back to that client. When Kate looked at her sales pages, the problem was obvious. There was no clear transformation, no social proof and nothing to tell a stranger why they should trust her. People saw the marketing. There just wasn't anything there they wanted to buy.
We're Dr Kate De Jong, a PhD engineer turned business strategist, and Sam Morris, a Navy veteran who's spent 20 years in business working out what makes businesses tick and what makes them stall.
Why isn't my marketing bringing in clients?
Usually it's not the marketing that's broken.
If your marketing gets attention but no sales, the problem is usually further back: you haven't nailed who you serve and what you're offering them. Marketing amplifies whatever's already there, so a fuzzy offer just gets seen by more people.
Plenty of business owners go to market, or hand the job to an agency, before they've done that groundwork. The $60,000 campaign is an extreme example, but we see smaller versions all the time.
Sam ran into a version of this when she started writing marketing for a new offer. Her first go with AI came back generic and full of features. It only got useful once she told the AI the story behind the offer and how her audience actually feels, and then asked it to build the marketing from there. AI is only as good as what you feed it, and you'll need to keep pushing back and rewriting. If you're setting up AI in your business, our AI Setup Workbook walks you through it.
What are the main marketing channels for small business?
There are three groups, and you want a bit of each.
The marketing channels for small business fall into three groups: traditional, relational and digital. Most businesses lean hard on one and ignore the other two.
Sam keeps the definition simple:
I think of marketing as the communication bridge between your business and your potential customers in a nutshell. — Sam Morris
Kate broke the bridge into three lanes:
You've got traditional, which is all the stuff we grew up with: TV, print, billboards, letterbox drops… — Dr Kate De Jong
Traditional: TV, print, billboards, letterbox drops and PR. It's easy to write off, but Kate has seen a recently launched business win its first customers through publicity.
Relational: networking, referrals and strategic partnerships. One interior designer Kate knows gets her work through builders and real estate agents who already have her ideal clients.
Digital: social media, SEO and email.
We both agreed on one thing: never rely on a single channel. Byron Sharp, director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, makes a similar case from the research side in How Brands Grow (Oxford University Press, 2010), which draws on buying data across hundreds of product categories. Brands grow by being easy to think of and easy to find, which he calls mental and physical availability. Different channels reach different people, so one channel alone leaves a lot of buyers who never come across you.
Is social media enough to market a small business?
It's good for being seen. It's rarely enough to get paid.
No. Organic social media is useful for visibility and brand awareness, but Kate's experience is that it rarely converts into actual sales on its own. Building a following that does convert takes years.
Paid campaigns can speed that up. If a customer is worth $200 to you over their lifetime, paying $5 or even $30 to get a lead makes sense. The catch is that a brand-new business usually doesn't have that data yet, or the budget to test. Kate mentioned test budgets of $5,000 or more. If you're already running ads that aren't paying off, our post on why paid ads waste cash has a simple diagnostic to work through.
Les Binet and Peter Field's 2013 IPA report, The Long and the Short of It, is useful here. It looked at the balance between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation, and later WARC coverage summarised their work as finding the most effective advertising split roughly 60:40 between the two. Social media awareness sits mostly on the brand side. It's worth doing, but you still need something that asks for the sale.
What's the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?
One pushes your message out. The other gets you found.
Outbound marketing pushes a message out to people, like social media posts and ads. Inbound marketing gets you found when someone's already looking, through SEO, your Google Business Profile and search.
Kate has worked on her own SEO for five or six years and now ranks on the first or second page for local searches. That kind of result builds slowly, but once it's there it keeps bringing people to you without you posting every day.
Does SEO still matter now that people use AI to search?
Yes. It's the base that AI search builds on.
SEO still matters because AI search tools pull from what's already on the web, and the way you get onto the web in a findable way is still SEO. Sam has noticed Google search traffic dropping as more people ask AI instead. Kate's response was clear:
No, actually, SEO is the foundation of AI. — Dr Kate De Jong
Google says much the same thing. Its own guidance, AI features and your website (Google Search Central, 2025), says SEO best practices remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and there are no extra special optimisations needed to appear in them.
AI also looks wider than your website. As Sam put it:
AI is going to look at websites, but it's also looking at forums — Sam Morris
So be intentional. Kate's example was a blog post built around a real question, like whether business coaching is worth the investment. Sam tested this with her newer business website. When she searched while logged out, an AI tool recommended it. The site hadn't been live long. She puts it down to getting the basic meta tags right and being very specific about what the business does.
Which social media platform should my business be on?
Start where your ideal client spends time, and where you already know your way around.
Pick the platform where your ideal client already spends time, then start with the ones you know. Kate's rough guide:
LinkedIn: business-to-business and professional services. An environmental consultant serving corporate clients belongs here.
Instagram: visual brands.
Facebook: community-based businesses.
TikTok: younger audiences.
Sam asked two different AI tools the same question and got two different answers, which says something about how much depends on your particular audience. Her advice:
go with your gut and use the social media platforms you're familiar with. — Sam Morris
Whichever you choose, match the tone to the platform. Sam uses a social media tool to adapt one post for several platforms, rather than copying the same words everywhere.
Why is an email list worth building?
Because it's the one audience nobody can take off you.
An email list is worth building because you own it. People have been saying the money is in the list for years, and we both still find it true. Kate explained why:
unlike social media, where Facebook owns your followers, Instagram owns your followers, LinkedIn owns your followers. — Dr Kate De Jong
Kate has seen what happens when that goes wrong. A client's Facebook account was hacked, and it nearly shut her business down.
Kate's own list grows quietly through two or three lead magnets on her website, a free ebook and a free guide. They keep bringing in new subscribers even though she barely promotes them. She uses email to share the podcast, events and workshops, and a recent email led straight to discovery call bookings.
A few practical points from the episode:
Only email people who've given you permission, and include an unsubscribe option in every email. Some platforms make you add the link yourself.
Kate's open rates usually sit around 40 to 50%. If yours drop below about 25%, she suggests cleaning your list or re-engaging subscribers.
Clean your list regularly. Kate can remove 10 to 30 or more unsubscribes after a single email.
Don't be offended when someone unsubscribes. Kate admits she still feels a little pang when it happens.
Where should a small business start with relational marketing?
Pick a room full of people who know people.
Start with referral networking, because it's the fastest way to get traction. Kate goes to a weekly networking group of 50 to 60 business owners, and she's now moving towards smaller groups. Sam pointed out that it doesn't have to be formal networking either. Local sports clubs and social clubs count.
Relationships work because people trust people they know. Nielsen's 2021 Trust in Advertising study found 89% of respondents trust recommendations from people they know, making it the most trusted channel in the study. Looking after the clients you already have feeds this too, which we covered in our post on improving client experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the three types of marketing channels?
Traditional (TV, print, billboards, letterbox drops and PR), relational (networking, referrals and strategic partnerships) and digital (social media, SEO and email). We suggest small businesses use at least one from each group rather than relying on one.
Can social media alone grow a small business?
It can build awareness, but in Kate's experience organic social media rarely converts into sales on its own, and building a following takes years. Pair it with something that asks for the sale, like email, referrals or a well-tested paid campaign.
Do I still need SEO if people are using AI to search?
Yes. AI search tools draw on what's published online, and Google's own guidance says SEO best practices still apply to its AI features. Being specific about who you help and answering real client questions on your site gives AI something useful to recommend.
How often should I clean my email list?
Regularly. Kate cleans hers regularly, and suggests cleaning or re-engaging your list if open rates drop below about 25%.
What to do this week
Three questions to work through before you spend another dollar on marketing.
Check your foundations. Can a stranger read your sales page and see the transformation you offer, proof it works and why they should trust you? If not, fix that first.
List every marketing activity you're doing now and sort it into traditional, relational and digital. Which group is empty? Pick one thing to add there.
Look at your email list. Do you have a lead magnet that gives people a reason to join? If not, write down one free guide your ideal client would actually want.
Sam's advice for anyone starting out:
choose one thing from each of the three different categories that you spoke about — Sam Morris
Further Reading
How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know, Byron Sharp (Oxford University Press, 2010).
The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies, Les Binet and Peter Field (IPA, 2013).
AI features and your website, Google Search Central (2025).
Trust in Advertising, Nielsen (2021).
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