Digital Marketing Explained

A plain-English beginner’s guide to digital marketing for business owners. Whether you are completely new to this or looking to better understand what you are already paying for, this page covers a topline overview of the various channels, what makes up your online presence and things to watch out for. 

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Understanding Digital Marketing

1. What is digital marketing?

Marketing, stripped down to its simplest definition, is how a business gets the word out. It is everything you do to make sure the people who want what you offer can find you, understand what you do, and choose you over the alternative. That includes how your business looks, how it sounds, where it shows up, and what impression it leaves.

Traditionally, that meant brochures, flyers, trade directory listings, local press adverts, signage, and word of mouth. Those things still exist, and some still work well. But the majority of the marketing landscape has moved online. When someone needs a product or service today, most start with a search engine, and their impression of a business is shaped by what they find – or do not find – before they ever make contact.

Digital marketing is the broad term for all of the marketing activity that takes place in that online space. It applies equally to businesses selling to other businesses (B2B) and those selling directly to consumers (B2C). The goals across both are the same – being visible, making sure the right people find you in the places they are already looking, and giving a strong enough impression to encourage that enquiry or purchase.

2. What does it include?

Digital marketing covers everything that shapes how your business appears and performs online. It falls broadly into two sides.

The first is your online presence – everything a potential customer sees when they come across your business on the internet. Your website, your visibility in search results, your social media profiles, your reviews, your content. These are things you build and earn over time. The more effort you put into them, the stronger your presence becomes, and the more likely people are to find you and trust what they see. Each of these areas is covered in its own section later on this page.

The second is paid advertising – what you will see referred to as paid ads, paid media, or sponsored listings. This is where businesses pay to appear in front of their target audience through platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Where the first side is earned, this side is bought – you are paying for immediate visibility in the places your customers are already looking. It can drive results quickly, and it gives you control over exactly who sees your business, where they see it, and when. The different types of paid advertising and how they work are also covered in detail further on.

Most businesses benefit from a combination of both. A strong online presence gives paid advertising something solid to point to, and paid advertising drives people to that presence while it grows.

3. How customers find you

The way people find and choose businesses has changed significantly. Historically, it might have been a recommendation from a neighbour, a listing in the Yellow Pages, or an advert in the local paper. Today, the starting point for most people is a search engine. They go online, type what they need into Google, and make decisions based on what comes back.

What appears on that first page of results is critical. At the top are businesses renting those positions through paid search listings. Below those are businesses that have earned their place through the strength and relevance of their online presence. Research consistently shows that the vast majority of people never look past the first page of results – so a business that does not appear there is unlikely to be found through search at all.

Once the results appear, people compare. They visit websites. They check whether a business looks professional and established. They read reviews. They look at photos of previous work. For certain types of business, they may check social media. All of this research happens before they ever pick up the phone or fill in a contact form. By the time someone reaches out, their first impression of your business is already formed. What happens from that point still matters – price, professionalism, and response times all play a part in the final decision – but much of the work has already been done before that first conversation takes place. For most businesses, the challenge is not closing the sale – it is getting the enquiry in the first place.

This page has been put together to cover all aspects of a digital presence – what goes into it, how each part works, and what can be done to improve it. Each one plays a role in making sure your business is present, credible, and easy to reach at the point someone is looking.

4. How you find new customers

Not all customers start with a search. Some discover businesses through advertising or content they were not looking for at all. A social media ad, a video, a display banner on a website they were browsing. They were not searching for the product or service, but once they saw it, they became interested.

This is particularly relevant for businesses where there is limited search intent – where people do not yet know the product or service exists, or would not think to search for it. A new innovative product, a new type of service, an event, a subscription service. Nobody is searching for something they do not know about, so appearing in search results is not a reliable option. Instead, these businesses need to put themselves in front of the right people and create the interest from scratch.

This is what is known as awareness marketing. Rather than capturing existing demand, it generates new demand by reaching people who fit the profile of a likely customer and introducing them to something they were not previously considering. It works through repetition and visibility – someone sees an ad once and may not act on it, but after seeing it several times across different platforms, the brand becomes familiar, and when the need or interest does arise, they already know where to go.

Even for businesses that do have strong search intent, awareness marketing plays a role. A potential customer who has already seen your name – on social media, in a video, on a banner ad – is more likely to click on your listing when it appears in their search results than one who has never heard of you. The two approaches are not alternatives. They serve different purposes and often work best together.

5. Knowing what you want to achieve

Before investing time or money into any specific channel, it is worth being clear about what you are trying to achieve. This sounds obvious, but it is a step many businesses skip – jumping straight into running ads or posting on social media without a clear idea of what success actually looks like.

The starting point is understanding what your business needs right now. That will look different depending on your situation. A new business with no existing customers needs to build awareness and generate its first enquiries. An established business with a full diary might want to attract higher-value work or promote a specific service. A seasonal business might need to fill quieter periods. A business expanding into a new area needs visibility in a location where nobody knows them yet.

Each of those goals leads to a different approach. A business that needs enquiries from people already searching for its services would focus on search visibility and paid search. A business trying to build awareness with an audience that does not yet know about it would look at paid social or display advertising. A business that wants to improve the quality of its enquiries rather than the volume might focus on its website and how it presents its services.

Understanding this upfront matters because it determines where your time and money go. Without it, there is a risk of spreading effort across too many channels without doing any of them well, or investing in a channel that does not match the problem you are trying to solve – both of which lead to inefficient spend and a poor return on investment. The businesses that get the most from their digital marketing are usually the ones that started with a clear question – what do I need, and what is the best way to get there – rather than the ones that started with a platform.

Your Online Presence

Before spending anything on advertising or committing to a longer-term strategy, there are a handful of things that cost little or nothing and take hours rather than months. They are not glamorous, but without them, everything else you do online is working harder than it needs to.

Most of these come down to one thing: making sure your business looks professional and credible when someone finds you online. The bar is not high, but a surprising number of businesses do not clear it.

A professional email address

Operating from a gmail, hotmail, or yahoo address when your business has its own website immediately undermines the impression you are trying to create. A branded email address – something as simple as info@yourbusiness.co.uk – costs very little and makes a noticeable difference to how you come across.

Google Business Profile

This is the free listing that controls how your business appears on Google Maps and in the local results that show up when someone searches for a service near them. Claiming it, filling it out properly -accurate contact details, opening hours, a clear description of what you do, and decent photos -is one of the highest-impact free things a business can do. For local and regional businesses, it is often the first thing a potential customer sees.

Consistent Information Everywhere

Your business name, phone number, and address should appear the same way on your website, your Google Business Profile, your social media, and anywhere else you are listed. Inconsistencies look unprofessional and can also affect how you appear in search results.

Decent Imagery

Photos of your work, your premises, your team, your vehicles -whatever is relevant to your business. They do not need to be professionally shot, but they do need to be clear, well-lit, and show real work you have actually done. These feed into everything -your website, your Google Business Profile, your social media.

Your Own Domain Name

If your only web presence is a Facebook page or a free website builder with someone else’s branding in the URL, that is the first thing to address. Your own domain – yourbusiness.co.uk – is inexpensive, straightforward to set up, and is the baseline for being taken seriously online.

Logo and Branding

Most businesses will already have these in place, but it is worth making sure they are right. Your logo and colours carry through everything – your website, your invoices, your business cards. If the logo is low quality, outdated, it undermines everything else on this list. Getting both locked in to a standard you are happy with early on saves significant time and money to avoid changing later.

Your website is the one part of your online presence that you fully own and control. Social media profiles, directory listings, and Google Business Profiles all sit on someone else’s platform and are subject to their rules. Your website is yours, and almost everything else you do in digital marketing will eventually point back to it.

What it needs to do

Your website is a direct reflection of your business. People will judge the quality of what you offer based on what they see on screen. What that needs to look like depends on your industry – a technology or software company would be expected to have a polished, modern site because that is the world they operate in. But for most businesses, the standard is simpler than people think. It needs to look professional, clean, and well-maintained. It does not need to be complex or expensive – it needs to be credible.

The practical requirements are straight forward:

  • Clear information about what you do and where you do it. 
  • Evidence of your work – photos, descriptions, examples. 
  • Easy-to-find contact details. 
  • A layout that works properly on a phone, because that is how most people will see it. 
  • Pages that load quickly. 

The most important thing is that someone arriving on your site can answer three questions within a few seconds: what does this business do, do they cover my area, and how do I get in touch. If any of those are not immediately obvious, people will leave.

It is also worth understanding that a website is not something you build once and leave. It needs to stay current – updated contact information, recent examples of work, content that reflects what you actually offer today. A website that looks like it has not been touched in years raises the same doubts as a shopfront with the lights off.

How to set one up

When it comes to how your website is built and hosted, there are broadly three approaches.

Fully managed services – like Yell – handle the build, hosting, and technical side for you, usually as part of a monthly contract. The benefit is ease. If something goes wrong technically, you have support on hand to fix it. However, that support typically covers the initial build and technical issues only – they are not maintaining, updating, or improving your website on an ongoing basis. The responsibility to keep the content current still falls on you. The cost is also significantly higher than the alternatives, and in many cases you do not own the website or even the domain name. If you stop paying or want to move on, you may have to start from scratch. 

It is also worth being aware that some of these providers are known for aggressive sales practices – pressuring business owners into signing contracts quickly, making verbal promises about results that are not reflected in the contract itself, and making it difficult to leave once you are locked in.

At the other end you have a much more manual approach; you can buy your own domain name (your web address – e.g. www.yourbusiness.co.uk), choose your own hosting provider (the service that stores your website and keeps it accessible online), and either build the site yourself or pay a developer or freelancer to build it for you. This gives you full ownership and control at a much lower cost. The trade-off is that if something breaks, fixing it is your responsibility – whether that means troubleshooting it yourself or paying someone to help.

In between, there are platforms that let you build and manage your own site using templates and drag-and-drop tools, with hosting included as part of the subscription and no long-term lock-in contracts. These can be a sensible option for businesses that want to manage things themselves without needing technical knowledge. However, it is worth checking what you can take with you before committing to any platform. Squarespace, for example, allows you to export your content if you want to move elsewhere. Others, like Wix, do not offer a full site export – meaning that if you decided to leave, you would need to manually recreate your content on a new platform, much like moving away from a fully managed provider.

Ownership matters

Whatever route you choose, make sure you own your domain name and understand what you can and cannot take with you before you commit. If you want full control and flexibility, buy the domain and hosting yourself and either pay someone to build the site or use a self-hosted platform like WordPress. If you prefer simplicity, a platform like Squarespace offers a good balance of ease and ownership. Either way, avoid being locked into an expensive contract for something you could own outright.

 

Most people use Google multiple times a day without thinking about what is happening behind the scenes. Understanding the basics of how search engines work makes the sections that follow – particularly paid search and SEO – much easier to make sense of.

When someone types a query into Google, the search engine scans its index of the internet and returns what it considers to be the most relevant results. That results page is made up of two distinct sections.

At the top are paid listings – ads placed by businesses who are paying to appear for that particular search term. These are clearly labelled as sponsored. Below those are the organic results – websites that have earned their position based on their relevance, quality, and authority.

Each section works differently. The paid listings are controlled through Google Ads, where businesses choose which search terms to appear for and pay each time someone clicks. The organic results are determined by Google’s algorithm, and this is where it gets more involved.

Google uses automated software to constantly crawl the internet, visiting websites, reading their content, and cataloguing what it finds. When someone searches for something, Google’s algorithm decides which pages from that index are the most relevant and ranks them accordingly. It takes into account a wide range of factors – how closely the content on your site matches what the person searched for, how well your site is built from a technical standpoint, how many other reputable websites link to yours, how much traffic your site receives, how long people spend on your pages, and whether your site works well on mobile devices. No single factor determines your ranking on its own – it is the combination that matters.

This is the case for other search engines such as Bing (Microsoft’s version) but Google remains the most popular choice which is why it has been used in the example. 

The result is that websites which are well built, contain relevant and useful content, and have built credibility over time tend to rank higher. Websites that are thin on content, poorly maintained, or have no external links pointing to them tend to rank lower – or not appear at all.

The key thing to understand is that where you appear in the results matters. The higher you rank, the more likely people are to find you. The majority of clicks go to results on the first page, and the further down or further back you appear, the less traffic you will receive. You do not need to be in the number one position to benefit, but being visible within the first page or two makes a significant difference compared to not appearing at all.

How to improve your organic rankings is covered in detail in the Search Engine Optimisation section later on this page.

Most people use Google multiple times a day without thinking about what is happening behind the scenes. Understanding the basics of how search engines work makes the sections that follow – particularly paid search and SEO – much easier to make sense of.

When someone types a query into Google, the search engine scans its index of the internet and returns what it considers to be the most relevant results. That results page is made up of two distinct sections.

At the top are paid listings – ads placed by businesses who are paying to appear for that particular search term. These are clearly labelled as sponsored. Below those are the organic results – websites that have earned their position based on their relevance, quality, and authority.

Each section works differently. The paid listings are controlled through Google Ads, where businesses choose which search terms to appear for and pay each time someone clicks. The organic results are determined by Google’s algorithm, and this is where it gets more involved.

Google uses automated software to constantly crawl the internet, visiting websites, reading their content, and cataloguing what it finds. When someone searches for something, Google’s algorithm decides which pages from that index are the most relevant and ranks them accordingly. It takes into account a wide range of factors – how closely the content on your site matches what the person searched for, how well your site is built from a technical standpoint, how many other reputable websites link to yours, how much traffic your site receives, how long people spend on your pages, and whether your site works well on mobile devices. No single factor determines your ranking on its own – it is the combination that matters.

This is the case for other search engines such as Bing (Microsoft’s version) but Google remains the most popular choice which is why it has been used in the example. 

The result is that websites which are well built, contain relevant and useful content, and have built credibility over time tend to rank higher. Websites that are thin on content, poorly maintained, or have no external links pointing to them tend to rank lower – or not appear at all.

The key thing to understand is that where you appear in the results matters. The higher you rank, the more likely people are to find you. The majority of clicks go to results on the first page, and the further down or further back you appear, the less traffic you will receive. You do not need to be in the number one position to benefit, but being visible within the first page or two makes a significant difference compared to not appearing at all.

How to improve your organic rankings is covered in detail in the Search Engine Optimisation section later on this page.

Organic social media is everything you post on social media without paying to promote it – your photos, updates, project showcases, and anything else that appears on your business profiles through your own activity rather than through advertising.

How it works

You create and maintain profiles on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and post content that your followers and visitors can see. Unlike paid social advertising, there is no spend behind it – your posts appear naturally on your profile and in the feeds of people who follow you. The reach of unpaid posts has declined over the years as platforms have increasingly prioritised paid content, but organic posts can still reach new people – particularly when content is shared, engaged with, or picked up by the platform’s algorithm.

Why businesses use it

A well-maintained social media presence builds familiarity and trust over time. It gives potential customers a sense of who the business is, what they do, and how they present themselves. It can also put you in front of people who were not actively looking for you – someone comes across a post, finds it interesting, and discovers a business they would not have found otherwise.

It also acts as a reference point. When someone is considering getting in touch – whether they found you through search, word of mouth, or an ad – they may check your social media as part of their research. A profile that is active, consistent, and shows real work gives a positive impression. One that has not been updated in months can raise questions.

Best suited to

Businesses where brand appearance and identity matter – where how the business looks and feels is part of what the customer is buying into. Creatives, visual industries, lifestyle brands, and businesses where personality and presentation are a genuine differentiator. Also suited to any business that has the time or resource to keep it consistent and active.

Less suited to

Businesses that do not have the time or resource to maintain it as a consistent activity. Organic social media only works if it is kept up. It is all well and good posting regularly for a few months, but the moment you stop, those profiles stick around – and an inactive profile can leave a worse impression than not having one at all.

What to expect

Organic social media is low cost but requires consistency. You do not need to post every day – posting when you have something worth showing is far better than posting for the sake of it. Keep it genuine, do not overthink it, and treat it as an ongoing reflection of your business rather than a campaign with a start and end date.

Paid Advertising

The foundation of digital advertising is data. Whether we like it or not, data is collected on pretty much everything we do online. Every search, every swipe, every click. It is the reality of the internet as it exists today.

For businesses, that is what makes digital advertising work. All of that data is what allows you to put your business in front of a very specific type of person, in a very specific place.

The targeting this enables can be remarkably granular. You could, if you wanted to, serve an ad exclusively to people within half a mile of your front door. You can target by location, age, interests, occupation, or behaviour. Compared to putting an ad in a newspaper or on a billboard and hoping the right person sees it, the precision is in a different league entirely.

That targeting is applied across a range of platforms. On Google, you can reach people at the exact moment they are searching for something. On Facebook and Instagram, you can put your business in front of a relevant audience while they browse. Each platform gives you access to different people, in different moments.

Each platform also has its own style and format of advertising that fits naturally into how people use it. On Google, your ad appears alongside search results – the format people have been familiar with for years. On Facebook or Instagram, it appears within the feed, sitting alongside the content people are already scrolling through.

Another significant difference from traditional advertising is cost control. With a newspaper ad or a billboard, you pay a fixed amount regardless of what happens. With digital advertising, you set the budget, you decide how much you are willing to spend, and in many cases you only pay when someone actually engages with your ad. That makes it far easier to manage spend and understand what you are getting for your money.

Whether you are trying to reach people actively searching for what you offer or looking to build awareness with a broader audience who may not yet know about you, digital advertising can support both. The different platforms and approaches suited to each are covered in the sections that follow.

It does take time to do properly, and getting the most from it takes experience with how these platforms work. That expertise is what agencies, consultancies and specialists have built their businesses on. It is also why larger businesses have dedicated marketing departments. All with the aim of bringing in more than the costs. 

PPC stands for pay-per-click, and it refers to the sponsored listings that appear at the top of Google’s search results. The name describes exactly how the cost works – you only pay when someone actually clicks your ad, not simply for it being shown.

How it works

It starts with keywords – the search terms people are already using when they look for products or services like yours. By identifying the right terms, you can make sure your business appears in front of people who are actively searching for exactly what you offer. Layer on some basic targeting – location, for example – and you can get very specific about who sees your ads and when. You can also use what are called negative keywords to filter out irrelevant searches, making sure your budget is not wasted on the wrong audience. A commercial lawnmower supplier, for example, might exclude terms like “residential” or “garden” so they are not paying for clicks from people who would never buy from them.

Why businesses use it

These are people already looking for what you offer – the intent does not get much higher than that. It is worth considering if your business is new and not yet ranking organically, if you want to push a specific product or service, if competitors are already running paid search and you risk losing customers simply because they appear and you do not, or if you are launching something new and want to compete with more established names from day one.

PPC Mock Up Example

How it works 
It starts with keywords – the search terms people are already using when they look for products or services like yours. By identifying the right terms, you can make sure your business appears in front of people who are actively searching for exactly what you offer. Layer on some basic targeting – location, for example – and you can get very specific about who sees your ads and when. You can also use what are called negative keywords to filter out irrelevant searches, making sure your budget is not wasted on the wrong audience. A commercial lawnmower supplier, for example, might exclude terms like “residential” or “garden” so they are not paying for clicks from people who would never buy from them.

Why businesses use it
These are people already looking for what you offer – the intent does not get much higher than that. It is worth considering if your business is new and not yet ranking organically, if you want to push a specific product or service, if competitors are already running paid search and you risk losing customers simply because they appear and you do not, or if you are launching something new and want to compete with more established names from day one.

Best suited to
Businesses looking to generate enquiries, leads, or sales from people actively searching for what they offer. Effective for appearing alongside or ahead of competitors at the moment a decision is being made.

Less suited to
Building awareness of something people are not already searching for. If the demand does not exist yet, paid search cannot create it – a different channel would serve that goal better.

What to expect
Results can appear as soon as a campaign goes live. You will be able to see exactly how many people clicked your ads, what each click cost, and what those visitors did on your site after arriving. Performance typically improves over the first few months as data builds and campaigns are refined.

Paid social ads appear within the content people are already consuming on social media – sitting naturally between posts, videos, and stories. Rather than reaching people who are actively searching for something, paid social puts your business in front of people while they are browsing. This is one of the clearest examples of awareness-driven marketing covered earlier on this page – reaching people who may not yet know about your business and creating interest rather than capturing existing demand.

Social media is consumed heavily across a wide range of ages, making it one of the broadest-reach advertising environments available. Platforms include Facebook and Instagram (both managed through Meta), TikTok, Snapchat, X, and LinkedIn – each with its own audience profile and strengths.

Ads take the same format as a standard post – image, video, or a combination – with a small indicator such as “Sponsored” so people can distinguish them from organic content. It is a visual medium, making it well suited to showing off a product, service, or brand in a way that text alone cannot.

paid social mockup

How it works
Social media platforms collect extensive data on their users. Paid social uses this to reach relevant audiences based on a combination of factors – their interests, their behaviours, their demographics, and more. This allows you to be quite specific about who sees your ads, even when you are reaching a broad audience. It is typically bought on a CPM basis – cost per thousand impressions. An impression is simply someone seeing your ad, whether they click on it or not.

Why businesses use it
It is a strong channel for building awareness and staying visible with a relevant audience over time. It suits businesses that benefit from being seen – showcasing products, telling a story, or building familiarity with people who may not yet be looking for what you offer. The visual nature of the format gives businesses a way to make an impression that goes beyond what a text-based ad can achieve.

Best suited to
Businesses looking to build recognition and presence with a relevant audience. Visual products and services that benefit from being shown rather than described. Businesses with compelling creative – strong imagery or video – to work with.

Less suited to
Audiences that are difficult to identify through the data platforms hold. A business owner responsible for purchasing commercial products or services in their professional life may show no such indicators through their personal social media use, making them harder to reach through this channel.

What to expect
Results build over time rather than arriving immediately – you are reaching people earlier in their decision making, not at the point of action. Growing awareness and familiarity takes consistent presence. Creative quality has a significant impact – a weak image or video will underperform regardless of how well the targeting is set up.

Display and video advertising covers the visual ads you encounter while browsing the web – the banners and image ads on the sides and within pages on news sites, weather pages, and pretty much any website that carries advertising. Video ads extend this further, appearing embedded within web pages and as pre-roll ads on platforms like YouTube that play before the content you came to watch.

Beyond that, the channel stretches to connected TV – ads served on streaming platforms – and digital out-of-home, which covers the digital billboard screens you see in towns, transport hubs, and high streets. Collectively, these formats are delivered through what is known as programmatic advertising.

programmatic mockup

How it works
Programmatic advertising works by bidding in real time on available advertising space – known as inventory – across thousands of websites, apps, and platforms simultaneously. What makes it particularly powerful is the targeting. Behavioural targeting reaches people based on their interests and online behaviour. Contextual targeting goes a step further – placing your ads alongside content that is directly relevant to what you offer. A landscaping business, for example, could ensure their ads appear on gardening publications and within content their ideal customers are already choosing to read. When you layer both together, you are not only choosing relevant environments but also the specific people most likely to be interested. Bought primarily on a CPM basis – cost per thousand impressions.

Why businesses use it
It is one of the most versatile advertising formats available. At one end it can introduce your brand to large, relevant audiences who have never heard of you. At the other, it can retarget people already in the consideration phase – someone who has been browsing competitors, for example – with a specific message or offer designed to convert them. The ability to reach the same audience at multiple points in their decision making, combined with contextual targeting that places your ads in relevant and trusted environments, makes it a genuinely powerful channel when used with the right strategy and investment behind it.

Best suited to
Businesses with an established presence or a well-resourced campaign behind them. Those looking to build wide awareness, stay visible through the consideration phase, and convert audiences through retargeting. Particularly effective for launches where a story needs telling to a broad audience.

Less suited to
Businesses with limited budgets or those needing an immediate, direct return on spend. Strong creative assets are essential – without them the channel will underperform. It rewards those with a more developed advertising approach already in place.

What to expect
Wide reach at an efficient cost per impression, but meaningful investment is required – both in budget and in creative quality. Results build over time, particularly for awareness-focused activity. Of all the channels available, it offers perhaps the broadest range of capabilities – but it rewards those who come to it prepared, with a clear strategy and the means to execute it properly.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and the most widely used video platform. People use it to learn, research, and be entertained – often spending significant amounts of time on the platform in a single session. For advertisers, that creates an opportunity to reach large, engaged audiences through video in a way no other platform offers.

Ads on YouTube take several forms. The most common are pre-roll ads – video ads that play before the content someone has chosen to watch. These can be skippable, where the viewer can skip after a few seconds, or non-skippable, where the full ad plays before the video begins. There are also in-feed ads, which appear alongside search results and recommended videos, and bumper ads – short, non-skippable ads of six seconds or less designed for quick brand exposure.

youtube mockup

How it works
You create video ads and choose who sees them based on demographics, interests, search behaviour, or the type of content they are watching. You can target people watching specific categories of content – someone researching home renovations, for example, could be shown an ad for a building supplies company. You can also retarget people who have previously visited your website or interacted with your business online. Pricing varies by format – skippable ads typically charge on a cost-per-view basis, meaning you only pay when someone watches a certain portion of the ad rather than skipping it.

Why businesses use it
Video is one of the most effective ways to communicate a message, demonstrate a product, or build familiarity with a brand, you can pass over far more information to your audiences through video than display or search ads. YouTube gives businesses access to that format at scale, with the ability to target specific audiences rather than broadcasting to everyone. It is particularly strong for building awareness and trust – a well-produced video ad gives a potential customer a much richer sense of your business than a text ad or a static image ever could.

Best suited to
Businesses that have video content or the means to produce it. Those looking to build brand awareness with a broad or targeted audience. Businesses where seeing the product, the process, or the people behind the business helps build trust, interest and drive enquiries.

Less suited to
Businesses without video content or the budget to create it. A poorly produced video can leave a bad impression. Also less suited to businesses looking for immediate, direct-response results – YouTube advertising typically works best as part of a broader strategy rather than as a standalone lead generation tool.

What to expect
Reach and visibility can be significant even on modest budgets, particularly with skippable formats where you are only paying for engaged views. Results tend to build over time as audiences become familiar with your brand through repeated exposure. As with all video-based advertising, the quality of the creative is critical – the content needs to hold attention within the first few seconds or the viewer will skip.

The Bigger Picture

Online reviews are one of the most influential factors in how people choose between businesses. When someone is comparing options – whether that is a tradesperson, a clinic, a supplier, or a restaurant – reviews are often the thing that tips the decision.

How they work

Reviews appear across a range of platforms. Google is the most prominent – reviews left on your Google Business Profile show up directly in search results and on Google Maps, making them one of the first things a potential customer sees. Other platforms carry weight depending on your industry – Trustpilot, Facebook, industry-specific directories, and in some cases platforms like Checkatrade or TripAdvisor. Each platform has its own review system, but the principle is the same: past customers share their experience, and future customers use that to inform their decision.

Why they matter

There are thousands of businesses offering the same services, and it can be difficult to know which ones to trust. Every business will tell you they are great – that is expected. What carries real weight is hearing it from other people. Reviews are the online equivalent of word of mouth – genuine opinions from real customers that help people decide who to trust with their money. A business with a strong collection of recent, positive reviews will always have an advantage over one relying solely on what it says about itself.

They also influence your visibility – Google takes review volume and quality into account when deciding where to rank your business in local search results. More reviews, with higher ratings, generally means more visibility.

When a potential customer is comparing two businesses and one has dozens of positive reviews while the other has none, the one with reviews has a clear advantage – regardless of which business actually does the better work.

How to get more

There is no shortcut to this – it takes persistence. Not everyone you ask will leave a review, and that is normal. Some people will mean to and forget, some will not bother, and some will. The key is making it a habit rather than something you do once and give up on. Ask after every job, every service, every positive interaction. Make it easy by sending a direct link to your Google review page. Keep it simple – “if you were happy with the work, a Google review would be really appreciated” is usually enough.

It can feel repetitive and even a bit awkward to keep asking, but the businesses with strong review profiles are not the ones that got lucky – they are the ones that made asking part of their routine and stuck at it.

What to avoid

Never buy or fake reviews. Google actively detects and removes them, and if your business is flagged for it, the consequences can include losing all of your reviews or having your profile penalised. It is not worth the risk.

It is also worth responding to reviews – both positive and negative. A short thank you on a positive review shows you are engaged. A calm, professional response to a negative review shows potential customers how you handle problems. How you respond to criticism often says more about your business than the criticism itself.

Tracking and analytics underpins pretty much everything else on this page, from website performance to paid ad results. It is the layer that tells you what is actually happening across everything you do online – what is working, what is not, and where your money is going.

Every platform has its own reporting. Google Ads shows you how your paid search campaigns are performing. Meta shows you how your social ads are doing. But for your website – which is where most of your marketing activity ultimately points – the main tool is Google Analytics (currently known as GA4). It works by placing a small piece of code on your site that tracks every visitor. How they found you, what pages they looked at, how long they stayed, and what actions they took – whether that is filling in a contact form, calling a phone number, or leaving without doing anything.

This data is what turns marketing from guesswork into informed decision making. If you are running paid ads, tracking tells you whether those clicks are turning into actual enquiries or just costing you money. If you have invested time into SEO, it tells you whether your organic traffic is growing and which pages are bringing people in. If one channel is significantly outperforming another, the data tells you where to focus and where to pull back. Without it, you have no way of knowing what is worth your investment and what is not.

It is worth setting up tracking from the very beginning, even if you are not running any paid advertising yet. Understanding how people find and use your website is valuable in its own right, and the earlier you start collecting data, the more useful it becomes over time. Patterns take time to emerge – early fluctuations are normal and should not be overreacted to.

One point that is worth emphasising: you should always have direct access to your own data. If you are working with an agency or consultant, you should be able to log in and see the numbers yourself rather than relying solely on reports presented to you. Your data is yours, and being able to interrogate it independently is one of the best protections you have against selective reporting or poor performance being hidden behind impressive-sounding numbers.

If you decide to work with an agency, consultant, or specialist to help with any of this, there are a few things worth knowing before you commit. The digital marketing industry is largely unregulated, the barrier to entry is low, and not everyone operates with the same level of transparency. The advice below applies regardless of who you choose to work with.

Who owns what

One of the most important questions to ask – and one that many businesses do not think to ask until it is too late – is who owns the assets. Your ad account, your website, your domain name, your analytics data. If any of these are set up under an agency’s account rather than yours, you risk losing access to everything if the relationship ends. Your ad account history, your conversion data, your keyword performance – gone. Always make sure your business owns its own accounts, with your provider given access to manage them on your behalf. The same applies to your website and domain – you should always know where they are hosted, have the login details, and be able to take them with you if needed.

Handoffs and experience

The digital marketing industry has no formal regulation and a low barrier to entry. Anyone can set up a marketing business and start offering services – and because the nature of the work is to promote businesses effectively, they are often very good at promoting themselves. That does not always reflect the experience behind it.

It is worth asking directly about the background of the people who will actually be working on your account. Any marketer with genuine experience will be able to talk you through previous work and explain what they did, what worked, and what they learned. If the answers are vague, that tells you something.

In larger agencies, the person you meet during the sales process is often the most experienced person you will deal with. Once you are signed up, the day-to-day work frequently gets handed off to more junior staff. This is not unusual and is not necessarily a problem – what matters is whether the senior team is actively involved in overseeing the work on an ongoing basis, or whether they only step in when something goes wrong. It is reasonable to ask who will be doing the work, what their experience level is, and how the oversight works in practice.

Transparency on fees and spend

Understand what you are paying for. Your management fee – the cost of the expertise and time – should be clearly separated from the money that goes to the advertising platforms. If those two figures are bundled together, or if you cannot see a breakdown, it is worth asking why. Some providers mark up the ad spend without disclosing it, meaning less of your budget reaches the platforms than you think. There is nothing wrong with a fair fee for good work – but you should always know exactly what you are paying and where it goes.

Contract lock-ins

Be cautious of long minimum contract terms with no break clause. A reasonable provider may ask for an initial commitment to allow time for results to develop – that is fair. But locking you in for twelve months with no exit if things are not working is not a sign of confidence in their work. If someone is delivering results, you will not want to leave. They should not need a contract to keep you.

Selective reporting

Data can tell almost any story depending on which numbers you choose to show. A report full of impressive-sounding metrics – thousands of impressions, hundreds of clicks – can obscure the fact that none of it translated into a single enquiry. Equally, positive data in one area can be used to distract from problems in another. A hundred website visits looks encouraging until you learn that half of them came from locations you do not serve, or that the average time on site was three seconds. The best protection against selective reporting is having your own access to the data – something the tracking section above covers in more detail.

Guarantees

Be wary of anyone who guarantees specific results – a number one Google ranking, a set number of leads, a particular return on investment. The reality is that no one can guarantee these things with certainty. What often happens in practice is that the guarantee is technically met but the outcome is not what you expected. Ranking number one for a search term that nobody uses. Delivering a volume of leads that turn out to be poor quality. The guarantee pulls you in, and the small print protects them. Good work speaks for itself through results, not promises.

One-size-fits-all approaches

If a provider is proposing the same strategy, the same channels, and the same approach regardless of the business sitting in front of them, that should give you pause. Every business has different goals, different customers, different competitive landscapes, and different budgets. A strategy that worked well for one business will not necessarily work for another – and a provider whose approach does not change from client to client is likely optimising for their own efficiency rather than your results.

None of this is intended to suggest that the industry is full of bad actors – there are many excellent agencies and specialists doing genuinely good work. But the information asymmetry between a provider and a business owner who is new to this space is significant, and the best defence is being informed. Ask questions, insist on transparency, and make sure you always own and have access to your own data and accounts.

Ad spend / Media spend. The portion of your budget that goes directly to the advertising platforms – Google, Meta, etc. Separate from any management or consultancy fees you pay to the person running the campaigns on your behalf.

Algorithm. A set of rules a platform uses to decide what to show and in what order. Google’s algorithm determines which websites rank highest in search results. Social media algorithms determine which posts appear in your feed.

B2B (Business to Business). A business that sells its products or services to other businesses rather than directly to consumers.

B2C (Business to Consumer). A business that sells its products or services directly to individual consumers.

Behavioural targeting. A form of advertising targeting that reaches people based on their online behaviour – what they have searched for, what websites they have visited, what interests they have demonstrated.

Bounce rate. The percentage of visitors who land on your website and leave without doing anything – no clicks, no page changes, no interaction. A high bounce rate can indicate that people are not finding what they expected.

Contextual targeting. A form of advertising targeting that places your ads alongside content that is relevant to what you offer – for example, an ad for landscaping services appearing on a gardening website.

Conversion. A completed action that you have defined as valuable – a form submission, a phone call, a purchase, a download. What counts as a conversion depends on your business and your goals.

CPC (Cost Per Click). The amount you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Used in pay-per-click advertising such as Google Ads.

CPM (Cost Per Mille / Cost Per Thousand Impressions). The cost of your ad being shown one thousand times. Common in display, video, and paid social advertising where the goal is visibility rather than direct clicks.

CTR (Click-Through Rate). The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on it. Calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions.

Domain name. Your web address – e.g. www.yourbusiness.co.uk. This is what people type into a browser to find your website and what appears in search results.

Engagement. Any interaction someone has with your content – a like, a comment, a share, a click. Often used as a measure of how well content is resonating with an audience.

GA4 (Google Analytics 4). Google’s current analytics platform. Tracks how people find and use your website – where they came from, what they looked at, what actions they took.

Google Business Profile. The free listing that controls how your business appears on Google Maps and in local search results. Includes your business name, address, phone number, opening hours, photos, and reviews.

Impressions. The number of times your ad or content was displayed. An impression does not mean someone engaged with it – only that it appeared on their screen.

Keywords. The search terms people type into Google when looking for products, services, or information. In PPC advertising, you choose which keywords trigger your ads.

Landing page. The specific page someone arrives on after clicking an ad or a link. Often designed with a single purpose in mind – such as encouraging an enquiry or a purchase.

Lead. A potential customer who has shown interest in your business – typically by submitting a contact form, making a phone call, or sending an enquiry.

Negative keywords. Search terms you specifically exclude from your advertising campaigns to prevent your ads showing for irrelevant searches.

Organic. Any visibility or traffic you have earned without paying for it – typically through SEO, content, or an established web presence. The opposite of paid.

PPC (Pay Per Click). A form of online advertising where you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Most commonly associated with Google Ads and the sponsored listings at the top of search results.

Programmatic. A method of buying digital advertising automatically through real-time bidding across thousands of websites, apps, and platforms simultaneously. Used in display and video advertising.

Retargeting / Remarketing. Showing ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your business online. The ads that “follow you around the internet” after you have looked at a product.

ROI (Return on Investment). A measure of what you get back relative to what you put in. In marketing, it is used to assess whether the money spent on a channel or campaign is producing enough results to justify the cost.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). The process of improving your website’s visibility in unpaid search engine results. Involves content, technical quality, and building authority over time.

Traffic. The visitors coming to your website. Can be broken down by source – organic traffic comes from search engines, paid traffic comes from advertising, direct traffic comes from people typing your address into their browser.

Still have questions?

If anything on this page has raised a question or you’d like something explained in more detail, drop us an email. You don’t need to tell us about your business or be considering working with us – we’re happy to help.

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