The days when businesses had to be convinced of the value of online marketing are long gone. Everyone now understands that without a strong digital presence, it’s hard to attract both customers and skilled staff. But which measures actually work — and which ones are worth the effort? Should you invest time and money in search engine optimisation (SEO) to appear higher on Google? Is it better to focus on Instagram? How do you recruit qualified employees online? Can you communicate with customers via WhatsApp? How do Google Ads work? And are email newsletters still worth it?
These are the kinds of questions many companies struggle with — and I help them find the right answers.
Below, I’d like to give an overview of the most important online marketing activities and share some practical tips on how to implement them effectively. 🙂
What is online marketing?
Online marketing includes all marketing activities carried out on the internet to achieve specific business goals. In most cases, the ultimate goal is to win new customers and/or attract qualified staff. Sometimes that’s straightforward — running Google Ads or launching a recruitment campaign might be enough. But in other cases, you first need to build a stronger online presence, increase brand awareness, or improve your company’s image.
There’s no single “best” online marketing measure. The right approach always depends on your goals, your products or services, the nature of your business, and external factors such as competition and market conditions. Admittedly, answers like “it depends” tend to be unsatisfying — so I’ll try to be more concrete in the following sections. Still, I always recommend this video to my clients to help them develop a better understanding of how online marketing works:
The following sections focus on online marketing disciplines that are particularly important for small businesses and organisations:
- Website marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Online referral marketing
- Social media marketing
- Online advertising
- Messenger and email marketing
There are many ways to group and differentiate the disciplines and instruments of online marketing. Content marketing, for example, is sometimes listed as its own standalone technique. However, because content can take so many different forms — from blog articles to TikTok videos to Instagram posts — I treat content marketing here as a cross‑disciplinary activity rather than a separate category.
Other disciplines, such as influencer marketing or affiliate marketing, play little to no role for most small businesses. For that reason, they are not covered in detail here, even though they are unquestionably established parts of the broader online marketing landscape. The same applies to podcasts and certain special advertising formats such as advertorials.
Is online marketing worth it?
Some businesses feel disappointed when they invest in paid online advertising but don’t see the results they were hoping for. It’s then easy to conclude that “Instagram ads don’t work” or “Google Ads are too expensive.” However, when you analyse the campaign, you often find that the problem isn’t the advertising platform—it’s mistakes made by the advertiser. Sometimes the target audience was far too broad. Sometimes the creatives were poorly designed. Sometimes the offer itself wasn’t compelling for the audience. Sometimes the budget was simply too small, or the goals far too ambitious. There are countless reasons why an online marketing activity may not deliver the desired outcome. Blaming the platform alone is usually too simplistic—though there are cases where a platform is simply not the right fit, for example when competition is extremely strong and drives prices up. In those situations, it’s worth exploring alternatives.
It’s also important to acknowledge that online marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise. Launching a campaign and then leaning back for months rarely works. Yes, the level of required maintenance varies by platform (Google Search campaigns typically remain effective for longer than social media campaigns), but ongoing monitoring and optimisation are essential. Even a relatively static website needs regular updates—otherwise, it risks losing visibility in Google’s search results. And most small businesses are now aware that they should ideally post on social media at least once a week. That doesn’t necessarily cost money, but it does require time. So the question “Is it worth it?” is absolutely valid—though an even better question is: “What alternatives do we have?”
Online marketing is generally well‑suited for achieving the following goals:
- Increasing sales of products and services
- Raising product, brand, or company awareness
- Improving your brand image
- Strengthening relationships with existing customers
- Acquiring new customers
- Building and enhancing your employer brand
- Recruiting apprentices and skilled workers
- Internal marketing and employee retention
What are the goals, and who are the target audiences?
Before launching any marketing activity, businesses should define their goals and target audiences. Only then can they choose the right marketing tools and craft an effective message. Ultimately, the defined goals also determine whether a measure can be considered successful.
Before starting an online marketing initiative, every business should ask itself the following questions:
- Who do we want to reach?
- What do we want to achieve?
- Which online channels are best suited for this?
- What content and messages should we communicate?
- How should we speak to our target audience?
- What budget is available — and is it sufficient to reach our goals?
Is online marketing better than traditional marketing?
There’s nothing wrong with traditional marketing activities: handing out flyers, sponsoring the local football club, placing ads in school yearbooks — all perfectly fine. But in most cases, they’re not enough. New customers primarily use the internet to search for products and services. While traditional advertising channels haven’t disappeared entirely, many have lost much of their relevance. For example, print newspaper ads hardly reach young people anymore — the same goes for radio advertising. That’s why online marketing has become one of the most important components of the modern marketing mix. From teenagers to grandparents, everyone uses the internet (just in very different ways). As a result, even small businesses and organisations need to be present in the online spaces their target audiences actually use if they want to remain visible and future‑ready.
Word‑of‑mouth is often mentioned in the context of traditional marketing. And it’s great for businesses — it costs neither time nor money. The downside? You can’t control it. It also works best for companies that have been around for a while, are well‑known, and have a good reputation. It’s also worth noting that word‑of‑mouth itself has changed. People still ask friends, family, and neighbours for recommendations — but they now do the same in online forums, Facebook groups or even via WhatsApp status updates. And the moment someone receives a recommendation, they’ll “double‑check” it online: scanning Google reviews, social media feedback, or customer ratings. In other words, referral marketing is increasingly happening online, even though the people behind it are still very real. And whether we’re talking about offline or online marketing, one principle remains the same: to acquire and retain customers, you need to position your business effectively and reach people where they actually are.
That said, online marketing has several advantages over traditional marketing in many situations:
- Personalisation:
Email and messenger marketing allow you to reach large numbers of people personally and cost‑effectively. - Dialogue:
Social media and messenger channels make it easy to communicate with (potential) customers. On review platforms, customers provide feedback proactively. - Cost:
Online marketing requires time, but many channels are free (e.g., social media) or inexpensive (e.g., maintaining a website). Online advertising such as Google Ads costs money, but fixed costs are low since you typically pay per click.
- Targeting:
Online ads allow for precise audience targeting (age, gender, location, interests), reducing waste and making campaigns far more efficient. - Scalability:
A well-performing online campaign can be scaled quickly to reach a larger audience. Poorly performing campaigns can usually be paused or adjusted immediately.
- Measurability:
Analytics tools make it possible to track performance accurately — including clicks, enquiries, and purchases — and to understand how well a campaign is actually working.
Content marketing: what role does content play?
“Content is king” — a phrase online marketers love to use, meaning that good content is one of the most important foundations of digital marketing. Unlike advertising, content marketing is not primarily about presenting your business in the best possible light. Instead, the goal is to provide information that is genuinely useful or interesting to your target audience. By doing so, companies can position themselves as experts, offering guidance, recommendations, and practical tips. Entertaining content can also play a role — and the line between information and entertainment is often blurred. Take a pizza maker on YouTube who explains how to bake the perfect pizza while sharing funny stories about unusual topping requests. It’s entertaining, but it also showcases expertise.
Content marketing isn’t tied to a specific medium or format. Texts, images, graphics, audio content, and videos all work. These can be shared on a website, blog, podcast, newsletter, messenger channel, or on social media platforms. When it comes to website marketing, strong content often leads to better visibility in Google search results. On social media, good content helps you attract followers — increasing awareness and strengthening customer loyalty. In that sense, content marketing creates value on multiple levels.
However, producing high‑quality content takes time and expertise. Not every business owner enjoys writing, editing images, or creating videos — and outsourcing this work to agencies can become expensive over time. AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or DeepSeek can generate content in seconds, and the results are often factually correct, typo‑free, and stylistically polished. But what value does such content truly offer to customers if they can generate the same thing themselves? Especially for small businesses, where personality, authenticity, and human charm are part of the brand, it’s important to sound real online. And if a comma ends up in the wrong place every now and then — that’s perfectly fine.
How AI‑generated content will affect Google rankings and search engine optimisation (SEO) remains to be seen. Until now, Google has strongly rewarded high‑quality content. But if anyone can produce “good” content at the push of a button, it raises the question of whether Google can reliably identify AI‑generated material — and how it will treat it. Will such content be penalised? Will it be considered legitimate? At the same time, user behaviour is likely to shift: traditional searching may decline as more people turn to AI tools directly to ask their questions — whichever platform they end up using.
