There are eight or nine digital marketing channels a small business could plausibly use. Most advice lists all of them and quietly implies you’d better be doing every single one.

You don’t. In my experience with Montana businesses, trying to run all of them badly is a far more common failure than picking two and running them well. So here’s the list, ordered the way I’d actually prioritize it, with an honest note on when each one is worth your time.

Your website, which is not optional

Everything else on this list points somewhere, and for almost every business that somewhere is your website. It’s the only channel you own outright, the only one that works while you sleep, and the one an AI assistant reads when someone asks it to recommend a business like yours.

Having a site isn’t the same as having a marketing site, and plenty of perfectly nice-looking websites fail this test. The bar is whether a stranger can tell within a few seconds who you help and what to do next, whether it loads quickly, and whether the thing works properly on a phone. If yours falls short, 8 signs it’s time for a website redesign covers how to tell whether it needs fixing or rebuilding.

Local search and your Google Business Profile

For most local businesses this is the highest-return channel available, and I say that knowing it costs nothing, which usually makes people suspicious of it.

Quick note, because it tells you something useful: Google renamed Google My Business to Google Business Profile back in late 2021. So any advice you find still using the old name is at least four years past its expiry date, and probably wrong about other things too. Beyond the name, the fundamentals haven’t changed much. Accurate details, current photos, correct service area, and replies to reviews.

The part that has changed is why it matters. Search increasingly answers questions directly rather than sending clicks, which makes your profile more important, not less, because it’s often the answer itself rather than a stepping stone to your site. There’s more on that shift in how to keep up with SEO and AI search.

Reviews and reputation

Technically part of local search, but I’ve given it its own line because it’s the cheapest thing here and the one I see neglected most often.

Recency matters more than volume. Eight reviews from the last two months do more work than forty from three years ago, both for how a human reads you and for how search treats you. The businesses that do this well have a habit, asking after a job goes well, rather than an intention. Getting reviews online covers how to build that habit without being awkward about it.

Content, meaning the questions you already answer

I know “content” sounds like a commitment to blogging forever, and that’s why most owners never start. What I actually mean is writing down the questions customers ask you anyway.

Those questions are what people type into Google, and they’re what AI assistants pull from when building an answer. A page that clearly answers a real question does more than a dozen posts about industry trends, and you already know the answers because you give them on the phone every week.

This is the channel with the slowest payoff and the longest tail. Start it early, expect nothing for six months, and it compounds.

Email, if you already have a list

Email is the one I most often find underused, mostly because it feels like work for a payoff you can’t picture.

The honest version: it’s excellent if you already have a list of past customers, and slow going if you’re starting from zero. If you’ve got a few hundred customer email addresses sitting in your point-of-sale system or your inbox, that’s a genuine asset you’re not using. If you don’t, build the list first through the other channels and come back to this.

Social media, with realistic expectations

Social is good at brand familiarity and, for most small businesses I work with, weak at direct lead generation. I don’t mean that as a criticism of social. It’s just what it’s for.

Post because you want people who already know you to remember you exist, to see the work, to feel like there’s a real person behind the business. Don’t post expecting the phone to ring off the back of a Facebook update. If you’re posting daily and getting nothing, the problem usually isn’t that you need to post twice daily. It’s that social was never going to be your acquisition channel in the first place.

Paid ads, once the rest is working

Ads amplify whatever you already have. If your message is clear and your site converts, they multiply it. If not, they just get you to the same disappointment faster and at a higher price.

That’s why they’re near the bottom of this list, not because they don’t work. They work well, in the right order. 5 things to consider when using Google Ads covers what to have in place first.

Tracking, which isn’t a channel but decides everything

None of the above is worth much if you can’t tell what’s working.

You don’t need a dashboard. You need to know where your last ten customers came from, and you need your website analytics set up to record when somebody contacts you. That’s the minimum. Plenty of businesses running four channels don’t have it, which means they’re making budget decisions on vibes and a general feeling that Facebook is probably doing something.

So which should you actually pick?

If you’re starting from very little: website, Google Business Profile, reviews. That’s the whole plan, and I’d rather you did those three properly than five things halfway.

If those are solid: add content, and start tracking properly if you aren’t.

If content is producing and you can trace your leads: that’s when ads and email make sense, because you’ll know what to amplify.

The order matters more than the list. Most businesses that tell me their marketing isn’t working turn out to be running channel six while channel two sits neglected.

If you’re not sure where you sit, our free MarketingStack Challenge will tell you, and it costs nothing. If you’d rather have the full picture assessed, including how you compare to competitors, the Total Online Presence Assessment goes deeper.

Quick answers

Which digital marketing channel is best for a small business? For most local businesses, your website and Google Business Profile together, supported by a steady flow of recent reviews. They’re the highest-return combination and two of the three are free, which makes them the right starting point before anything paid.

How many marketing channels should a small business use? Two or three, done consistently, beats six done occasionally. Add channels as the earlier ones start producing rather than launching everything at once.

Do small businesses still need social media? It’s useful for staying familiar to people who already know you, and weak as a direct source of new customers for most local businesses. Treat it as reinforcement rather than acquisition and it stops feeling like a waste of time.