It’s almost that time of year when you review your marketing strategy, make adjustments for the rest of the year and start thinking about setting goals for next year.
During that process, you’re going to look at what worked and what didn’t, and if you’re like many companies we work with as a digital marketing consultant, you’re looking to spend more money and time on getting more leads and customers from digital marketing channels.
Are you spending time and money on the right small business marketing efforts?
Marketing activities are the specific actions a company takes to attract the right audience, help prospects understand what it offers, and turn interest into measurable inquiries and sales. The seven activities below work together, but they do not all need the same budget or attention at the same time.
Start with the problem you need to solve. Paid search can create traffic quickly. Content and SEO build useful visibility over time. If the website already attracts the right people but too few become leads, conversion rate optimization deserves attention. Closed-loop reporting connects all of that work to CRM deal counts and pipeline so you can see what is helping the business.
| Marketing activity | When it deserves attention | Useful measures |
|---|---|---|
| Closed-loop reporting | You cannot connect marketing sources and website inquiries to sales results | Qualified leads, deal count, pipeline and revenue by source |
| Video production | Buyers need to see your expertise, people, product or process | Engaged views, website visits and inquiries influenced by video |
| Content creation and updates | Buyers need clearer, more current answers before they contact you | Search visibility, useful engagement, assisted inquiries and sales use |
| Search engine optimization | You need more durable visibility for the questions and services buyers search for | Relevant impressions, clicks and qualified inquiries from organic search |
| Paid search | You need traffic quickly or want to test whether high-intent searches produce inquiries | Qualified conversions, cost per lead and opportunities by campaign |
| Conversion rate optimization | The site gets relevant traffic but produces too few useful inquiries | Visitor-to-lead conversion rate, form completion and lead quality |
| Social media | Your audience uses a social platform to learn, compare, connect or evaluate your company | Relevant engagement, referral traffic and assisted inquiries |
Whether you’re doing the work in-house or outsourcing part of your digital marketing, a strategy only becomes useful when your team can carry out the activities, measure what happens and make a better decision with the results.
Make your digital marketing a sales system
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Closed Loop Reporting
Google Analytics can show what people do on your website, but it cannot prove marketing ROI on its own. Connect website forms, calls and campaign data to a CRM so you can see which leads become qualified opportunities, how many deals are created and how much pipeline and revenue each source influences.
As a modern marketer, it’s important to get on the same page with your sales team.
- What tools are they using?
- Are they using them consistently?
- What information could help them do their jobs better?
- What data could your website share through a CRM connection to help them advance a sale?
Pro Tip: Connect your website to a CRM through marketing automation software like HubSpot. It can pass useful website and conversion context to sales, support lead routing and scoring, and make follow-up priorities easier to see.
Video Production
Video earns its place in the plan when buyers need to see your people, products, services or process. A smartphone camera or laptop may be enough for a useful explanation, product demonstration, customer question or sales follow-up.
Video can also help a brand become more understandable in AI-driven research. Google’s 2026 Gemini API documentation, for example, explains that its models can process public YouTube videos and extract information from their audio and visual streams. Accurate captions and a complete transcript give people and machines a dependable text version of what was said. That does not guarantee an AI citation, but it gives a useful video more ways to be understood and surfaced.
Video can be used in a variety of places, from your website and presentations to email campaigns, social media and one-to-one sales communication.
Pro Tip: Use video at different points in the sales process. You can publish an educational video on your website or YouTube, record a product demo to send with a quote, invite someone to an event or thank a customer for a recent purchase. Review YouTube’s automatic captions and correct transcription errors before relying on the transcript.
Content Creation
Content creation is the process of engaging your target audience and existing customers with useful, educational and interactive information. This information should live on your website and be promoted through the channels your prospects actually use.
Content creation includes improving what you already have. Revisit older pages and articles, update facts and links, remove advice that is no longer relevant, revise examples and make sure the content still answers the questions your buyers ask today. A content gap analysis can help you decide what to create, update, combine or leave alone.
Buyers expect to find information online that’s focused on their needs. Your job is to make that information accurate, clear and useful enough to help them understand the problem and decide what to do next.
You’re the expert. Show them what you know, then keep it current.
Pro Tip: Creating quality content takes time. Learn how to be more efficient by reading this article, and read about how companies are building thought leadership with content creation. This article explains how to write for your customers.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO helps your company get found online. Be deliberate about how you publish content, and use the words your prospective customers use when they describe the problem, product or service.
Search engine optimization now includes visibility in AI-influenced search experiences. Google’s 2026 guidance for generative AI features says the same SEO foundations still apply: make pages crawlable, publish original and useful content, keep important information in text, use internal links and maintain a clear technical structure. Treat AI optimization as part of a sound SEO program built on these practices.
It can also be useful to understand how much automated activity reaches the website. Search Console and web analytics help you review human search visibility and behavior. Server logs or a bot-management tool can identify many crawler requests using the current identifiers and controls documented by OpenAI and Google. Report estimated AI-bot activity separately from human visits, conversions and sales opportunities so the numbers do not get confused.
Moz remains a useful source for practical SEO ideas, but don’t hesitate to contact a professional who can connect technical SEO, content, search intent, conversion and measurement.
Pro Tip: SEO takes much more than adding keywords to a page or changing meta tags. Useful content, technical access, internal links, page experience and a clear path to the next step all contribute.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Your company might already be doing search engine optimization, writing content or buying traffic. If the website attracts relevant visitors but produces too few useful inquiries, start by looking at conversion rate optimization.
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is simply the process of testing improvements that can turn more of the website visitors you already have into business opportunities.
Review the whole path: the message that brought someone to the page, the clarity of the offer, the proof that builds confidence, the call to action, the form experience and what happens after a person responds. Watch the visitor-to-lead conversion rate, but also use CRM data to see whether those leads become qualified opportunities.
Pro Tip: Smaller, incremental website changes can help you learn what improves inquiries without waiting for a full redesign. Because conversion rate optimization involves writing, design and development, incremental design can support a practical testing process.
Social Media
There are more social media platforms than most small and mid-market teams can update well. Choose the places where your audience already learns, compares, asks questions or builds professional relationships.
LinkedIn can support B2B content distribution, recruiting and relationship building. Facebook and Instagram may be more useful for local visibility, community engagement, visual products or employer branding. YouTube can support education, demonstrations and search discovery. Other platforms may fit when your buyers or employees are genuinely active there.
If recruiting is a top priority, show people what it is like to work with your company. If lead generation is the priority, connect social activity to useful website content and track whether the visits and inquiries are relevant.
Pro Tip: Give each social platform a specific purpose. A B2B company might use Instagram to show company culture, LinkedIn to distribute expertise and YouTube to answer detailed buyer questions.
The most useful marketing plan starts with the business problem, funds the work your team can execute well and uses website conversion rate, CRM deal counts and pipeline to understand what is helping.
Paid Search
Paid search is the seventh activity to consider when you need traffic quickly or want to test whether a high-intent offer can produce actual inquiries. Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising can put your company in front of people who are actively searching for the products or services you offer.
A campaign needs more than keywords and a budget. Send each ad to a page that matches the searcher’s need, track calls and forms, connect conversions to the CRM and review which campaigns create qualified opportunities. Otherwise, you may buy visits without learning whether the traffic can become business.
- Choose searches that indicate a real need for what you sell.
- Write ads and landing pages that make the offer clear.
- Track qualified inquiries, not just clicks and form fills.
- Review cost per lead, opportunity creation and pipeline by campaign.
Pro Tip: Paid search can create traffic quickly, while SEO and content build visibility over time. This guide to choosing between SEO and paid search can help you decide how the two should work together.
What are you planning on doing differently next year? Next quarter? Next month?
Last updated: September 2026
