Digital marketing in Newcastle, NSW: one plan for everywhere people find you.

Search, paid advertising, social media, email, and the website they all send people to. They do different jobs, and the mistake is treating them as alternatives to each other.

The channels get sold as competitors and they are not. They meet people at different moments, and which one suits depends on whether your customers are already looking for what you sell.

What each one is for

• Search. For people already looking. They typed the thing, which means the decision to buy has usually been made.
• Paid advertising on search. The same people, sooner, for as long as you pay. You are buying the top of a list you have not earned yet.
• Social advertising. For people who were not looking. Cheaper attention, harder work, because you have to create the interest as well as capture it.
• Social posting. For people who already know you. Staying in front of past customers and the people they talk to.
• Email. For people who already gave you their address. The cheapest channel and the one small businesses use least.

Underneath all of them sits the website, which is where every channel sends people. Spending on traffic before the destination works is the most expensive order to do it in.

Google states the ground rules itself in its search essentials, and it is shorter than most of what is written about it.

Almost every channel gets more effective when the one under it is working. Fixing the listing and the pages makes both the free and the paid results work harder, and it costs less than either.

The usual sequence in a small business is backwards. Somebody sells them advertising, the advertising sends people to a website that does not ask for anything, and the conclusion is that advertising does not work.

The order that costs least is the same one every time, and none of the early steps involve a media budget.

The order that costs least

• The free listing. Categories, services, photographs and reviews. An afternoon of work, and it is what decides the map.
• A page for each thing you sell. The largest piece of the work, and it makes everything after it cheaper, including advertising.
• Reviews arriving every week. Feeds the map, and it is what a customer reads before choosing between two businesses.
• Then paid advertising. Once the destination works and you know which searches matter, the money buys something.

This one question decides most of the plan. If they do, search work is the cheapest route. If they do not, you have to interrupt people instead, and that is a different budget and a different skill.

A plumber does not need to create demand. Somebody with a burst pipe is already typing. A business selling something people do not know exists has to put it in front of them, which is advertising's job rather than search's.

The way to answer it is to look. The search terms and their rough monthly volumes are available, and an hour with them tells you more than a strategy document.

Most Newcastle trades and services fall on the search side, and most new products fall on the interrupt side. Plenty of businesses are on both, with one service people search for and another nobody has heard of.

Count enquiries by where they came from, and know what a job is worth. Without those two, every channel looks equally reasonable and every agency report looks convincing.

This is the part that gets skipped, and skipping it is what makes marketing feel like a matter of opinion.

What to know

• Where each enquiry came from. Search, ad, social, referral, or somebody walked past. Asking on the call is enough to start.
• What a job is worth. An average, and how often an enquiry becomes one. Two numbers, and most owners have never written them down.
• What each channel cost. Including the hours, not just the invoice.
• What is repeatable. One good month is weather. Three is a pattern.

A report full of impressions and clicks is describing activity. The number that settles an argument is enquiries against cost, and it is worth insisting on.

Work out what a customer is worth, check whether people search for what you sell, fix the free things first, then buy traffic once the destination works.

1. Work out what a customer is worth

An average job, and how often an enquiry becomes one. Every decision after this depends on it and it takes an afternoon.

2. Find out whether people search for you

The terms and their rough volumes. This decides whether you are capturing demand or creating it.

3. Fix the free things

The Google listing, the reviews, and a page for each thing you sell. This part runs on time rather than a media budget, and it makes the paid work cheaper afterwards.

4. Make the destination work

A phone number that is obvious, a form that arrives, and a page that answers what stops people. Paying for traffic to a page that does not ask is the expensive order.

5. Then buy traffic

On the searches you now know matter, or in front of the people you now know you have to interrupt.

6. Count where the enquiries came from

From day one. This is what turns next year's decision from an argument into a look at a number.

Paid advertising works the day it is switched on and stops the day it is switched off. Search work is the other way round: slow to arrive, and it holds.

The order it happens in

• The free things get fixed. Listing, reviews, pages. The first movements come from here, and the price of them is time.
• The destination gets sorted. Forms that arrive, a number that is obvious, pages that answer what stops people.
• Paid traffic goes on top. Immediate, measurable, and it stops when the spending does. Which is why it goes on top rather than first.

A business that can only afford one of them for now is nearly always better off with the free half, because the paid half gets cheaper afterwards.

Ask what they would do first and why, what they will report, who owns the accounts, and what happens if you stop. The first answer tells you whether they looked at your business or ran a template.

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• What would you do first, and why? A specific answer about your business. A package that starts the same way for everybody has not looked.
• What will you report? Enquiries and where they came from. Impressions and clicks describe activity rather than results.
• Who owns the accounts? The business. Ads accounts, listing, analytics and website, all in its own name. Ours are set up that way from the start.
• What happens if I stop? The accounts and the pages stay. Whatever was rented goes, and it is worth knowing which is which before you start.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

A business doing well on word of mouth alone is not obliged to do any of this. The reason to start is usually that the referrals have gone flat or the busy season is uneven.