Digital marketing in Newcastle, NSW: one plan, every channel.

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 one another.

The channels get sold as competitors and they are nothing of the sort. They meet people at different moments, and which suits depends on whether your customers are already looking for what you sell.

What each one is for

• Search reaches people already looking.

  They typed the thing in, which usually means the decision to buy has already been made before you appear.

• Paid advertising on search does the same.

  The same people, reached sooner, for as long as you keep paying. You are buying the top of a list you have not earned yet.

• Social advertising, for people not looking.

  Cheaper attention and harder work, because the interest has to be created as well as captured.

• Social posting, for people who know you.

  Staying in front of past customers and the people those customers talk to about you.

• Email, for people who gave you an address.

  The cheapest channel there is, and the one small businesses use least often of all.

Underneath every one of them sits the website, which is where all of them send people. Spending on traffic before the destination works is the most expensive order to do this 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 once 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 runs backwards, and it produces the same conclusion every time. The advertising takes the blame for a page that never asked anybody to get in touch.

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

The order that costs least

• The free Google listing goes first.

  The categories, services, photographs and reviews. It is an afternoon of work, and it is what decides the map.

• Then a page for each thing you sell.

  The largest single piece of the work, and it makes everything after it cheaper, advertising included.

• Then the reviews start arriving every week.

  They feed the map, and they are what a customer reads when choosing between two businesses.

• Then the paid advertising goes on top.

  Once the destination works and the searches are known, the money is buying something rather than testing it.

That one question decides most of the plan. Where they do, search work is the cheapest route. Where they do not, people have to be interrupted instead, and that is a different budget and a different skill.

Whether to put the first money into ads or SEO is the question underneath all of this, and the answer turns on whether people are already searching for what you sell.

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 simply to look. The search terms and their rough monthly volumes are available, and an hour with them says more than a strategy document does.

Most Newcastle trades and professions fall on the search side, and most new products fall on the interrupt side. Plenty of businesses sit 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.

None of this can be judged until what gets counted is decided, because a channel with no measurement always looks like the cheapest one.

This is the part people skip, and skipping it is exactly what makes marketing feel like a matter of opinion rather than a decision.

What you need to know

• Where each enquiry actually came from.

  Search, an ad, social, a referral, or somebody walking past. Asking on the call is enough to start with.

• What a job is genuinely worth.

  An average, and how often an enquiry becomes one. Two numbers, and most owners have never written them down.

• What each of the channels really cost.

  Including the hours somebody spent on it, rather than only the invoice that arrived for it.

• Which part of it is repeatable.

  One good month is only weather. Three good months in a row is a pattern worth spending against.

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

Work out what a customer is worth first, then whether people search for what you sell. Fix the free things, sort the destination out, and only then buy any traffic.

Each of the first four steps makes the last one cheaper, so doing them out of order means paying more for the same result.

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. Check whether people search for it at all

The terms and their rough volumes, looked at rather than guessed. This decides whether the business is capturing demand or creating it.

3. Fix the free things

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

4. The destination gets made to work

An obvious phone number, a form that arrives, and pages answering what stops people. Paying for traffic to a page that asks nothing is the expensive order.

5. Then the traffic gets bought

On the searches now known to matter, or in front of the people now known to need interrupting. Either way it is aimed rather than hopeful.

6. Count where the enquiries came from

It happens from day one, without exception. 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 then it holds.

The guides on this site work through the questions that come up before any of this gets bought, and they cost nothing to read.

The order it happens in

• First the free things are fixed.

  The listing, the reviews and the pages. The first movement comes from here, and the price of it is time rather than money.

• Then the destination itself is sorted out.

  Forms that arrive, a number that is obvious, and pages that answer what actually stops people asking.

• Then 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 once it is done.

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

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• What would you do first, and why?

  A specific answer about your business. A package starting the same way for everybody has not looked at yours.

• What does the monthly report actually show?

  Enquiries and where they came from. Impressions and clicks describe activity rather than results.

• Who ends up owning the accounts?

  The business owns all of them. Ad accounts, the listing, the analytics and the website, all in its own name from the start.

• What happens to it if I stop?

  The accounts and the pages stay. Whatever was rented goes, and it is worth knowing which is which before starting.

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 has turned uneven.