How to market a business online: a step-by-step guide for Australian businesses
To market a business online, work in a fixed order: get clear on who you sell to and why they should choose you, fix the foundations (Google Business Profile, website and tracking), use Google to win customers who are searching now, add advertising for speed and SEO and content for growth, keep the customers you win, and measure enquiries rather than clicks. Most Australian small businesses skip the foundations and go straight to spending, which is why the spend does not work. This guide gives the sequence and names the service that fits each step.
Step 1: Know who you are selling to and why they should pick you
Start with the customer, not the channel. Before you spend anything, you need three things written down: who your best customers are, what they type into Google when they need you, and the one reason they should choose you over the other quotes.
For the audience, go beyond age and postcode. What problem sends them looking, what worries them about buying, where do they look first, and who else do they ask? Your existing customers will tell you this in a ten-minute call, and your enquiry inbox already holds the language they use.
For the reason to choose you, be specific. “Better service” is not a reason. “Shower repairs in Perth with a written quote before we start and a five-year warranty” is. If a prospect held your quote and a competitor’s side by side, the reason should be visible on the page.
Look at the competitors you lose work to. Their websites, ads and reviews show what they promise and where they are weak, and that gap is usually where your message belongs.
Step 2: Set one goal and a budget you can measure
Set a goal in customers, not in traffic. “Twelve new kitchen renovation enquiries a month by March” gives you something to plan backwards from. If you need twelve enquiries and your website converts roughly one visitor in fifty, you need about 600 of the right visitors a month, and that number tells you what the channels have to deliver.
Budget by working back from what a customer is worth. Know your average sale and your margin, decide what you can afford to pay for an enquiry, and set the monthly budget from there. Skip the rule-of-thumb percentages. They ignore your margin and your competition, which are the only two things that matter.
Separate media spend (what Google or Meta charge) from labour (who does the work) and tools. A budget that is all media and no labour produces campaigns nobody manages.
Step 3: Fix the foundations before you spend
A website that does not convert wastes every dollar sent to it. Three things need to be right before any campaign starts.
Google Business Profile. For a local business this is often the first thing a customer sees. Complete every section, add real photos, keep hours accurate, post updates, and answer every review. Our guide to responding to Google reviews covers the reply side.
Website. It needs to load fast on a phone, say what you do and where in the first screen, make the phone number and enquiry form obvious, and show proof: reviews, photos of real work, and case studies. Design comes second to clarity. If your site was built years ago or on a template you cannot change, fixing it is the first job.
Tracking. You need to know which enquiries came from where. That means Google Analytics 4 with form submissions and calls tracked as conversions, and call tracking if the phone is how customers reach you. Without it, Step 8 is guesswork.
Step 4: How to get more customers from Google
Google gives you three ways to appear when someone searches for what you sell, and a local business should use all three: the map pack through your Business Profile, the organic results through SEO, and the ads at the top through Google Ads.
For most service businesses the map pack is the fastest win. A complete, verified profile with steady reviews, the right categories and a service area set correctly can appear for “plumber near me” style searches within weeks. Local SEO is the work of making that happen and keeping it there, including citations, reviews and location pages on your website.
Google Ads puts you above the organic results for the searches you choose, and you pay per click. It works from day one, which is why it belongs early in the sequence, and it produces the search data that tells you what people actually type. We run Google Ads for Perth businesses with conversion tracking set up first, so the spend is judged on enquiries.
Organic rankings take longer and last longer. Step 6 covers them.
Step 5: How to get traffic to your website fast
Paid advertising is the only way to get traffic to a website fast. Everything else takes months. If you need enquiries this month, the sequence is Google Ads on the searches with buying intent, a landing page built for those searches, and remarketing to bring back the people who visited and did not enquire.
Where the customer is not searching yet, Meta advertising (Facebook and Instagram) reaches them by interest, location and behaviour. It suits products people buy on impulse or after seeing them, home and lifestyle services, and anything with a strong visual. For business-to-business, LinkedIn advertising targets by job title and company.
Two cautions. First, send ad traffic to a page built for the ad, not to your homepage. A dedicated landing page with one message and one action converts far better than a general page. Second, set a daily budget you can hold for at least a month. Campaigns need time and data to settle, and switching them on and off resets both.
Step 6: How to promote your business through digital marketing over the long term
Long-term growth online comes from SEO, content and brand, because they keep working after you stop paying for clicks. They are slower to start, so they run alongside advertising rather than instead of it.
SEO. Ranking in the organic results for the searches that matter is the highest-value channel for most businesses once it is working. It covers technical health (speed, mobile, crawlability), pages built around what customers search, and links from other sites. Expect visible movement in months, not weeks. Our SEO Perth page explains how we run it and how we report on it, with no lock-in contract.
Content. Answer the questions your customers ask before they buy. One well-researched article a month that answers a real question outperforms four thin posts a week. Use your enquiry emails, sales calls and the questions Google shows under “People also ask” as the source list.
Social media. Post where your customers actually are, and follow an 80/20 rule: 80 percent useful or interesting, 20 percent promotional. A trades business does better with before-and-after photos on Facebook and Instagram than with a LinkedIn presence nobody reads. Track which platform produces enquiries and put the effort there.
Brand. Your brand is what people expect when they deal with you, and it shows in your copy, your photos, your replies to reviews and how the phone is answered. Keep it consistent across every channel so each exposure builds on the last.
Step 7: Keep the customers you already have
Winning a customer costs more than keeping one, and most small businesses put no effort into keeping them. Three habits fix that.
Email your customer list regularly with something useful: seasonal reminders, new services, real project photos. A simple monthly email to past customers is often the cheapest source of repeat work a business has.
Ask for reviews at the moment a job finishes well and answer every one. Reviews feed Step 4 as well as retention.
Use promotions with a purpose. A discount tied to a slow month, a new service or a referral has a job to do. A random sale trains customers to wait for the next one.
Step 8: Measure enquiries, then move budget
Review the numbers monthly, and review enquiries and cost per enquiry rather than traffic and followers. For each channel you should know how many enquiries it produced, what each one cost, and how many turned into customers. Google Analytics 4, your ads accounts and your call tracking give you the first two. Your CRM or job sheet gives you the third.
Then move budget towards what works. A channel that produces enquiries at a cost you can afford gets more. One that produces clicks and nothing else gets cut. This is the whole loop, and it only works if Step 3 was done properly.
Which PWD service fits which problem
Most businesses do not need every service at once. Match the problem to the fix:
- No enquiries from Google and no map presence: Google Business Profile optimisation and local SEO.
- Need customers this month: Google Ads with a landing page.
- Traffic but no enquiries: conversion rate optimisation, landing page development, or a website rebuild.
- Customers do not search for what you sell yet: Facebook, Instagram or TikTok advertising.
- Selling to other businesses: LinkedIn advertising and content.
- Want growth that compounds: SEO and content marketing.
- Do not know where enquiries come from: call tracking and analytics setup.
If you are not sure which of these applies, which digital marketing services do I need walks through the decision.
When to hand this to an agency
Hand marketing to an agency when you have the budget to spend but not the hours or skills to spend it well, when you have tried advertising and cannot tell whether it worked, when your website needs rebuilding before anything else will work, or when you are running two or more channels and none of them gets proper attention. A good agency does the foundations first, sets up tracking before spending, and reports on enquiries and cost per enquiry rather than impressions.
Keep it in-house when you have one channel, a small budget and a person with the time to learn it. Google Business Profile and a monthly customer email are within reach of any owner. Google Ads, SEO and a website rebuild are where the cost of doing it badly outweighs the fee for doing it properly.
Talk to PWD about the right mix
PWD is a full-service digital agency in West Leederville, established in 2007, with SEO, Google Ads, social advertising, web development and tracking all delivered in-house in Perth. We start with a discovery conversation about your customers and your goal, then recommend only the services that fit.
See PWD’s digital marketing services, or call 08 6146 0195 to talk through where to start.
