Running a small business means your marketing to-do list basically has a to-do list. One minute you’re knee deep in Instagram hashtags, the next you’re wondering if you should start a blog... or throw some cash at paid ads.

It’s a lot. (Like, a lot a lot.)

But here’s the good news: you don’t have to be everywhere or doing everything to see real results.

With the right digital marketing strategies for small businesses—the ones that actually fit your business—you can attract new customers, build serious trust, and grow steadily…without feeling like you need a second brain (or a second you).

In this post, we’ll walk through:

• The best marketing channels for small businesses
• How to create content that actually connects with your ideal audience 
• Real marketing examples to help you bring it all to life

Why You Should Start With a Strategy, Not Just a To-Do List

Let’s back up a sec. It’s so easy to jump right into the list of things that you need to do to market yourself, but digital marketing strategies should actually help you make that list much easier to manage. 

You can think of your strategy as the reason for your list. Just like you might have a separate grocery list, to-do list, and cleaning list for your personal life, your marketing tasks should all fall under a unique strategy, not just one big laundry list.

When you start with a marketing strategy, you know: 

• Who you’re speaking to (your audience)
• What you want to accomplish (your goals) 
• What you can do to reach those goals (your tactics)
• And how much time and money you can spend (your budget and bandwidth)

Once you have a marketing strategy in place, it’s much easier to organize your to-do list and make sure that everything you have on it is worth the time and energy. 

Choose Your Channels Based on Where Your Audience Is 

One of the first steps to building a solid digital marketing strategy? Knowing who you’re talking to. When you understand your audience, it’s a whole lot easier to figure out how (and where) to reach them.

Because truthfully? Blasting random content across every platform isn’t just exhausting—it’s unnecessary. 

Instead, you can get intentional about where you show up. And some tried-and-true marketing channels for small businesses include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) and blogging
• Social media
• Email marketing

Depending on your business and audience, you might also want to dabble in:

• Pinterest
• PR
• Podcasting
• Advertising
• Video marketing
• Affiliate marketing

If you’re not sure where to start, peek at your own customer data (where are they finding you?), check out what your competitors are up to, or dig into a little industry research. When you sign up for a free trial with Enji we’ll create a digital marketing strategy to help you too!

But one important piece of advice? Don’t overload yourself. Pick one or two channels to focus on for a few months. See what’s working (and what’s not). Adjust from there. That’s how sustainable, sanity-saving marketing gets done.

Create Content That Speaks to Your Customer Pain Points

Once you know where you’re going to create content, you want to make sure your content is valuable. That doesn’t mean it needs to be all educational content… but it does mean that what you create needs to be valuable for your customers and yourself (even if the content type is just for entertainment). Creating content is a lot of work after all, so you don’t want to spend time on things that won’t move the needle!

If you want your content to click with customers—and help you actually sell your stuff—it needs to hit on their pain points (think: the problems they’re facing, the struggles they can’t quite solve, the things that keep them up at night.) 

At Enji, for example, we know a huge pain point for small business owners is marketing. Some folks don’t even know where to start. Others are drowning in a sea of tasks spread across 7 pieces of software.

Sound familiar? If so—hi, you’re in exactly the right place.

That’s why our content isn’t just “tips and tricks.” It’s real help:

• Simplifying the marketing process
• Showing you that it can feel manageable
• Introducing you to tools (like ours) that make it all a heck of a lot easier

Batch and Schedule Content to Stay Consistent

So now you have great content ideas based on your customer pain points and you know where to post them, but how do you turn that into actual marketing? 

Batch 👏 and 👏 schedule! 

You already have so much to take care of every day as a business owner, so you don’t need to add marketing to your daily to-do list. Instead, create a marketing routine where you can block off time once every week or twice a month to create and schedule your content in advance. 

This also doesn’t have to be a huge chunk of time either—with Enji, you can use our AI copywriter to turn your ideas into content and get it all ready to go in our social media scheduler. That’s days and weeks of work all taken care of in one sitting. 

Examples of Digital Marketing Strategies for Different Businesses

Now, let’s talk about what you came here for—real digital marketing strategies for small businesses. You’re probably wondering what this all actually looks like. Here are some examples of digital marketing strategies to try this quarter:

• Create SEO-friendly blog posts if you're a local service-based business
• Post user-generated-content (UGC) and behind-the-scenes if you're a product-based brand
• Share real results and client wins on Instagram if you're a coach or service provider
• Use Pinterest if you're in the wedding, lifestyle, creative, or retail industries
• Test Instagram Reels if your product or service is highly visual
• Build an email list with a freebie that solves one key problem (this is a great option for most businesses)
• Run a seasonal campaign
• Repurpose top-performing content in different formats (text, video, email)
• Pitch yourself to be a guest on someone else’s podcast

Track What’s Working So You Can Double Down On It

Once you’ve taken your digital marketing strategies and have turned them into content that’s out in the world, you deserve a sigh of relief and a pat on the back. Great work!

But, there’s one last task: tracking your performance. Otherwise, you won’t know what to create next, and you can’t know if your efforts are actually working to achieve your goals. 

Even if you aren’t a numbers person (no shame in that, because same), this part isn’t hard. Especially with Enji on your team because you can use our KPI dashboard to see all of your metrics in one place. 

If you see one channel is gaining a lot of traction, lean in there. If another is flat or even declining after several months, maybe deprioritize and focus more on your successful channels. 

Generate and Manage Your Digital Marketing Strategies With Enji

Digital marketing strategies aren’t just for bigger companies—small businesses absolutely need them too. But you have enough to worry about, so why not offload your strategy and content creation? If you feel like you don’t have the budget just yet, that’s what Enji is for. 

Our tools are specifically designed for small business owners who need help taking marketing tasks off their plates, but without a big budget for contractors or freelancers. With Enji, you can do everything from generating your marketing strategy, building your content calendar, writing your marketing copy, and measuring it all. Yep–all in one place!

Ready to try it out? Start a free trial to see how it works!