Discover the best digital marketing strategies for your business growth

TL;DR Digital marketing is not a single channel solution. The right strategy depends on your industry, margins, buying cycle and growth stage. You must map every sales channel, from SEO and Google Ads to referrals and offline outreach, then prioritise based on commercial impact. When all channels are viewed as part of one growth system, you can allocate budget and effort where it drives the highest return.

Business owners often ask which marketing channel works best for growing your business and how should I look at this?.

Should you invest in SEO?
Old fashioned letter box drops?
Run Google Ads?
Research and do cold outreach?
Launch Meta Ads or LinkedIn Ads?
Try TikTok Ads?

The honest answer is that it depends.

Every business has a different sales model, margin structure and customer acquisition pathway. What works for an ecommerce brand will not look the same as what works for a builder or a B2B consultancy.

Digital marketing is not about choosing one channel. It is about understanding your full sales system and deciding where effort will generate the highest commercial return.

Start with your full sales ecosystem

Before you invest in any marketing channel, map every possible way your business generates leads or sales. Think beyond just digital. Your sales channels may include:

• SEO driving organic website traffic growth
• Google Ads capturing high intent searches
• Meta Ads building demand and retargeting
• LinkedIn Ads for B2B lead generation
• TikTok Ads for attention driven brands
• Email marketing to nurture existing contacts
• Referrals from clients
• Referral partners
• Networking and industry relationships
• PR and media
• Cold outreach
• Offline marketing such as letterbox drops

Some trades such as electricians may generate significant revenue from old school letterbox distribution in targeted suburbs. For them, that may outperform paid social. This is why there is no universal answer.

You must look at all sales channels as a portfolio.

A simple growth system model

Every business follows a similar structure:

Traffic sources → Leads → Sales → Repeat customers → Referrals

In front of this pipeline sit all your acquisition channels:

SEO | Google Ads | Meta Ads | LinkedIn Ads | TikTok Ads | Email | Referrals | PR | Offline | Outreach
                ↓
            Website / Landing pages
                ↓
              Enquiries
                ↓
              Customers

Each channel feeds the same core system.
The question is not which channel is trendy.
The question is which channel can feed your funnel most efficiently based on your business model.

How different business types prioritise digital marketing

Ecommerce businesses

For ecommerce, SEO is often critical. Ranking for product and category terms drives consistent website traffic growth.

Google Ads is also essential for capturing high intent purchase searches.
Meta Ads and TikTok Ads are strong for demand generation and retargeting.
Conversion rate optimisation becomes a major lever. Small improvements in checkout flow or product pages can significantly increase revenue.

For ecommerce, digital channels are often the primary growth engine.

Service based local businesses

Local services often rely heavily on referrals and networking.

Builders, for example, may generate a large portion of revenue through word of mouth and industry relationships.

SEO still matters, but it may represent a smaller percentage of total revenue compared to referrals.

Google Ads can work well for high intent searches such as “kitchen renovation Sydney” or “solar installer near me”.

The priority becomes:

1. Protect and amplify referral channels
2. Strengthen organic visibility
3. Use paid ads strategically to fill pipeline gaps

This is growth marketing in context, not theory.

B2B professional services

Some B2B businesses benefit less from Meta Ads and more from LinkedIn Ads or direct outreach. In certain industries, a strong personal brand and networking presence may outperform broad paid campaigns.

SEO still supports authority building and inbound visibility, but it may drive fewer total leads compared to relationship driven channels.

Here, content strategy, LinkedIn Ads and targeted outreach often sit higher in the priority list.

Why SEO is often foundational

Across most industries, SEO plays a long term strategic role.
It builds:

• Authority
• Trust
• Compounding traffic
• Lower cost acquisition over time

While not every business depends on SEO equally, most benefit from some level of organic visibility.

SEO strengthens brand credibility even when leads originate from referrals or paid ads. Prospects often search your business name before enquiring.

For that reason, it remains a core part of many integrated strategies.

How to prioritise your marketing investment

Once you map all potential channels, prioritisation becomes commercial. Ask:

1. What is our average customer value?
2. What is our profit margin?
3. How long is the sales cycle?
4. Which channels can realistically influence buying decisions?
5. Where are competitors investing?

For example:

• If you sell low margin products, Google Ads may require very tight optimisation to remain profitable.
• If you close high value contracts, even one additional lead per month may justify investment.
• If referrals dominate, your strategy may focus on increasing referral volume before scaling ads.

This is where growth marketing becomes financial modelling, not guesswork.

The role of conversion rate optimisation

Many businesses focus purely on traffic. Traffic alone does not grow revenue.

Conversion rate optimisation ensures that existing traffic converts into enquiries or sales at a higher rate. If you double your website conversion rate, you effectively double the output of every traffic channel.

Before scaling Meta Ads or TikTok Ads, ensure your landing pages and sales process are optimised.

Avoid the one channel trap

It is common to hear:
“Google Ads does not work.”
“SEO takes too long.”
“Meta Ads are too expensive.”

In most cases, the issue is not the channel. It is misalignment with business model or poor execution. No single channel guarantees growth. Digital marketing works when channels are aligned to commercial objectives and integrated into one system.
That is why we approach growth holistically through an integrated digital growth strategy.

Growth marketing is about systems, not tactics

The more visibility your business has across multiple relevant channels, the more opportunities exist to generate sales. However, expansion must be strategic.

You open channels progressively:

1. Strengthen core revenue drivers
2. Optimise conversion
3. Expand into adjacent channels
4. Monitor cost per acquisition and lifetime value

When done correctly, your marketing becomes predictable and scalable. When done randomly, it becomes expensive.

Final perspective

There is no universal digital marketing formula. Some businesses thrive on referrals and networking. Some depend heavily on Google Ads and SEO. Others scale through paid social or LinkedIn Ads.

The right strategy depends on your industry, margins and stage of growth. The key is to view every acquisition method as part of one growth system and prioritise based on numbers, not trends.

That is how digital marketing becomes commercially grounded and sustainable.