Digital Marketing for Australian Small Businesses in 2025

6 Affordable Digital Marketing Strategies for Australian Small Businesses in 2025

Looking for an affordable digital marketing strategy for your Australian small business? In this article we are going to examine 6 common and affordable strategies. While not all of these strategies are ideal for every business, this list will help by giving you some ideas for different strategies. The strategy that is the best fit for your business will be dependent upon a number of factors which we will discuss later.

At Branchlead we specialise in digital marketing and we work with many of our current clients to help them implement a variety of strategies including SEO optimisation, content marketing, paid advertising, and more. If you would like to learn more about how Branchlead can help you create and implement an effective digital marketing strategy that helps you acquire more customers and generate more revenue, contact us today.

Defining Your Goals---What to Expect

Before diving into these digital marketing strategies, it is important to realise that not all businesses need to implement all these strategies to be successful. Some of the largest and most successful brands in the world have one or two main sources of customer acquisition--they know they don't need to be omnipresent on all channels to profit. Depending on your goals for your business and your target customers, some of these strategies will make much more sense than others. After reading this article if you're not sure which strategy would work best for you, contact us for a free consultation and we can help you figure out where to begin.

So, let's dive in.

1. Leverage Social Media Platforms

Social Media is a marketing tool that many small businesses are eager to adopt, but because of the need for producing consistent content and engaging with your audience, many small businesses quickly remove it from their digital marketing strategy. With 20.9 million social media users in Australia alone, and Australians spending an average of 1 hour and 51 minutes on social media each day (Digital 2025), you can see why giving up on social media is a bad idea.

There are numerous social media platforms, most people are familiar with the larger ones like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn but there are many smaller niche platforms as well. Although the increased exposure is nice, due to the amount of work required relative to the returns, it doesn't make sense for most businesses to build a following on more than one or two social platforms. 

When choosing which platform to focus on, you need to consider a few things:

1. What kind of content will I be posting?

   1. If your content is text focused with very few images and videos, then Facebook, X, or LinkedIn might make more sense.

   2. If your content is mostly videos then TikTok or Instagram may be a better choice.

2. Who is my target audience?

   1. If your audience is almost entirely over 30, then Facebook, X, or LinkedIn may be a better choice.

   2. If your audience is under 30, then Instagram and TikTok will be better places to connect with them.

   3. If your audience is entirely professional or business focused then you may want to stick to LinkedIn or X.

On these platforms you can share valuable content, respond to comments, and build a community around your brand. It's important to make consistent posts and to regularly engage with your audience if you want to maximise your benefits from Social Media. While social media is an affordable digital marketing strategy, for many small businesses it is a lot of work with little return, but if you have the extra funds hiring someone to manage your social media can be a worthwhile investment. 

At Branchlead we offer social media management and content creation services. To find out more, contact us here.

2. Implement Content Marketing

Content marketing is another affordable digital marketing strategy for Australian businesses. This is very similar to social media in that it requires you to regularly create and post content, but it's not as demanding. Whereas with social media you typically need to post multiple times per week to see results typically per day, content marketing through your website is typically effective even if you only post 2-4 times per month, especially when paired with a professionally crafted SEO strategy.

You can post blogs, videos, infographics, and other information to provide value and establish authority in your industry. By creating and sharing relevant content, you can attract and retain future customers. While content marketing is simple in theory, in some industries it can be like looking for valuables on the beach without a metal detector (not very effective!). If you want to create a content marketing strategy that is both effective and affordable, Branchlead can help. Through our SEO research, we can focus your content marketing efforts on the places it is most likely to earn a return. Think of this as not only having a metal detector, but having x-ray glasses that let you see everything in the sand from metres away. To learn more about what an effective SEO and content marketing strategy for your business would look like, contact us.

3. Optimise for Local SEO

Google is a large and affordable source of traffic for many businesses, but if you haven't claimed and updated your Google My Business profile, then you're getting left out of local searches. If you really want to dominate traffic from Google you also need an SEO strategy that lets Google know about your business so it can show you to more people. We won't go into too much detail here, but if you would like to know more specifics about Local SEO, you can check out our blog post on SEO Near Me.

Conversion-focused local SEO services are one of our specialties at Branchlead. We pride ourselves in helping our clients increase traffic, clients, and revenue in as little time as possible. If you want a local SEO strategy that pays for itself in 3 months or less, contact us today.

4. Utilise Email Marketing

Email marketing is the powerhouse of digital marketing strategies for Australian businesses. According to the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), on average for every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses receive a $42 ROI. Combine that impressive ROI with the fact that email can be automated and you can send thousands of emails at once to different segments of your audience, email is a highly customisable marketing tool. Unlike social media or content marketing where your content is posted for everyone to see, with email you can send early invitation emails to your VIP customers, you can send a welcome email to new subscribers, and you can even send specific emails to just your audience members in Canberra. Unlike social media marketing, email marketing can also be effective with less frequent use (even just 1-2 emails a week will keep you top of mind for your list).

If you run an ecommerce business, email can also be used to target customers who have done certain things on your website. For example if someone has visited a product page and added your product to their cart but didn't make a purchase, you can send a special sequence of emails to them with more detailed information on the product, or you can even send a targeted promotion to give them that little extra nudge.

Email marketing works really well when combined with other digital marketing strategies. One example of this would be social media marketing. Through your social media platform you can encourage people to sign-up for your email list or newsletter. Here you can regularly inform them of special offers and promotions. You can also use this to directly inform your audience of new video posts or other valuable content you produce.

5. Engage in Influencer Partnerships

This one can be a little more complicated at first but once you get the hang of it, it is an easy way to get in front of a larger local audience. For this you need to know enough about your target local audience. 

Take a look at your target audience and ask yourself: 

• Who do they follow on social media?

• Who do they go to for news and entertainment?

• Who has their attention when they aren't slaving away at work?

Those "whos" are who you want to partner with. Depending on the size of their audience, a mention can cost you a good bit of money, but for small local influencers they might even be okay with you offering them your service in exchange or giving them a shoutout on your own social media. Partnering with these influencers allows you to reach a larger more focused audience through the voice of someone they know, like, and trust, which means they begin to then know, like, and trust you by association.

6. Invest in Paid Advertising

When all else fails one of the easiest digital marketing strategies to implement is investing in paid advertising. You can allocate a budget for targeted ads on platforms like Google Ads and social media and you can monitor and adjust these campaigns to maximise ROI. While paid advertising is simple in principle, it is pay to play. If you don't have a large enough budget to invest in enough ads for the algorithms to find your target audience, then you won't make any sales off of your ads. Not to mention your ad will be competing with many other high-quality ads produced by marketing and advertising agencies.

If you have an advertising budget and you are looking for some quick wins, paid advertising might be the best digital marketing strategy for your business. 

Digital Marketing Strategies for Australian Businesses: Where to Start?

By now you probably already have a few ideas about different digital marketing strategies you can use to get in front of more customers, at the same time you probably have even more questions about what is the best option for your business. As a business owner you need to think about your target audience. Think: Where would I be most likely to connect and engage with them? All of the strategies outlined above are effective digital marketing strategies and each of them is responsible for millions of dollars in revenue each year for businesses all over the world. While you may not have the time or capital to use all of the strategies listed above, having a strategy is better than having no strategy at all.

If you're still a little confused and would like to learn more about effective strategies for your business, reach out to us on our contact page, and we can do a marketing audit of your business to find out which strategies would be the most effective and cost efficient for your business, as well as how Branchlead could help you implement these strategies.

Ready to plan and implement the right digital marketing strategy for your business? Contact us today.

Small Business Digital Marketing FAQs

What is the best digital marketing strategy?

This depends on a number of factors including your advertising budget, your available time, whether you plan to do everything in house or outsource it, where can your target audience be found, etc. On average with strategies like paid ads you can expect results in 30-60 days (assuming you run a strong campaign and you have some experience), whereas SEO and organic social media take an average of 90 days or more, but do more for your business in the long run. If you're interested, Branchlead can help deep dive into your business and determine the best digital marketing strategy (or combination of strategies) for your current business, just contact us here.

How long does each of these digital marketing strategies take to be successful?

This depends on a number of factors. Some strategies like paid advertising or partnering with an influencer, it is common to see returns on your investment in less than 3 months, but these are both typically pay-to-play methods (and keep in mind they don't always work if you haven't prepared properly!). Other methods like social media and email marketing can take longer but they help build a loyal community and customer base that you can continue to engage with and sell to for as long as your content remains online.

Which strategies does Branchlead use?

At Branchlead we optimise all our content for local SEO searches. We also regularly produce valuable content that we make available on our website. Local SEO and content creation have been enough for us to reach numerous businesses and bring in more than enough customers to have consistent and reliable growth. We occasionally use paid advertising but most of our content is evergreen so we don't need to rely on ads for exposure. Moving forward we have plans to invest more time and resources into social media and email marketing.

Most businesses would think we are crazy for sharing this much information with you about our own digital marketing strategy, but we believe our success is proof of the effectiveness of optimising content for local SEO searches and regularly producing valuable content. If you would like to implement a similar strategy in your business that has the potential to multiply the number of new clients you bring in month after month, contact us today.