Small business marketing guides for the UK

Small business marketing: where to start

Marketing a small business is mostly a matter of doing a few ordinary things well and keeping them up. Being easy to find when someone searches. Having a website that answers the questions people arrive with. Staying in touch with the customers you already have. Knowing which of those efforts actually brings in enquiries, so you can do more of what works and stop paying for what does not.

The Growth Brief is written for owners and small teams in the UK who do their own marketing, or who want to understand it well enough to brief someone else. Each guide takes one question and answers it properly: what the thing is, whether it is worth your time at your size, what it is likely to cost and how to begin. This page is the map. Pick the part of your marketing that worries you most and start there.

Be found: SEO for small businesses

Search engine optimisation sounds technical, but for most small firms it comes down to a short list: a site that search engines can read, pages that match what customers type, and a complete, accurate business listing. If the subject is new to you, begin with what SEO is and how search works, then read SEO for small business for the jobs that matter most when time is short.

If your customers are local, local search deserves more attention than anything else you do online. Our guide to local SEO for small businesses explains how the map results work and what influences them, and the local SEO audit gives you a checklist you can work through in an afternoon. If you are thinking of paying for help, what an SEO agency does sets out what to expect and which promises to distrust.

Your website: cost, upkeep and design

A website is usually the largest single marketing purchase a small business makes, and the one owners feel least able to judge. How much a website costs breaks the price into its parts, so a quote stops being a mystery. Website maintenance covers what has to be done after launch to keep a site safe and fast, which is where many cheap builds turn expensive.

If you sell online, ecommerce website design explains what a shop needs to turn visitors into orders, and the guide to choosing an ecommerce website builder compares the main routes. Before you hire anyone, read how to choose and brief a web designer: a clear brief saves more money than any discount.

Keep in touch: email and social media

It is cheaper to sell again to a customer than to find a new one, and email is still the most dependable way to do it. Email marketing for small business covers building a list properly, with permission, and what to send to it. For ideas, see our email newsletter examples and the practical advice in email marketing tips.

Once you are sending regularly, email marketing metrics explains which numbers tell you something and which only flatter, and email marketing platforms helps you pick a tool that fits a small team. Rules on consent and electronic marketing apply to every business in the UK, however small, and we point to the official guidance wherever it matters.

Plan it and measure it

A marketing plan does not need to be long. It needs to say who you are trying to reach, what you will do each month, what it will cost and how you will know whether it worked. How to write a marketing plan walks through it step by step, and the marketing plan template gives you a structure to fill in. For inspiration from real approaches, see marketing strategy examples.

Measurement is where small businesses most often lose their way, either by tracking nothing or by tracking everything. Marketing KPIs explains how to choose a handful of numbers that connect to sales, and digital marketing strategy shows how the separate channels fit together into one plan rather than five unrelated chores.

Understand why customers buy

Good marketing rests on an honest picture of how people decide. They compare prices by rough impressions rather than arithmetic, they prefer a recommendation to a claim, and they put off decisions that feel complicated. Pricing psychology looks at how the way a price is presented changes what people are willing to pay, with examples you can test in your own business.

Consumer psychology covers the wider research on choice, trust and habit, and what neuromarketing is separates the useful findings from the hype. We describe research carefully and do not pretend that a trick will rescue a product people do not want.

How we write these guides

We do not sell marketing services, and no company pays to be mentioned here. Statements about how a platform works come from that platform's own documentation. Rules that affect UK businesses come from official sources such as GOV.UK and the Information Commissioner's Office. Where a job really does need a specialist, we say so, and explain what to ask for and what a fair answer sounds like.

Every guide shows the date it was last updated, because the tools change and advice goes stale. If you find something out of date, tell us through the contact page and we will check it.