Marketing a small business well means doing a small number of things properly, not everything at once. For most UK small businesses the order is: be findable where people already look, ask happy customers to say so publicly, and only then pay for attention — measured, so you know what each customer costs to win. This guide covers the channels in that order, what they cost, and how to tell whether any of it is working.
At a glance
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Start here | Local search: a Google Business Profile with real reviews, free |
| The multiplier | Reviews — asked for at the moment the customer is happiest |
| Paid ads | Work when you know what a customer is worth; punish guesswork |
| The budget | An output of your numbers, not a percentage plucked from the air |
| The only measure that matters | What it costs to win a customer, against what they are worth |
Free first: be findable
When someone needs what you sell, they search for it — "[your trade] near me" — and pick from the top few results with the best reviews. Getting into that shortlist costs nothing: a complete Google Business Profile with real photos, accurate hours and a steady flow of reviews. For a local service business this single free channel usually beats everything paid, because you are found at the exact moment someone wants to buy.
Reviews are the engine. Ask at the moment of delight — the boiler fixed, the cake collected — and make it one tap. Ten real reviews move you up the shortlist; a hundred make you the default choice. This costs discipline, not money.
A clear website finishes the job: what you do, where, prices or a way to ask, and a phone number that gets answered. It converts the attention the profile wins.
Word of mouth, made deliberate
Word of mouth is not luck — it is quality plus a nudge. Tell every customer you are taking on new work. Give the letting agent, the wedding planner, the school gate its own reason to mention you. For most established small businesses this becomes the biggest source of work; in year one, the nudging is what starts it moving.
Social media: pick one platform, by trade
For a small business, social means Facebook or Instagram — one of them, or both, chosen by who your customers are and what your work looks like. Trades and local services — plumbers, cleaners, gardeners — start with Facebook: local groups, recommendations threads and a page people can check before they call. Visual businesses — beauty, aesthetics, fashion, food, flowers — start with Instagram: the work sells itself in pictures, so the feed is the shop window. If you have time for both, fine; if not, one platform done consistently beats two done half-heartedly.
Whichever you pick, the job is the same as the rest of this page: photos of real work, posted steadily, pointing people to the way you take bookings.
Paid ads: when and how
Ads make sense once two things are true: you can handle more work, and you know what a customer is worth to you. Without the second, ads are guesswork with a bill.
The arithmetic that keeps you safe has three numbers: what a lead costs in your trade (an enquiry, not a customer), how many leads become customers, and what a customer is worth over their time with you. If leads cost £10, half convert, and a customer is worth £400, ads print money. Same ads with a £50 customer lose it. The numbers vary hugely by trade and area, which is why copying another business's ad budget teaches you nothing.
Start narrow: one channel, one service, one area. Google Ads reaches people already searching; Facebook and Instagram reach people who were not — which suits products and occasions more than emergencies. Prove one channel pays before adding another.
Setting the actual monthly figure is its own job, and it should come from your plan rather than a rule of thumb. See what you can afford to spend on marketing. Plan works out a marketing budget from your own numbers, so you know what a customer is worth before you pay to win one.
How to tell if it is working
One habit: ask every new customer how they found you, and write it down. A month of answers tells you more than any dashboard — which channel brings people, what those people spend, and where the next pound should go. If a channel cannot be measured even roughly, treat it as a cost, not an investment.
What this looks like in practice
Take Dana, who runs a small cleaning business in Cardiff. Her marketing is one free profile, kept alive: photos of finished jobs, every happy customer asked for a review the same day, hours accurate. Eight months in she has forty reviews, page-one visibility, and enough enquiries that her only paid marketing is an occasional boost when a regular moves away. Total spend: nearly nothing. Total effort: ten minutes a week, done without fail. That is what marketing a small business usually looks like when it works — unglamorous and consistent.
When the diary is full and she wants a second cleaner's worth of work, that is the moment for paid ads — with her numbers already known.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best marketing for a small business? For local and service businesses: a complete Google Business Profile with a steady flow of real reviews. It is free, and it reaches people at the exact moment they want to buy. Paid channels come after, once you know what a customer is worth.
How much should a small business spend on marketing? Work it backwards from your numbers, not forwards from a percentage: how many customers you want, what a lead costs in your trade, how many leads convert. If winning a customer costs more than they are worth, fix the price or the offer before spending more.
Do Google Ads work for small businesses? They can, because they reach people already searching for what you sell. They work when you know your numbers — lead cost, conversion, customer value — and punish you when you do not. Start with one service in one area and measure.
How do I market my business with no money? Google Business Profile, reviews asked for at the right moment, telling everyone you know, and a basic clear website. That set costs time rather than money and is how most local businesses actually fill their first diary.
How do I know if my marketing is working? Ask every new customer how they found you and write it down. A month of honest answers shows which channels bring people and what those people are worth — better than any dashboard, and free.
Figures correct as of September 2026. Tax thresholds, fees and rates change; check the linked GOV.UK pages before acting. Prices and costs shown are indicative and vary by area and by what's included.
What is Plan?
Plan is a free business operating system for people starting or newly running a UK business. It walks you, one simple step at a time, from your elevator pitch through brand, product and pricing, to a complete business plan — then uses everything it now knows about the business to help with the basics: logo and brand, marketing, a website, a bank account, funding, insurance, company registration. You can use as much or as little as you want.
Two ways to do this
Work out your marketing numbers, free. Plan builds your marketing budget from your own plan — what a customer is worth, what leads cost in your trade, what you can afford — so the spend is a decision, not a hope.
Or get the marketing done for you. Our sister agency The Fractions runs ads and builds websites for small UK businesses — the pages, the ads and the enquiries behind them, measured so you know what each customer costs.