The Best Way to Market Your Small Business in 2026
You want to market your small business and attract more customers online.
The problem is, you don’t know where to start.
What should we post on social media? What about our website? What are we supposed to do now that AI is taking over everything?
At this stage, most business owners complicate their content strategy. They think they need to be everywhere and do everything to break through the noise.
But that couldn’t be more wrong.
Keep reading to find out the best way for small businesses to stand out online and market their business in 2026.
Step 1. Mobilize happy customers
Do you have happy customers already? This is the best place to start!
You can turn your existing customers into mini salespeople for your brand.
Why does this matter? A Nielsen study showed that 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know over any type of traditional marketing.
“88% of global respondents trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel.”
So when your customers spread the word about your business to their family, friends, and community, you’re more likely to get new customers this way than with any other strategy.
Here are some ways you can mobilize your happy customers:
Ask them to leave a review or refer a friend (especially for B2B businesses)
Hold fun community events with photo opps
Give customers referral cards or coupons that give them and their friends a discount
Give away small gifts like pencils, hats, or keychains that reflect your business and brand (with your logo on them of course)
Implement referral tiers (so customers get better perks as they send more people to your business)
This way, before you figure out your digital marketing strategy, your customers will be off promoting your business and bringing in new customers for you.
Step 2. Polish up your website
The next step is making sure your website is ready to welcome new customers.
Your website is your digital storefront. It represents you to the billions of people who will only ever find you online.
Your website is crucial because:
It defines your business to new people
It pitches your business and offers to new customers
It’s usually where people buy from you online
And it forms the first impression of your brand
A well-made website will attract your target customer, instantly show them how you can help, and invite them buy from you.
The top section of this Phoenix-based dentist website targets customers with kids and their ultimate desire: to be healthy and happy!
These are my best tips for developing your website:
The first headline on your home page should identify your target customer and explain the way you make their life better. For example, my website currently says: You don’t have time to figure out content. Let us do it for you. Bonus points if it also differentiates you from the big names in your industry.
Include your city name and the words your customers would use to describe you, which can help you show up in local searches. (Don’t forget to create a matching Google Business listing if you’re a local business, too!)
Your website shouldn’t drone on about how great you are. It should instead focus on your target customer, what they want, and exactly how you’ll help them get there. (I personally love the Storybrand framework for figuring this out.)
You also want to make sure your main action buttons are easy to find on both your top navigation bar and right under that top headline. The main button is the next sales-related action you want them to take (buy now, book a call, etc.).
Finally, you want to include some information about the people behind the business, in an About section. This is a great place to tell your origin story and reveal a bit of your personality.
In short, your website should start by promising a great benefit to your target customer, then back it up with proof, explaining how it works, and giving them a chance to buy.
Step 3. Pick two platforms to post on
Once your website is fixed up, you’re ready to start posting content on other platforms to gain visibility for your business.
I recommend small businesses choose just two platforms for now. Yes, I said two!
I say this because while re-posting content to every platform is easy, it’s difficult to post good content and build an audience on every single platform. At this stage, trying to spread your team over several different platforms is a recipe for burnout.
Plus, two platforms are enough to get you real traction with your marketing.
The key is to pick one platform of each type that I’m going to explain now.
The first type is discovery platforms. These have algorithms and show your content to new people. Examples are TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Search.
My algorithm always wants to show me babies for some reason…
The second type is relationship platforms. These don’t show your content to new audiences, but they allow you to send content directly to subscribers, where you can build a personal connection. Examples are mailing lists, Instagram community chats, and Substack.
Your discovery platform will get more eyes on your content and grow an audience, while the relationship platform will nurture your audience and ultimately turn them into customers.
So pick one from each category that makes sense for your business and customer.
When setting up your platforms and profiles, echo the same statement you’ve put on your website to capture your target customer. And make sure your most important action button (the same one you featured on your website) is featured as well.
Step 4. Use content to build relationships
As you prepare to make content for your business, you might be feeling overwhelmed.
There’s just so much content being posted these days. And a lot of it is really, really good. Not to mention, businesses use AI tools to produce 10 or more pieces of content per day. So how can a small business like yours break through all that noise?
I have good news. People online are generally sick of seeing over-polished, branded, faceless, or AI-generated content. They long to see real people and feel a genuine connection online.
That means that you, being a real person running a business, has an advantage when marketing online.
As long as you remember this important rule: people will never engage with your brand account because you did great product promotion. They will only engage if they feel like there are real humans on the other side.
The key is to use your content to show yourself or your team, interact with people, and build a community feeling with your followers.
So here’s how to do that:
Film unpolished videos of yourself talking about your industry, going about your day, or telling the story behind your business. Or teach customers how to do something, answer a question, or give them new ideas. (Just make sure to use the first 3 seconds to clearly tell people why they should keep watching.)
Post candid photos of the process of developing your products or helping your clients.
Hop on stories and share bits of your personality and life so people know who you are. Give your team a spotlight, too.
Link your personal social media from the bio as the founder, so people can see you off-duty too. (If you’re comfortable with that.)
Use your relationship platform to send truly helpful and thoughtful content every week that makes your customers’ lives easier.
As you share more of yourself online and help people with your content, people will recognize you and start to like and trust you. And as humans, we tend to buy from people we know, like, and trust. That means the more you build relationships online, the more customers you can expect to see.
Step 5. Get reviews, features & mentions
Marketing in the age of AI has an added layer of complexity.
As more people use ChatGPT and other tools instead of Google, we not only need to think about how to get featured on search engines, but also how to show up in AI results!
The bad news is that no one really knows how these tools work under the hood. But we can look at their behavior to try and draw clues about how to be featured in AI answers.
At the moment, the key seems to be:
Getting your brand featured or mentioned on social media, review sites, and Reddit
Getting big-name publications or websites to feature your business
Having a solid online presence, where your website and platforms all say the same thing about you
And as always, continuing to rank on Google, since many AI chatbots use Google search for research
That’s why getting people talking about your business online is so important in marketing your business in 2026.
That might look like encouraging customers to leave reviews, doing some PR work to get your business mentioned by publications, and building such a loyal following that people recommend you on Reddit.
It’s not a quick fix. But one day, you may see Claude name-drop your brand in a list of best candle shops, dental hygienists, or whatever it is you offer.
Step 6. Slowly add content to your website
I’ve designed these steps to build on each other. And honestly, if you can get to step 4, you can get great results already.
But if you’ve gotten this far and want to go further, I recommend that you slowly start investing in good, SEO-optimized educational content that will help your target customers.
It’s not fast or easy to get your articles ranked on Google if you’re just getting started, but as you build an online reputation and write more optimized content, you can start to see more traffic coming in from search.
And in the mean time, if you create truly helpful content that’s interesting to read, anyone who visits your website can read it. This gives them a great experience and teaches them something that will help them get more out of your products and services.
So start by identifying some of the most basic questions your customers would have, and imagine what they might be typing into Google. Then write articles around that. Learning about the stages of awareness and how they affect buyer behavior can help you come up with great topics.
Contrary to popular advice, I do not recommend you write your content with AI. Why? Because anyone can do that. If you really want your content to stand out and be picked up by Google and major publications, it needs to be written from the heart, highly specific, and backed up by your personal expertise. In other words, something AI could never write.
One pretty-good 1000-word post a week or one longer post a month should be good enough to start the ball rolling.
Your turn!
Now you know exactly what to do to start marketing your business in 2026.
If this feels overwhelming, know that you can hire someone to do all of this for you. (That’s what I do!)
Book a free strategy session to talk through your business goals and find out what kind of marketing strategy might be best for you.
