You’ve got a limited budget, a million things to manage, and a whole lot of people telling you to “just run some ads.” Cool — but what kind? Where? For how long? And is it actually worth it?

Here’s a clear-eyed breakdown of what works, what doesn’t, and how to get real results without throwing cash into the void.

Ads That Work for Local Small Businesses

1. Google Search Ads

If you have a storefront or service area, this is where to start. You’re targeting people who are already searching for exactly what you offer — things like “coffee near me,” “massage therapist Concord NH,” or “best gift shop in [your town].”

The big advantage over display ads (the banner-style ads you see on the sides of websites): you only pay when someone clicks. That makes it a low-risk way to test paid advertising for the first time.

Get started with Google Ads

2. Retargeting Ads

Ever visited a website and then seen that brand follow you around the internet? That’s retargeting. A small snippet of code — called a pixel — is placed on your website and allows ad platforms like Meta or Google to identify past visitors and show them your ads again later.

It keeps your business top of mind for people who showed interest but didn’t convert the first time. It’s especially effective for higher-consideration purchases.

3. Meta and Reddit Ads

These work best for businesses with a clear customer profile. Meta’s targeting tools let you reach specific demographics — age, location, interests — so you’re not broadcasting to everyone, just the people most likely to care.

Reddit can be a strong fit if your business touches a niche topic. Subreddits gather people who are actively engaged in specific interests — car repair, home renovation, local DIY, and more — which means your ad reaches an audience that’s already primed.

Get started with Meta Ads
Get started with Reddit Ads

Ads That Usually Don’t Work (Unless You’re Huge)

1. Random Print Ads Without a Clear Call to Action

Local newspapers can be great — but an ad that just shows your name and logo isn’t doing much. Without a specific offer, event, or next step, print ads function more as brand awareness than lead generation. That’s fine for large marketing budgets, but it’s a tough investment for a small one.

2. Boosting Social Posts Without a Strategy

Hitting “Boost Post” is tempting, but it’s not a strategy. To get a return, you need a clear goal, strong creative, a defined target audience, and a funnel that actually captures the interest you generate. Without those pieces in place, you’re essentially paying to show your content to more random people.

3. Directory Listings With No Traffic

If someone is selling you space on a “local business guide” but can’t show you their actual visitor numbers — pass. A beautiful listing no one sees doesn’t move the needle.

Before you spend a dollar: build your infrastructure

The effectiveness of any ad campaign depends heavily on what you’ve built before it goes live. This step is skipped too often, and it’s why many campaigns underperform.

Ask yourself: Do you have a focused landing page? Not your homepage — a page built around the specific product or service your ad is promoting. Have you researched your keywords? The terms you bid on directly affect who sees your ads and what you pay. Have you organized your ad groups? Grouping ads by theme helps the platforms serve them more accurately and keeps your costs down.

Getting this structure right before you spend will make every dollar you put in go further.

Still sounds like a lot? That’s fair — this isn’t what you signed up for when you started your business. Voice Z Digital can help you build a strategy that fits your goals and budget.

Get in touch

What does this mean for your business?

For years, businesses have relied on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to rank higher on search engine results pages. Marketers have targeted specific keywords so Google and other search engines could match their content to user queries. Today, AI platforms are redefining that process. SEO focuses on targeting keywords that Google and other browsers will pick up on and return to people who are searching for related topics. Instead of looking exclusively at keywords, AI platforms take a holistic angle, pulling from social media and open forums as well. 

Today, over 60% of searches end without a single click. Users increasingly choose AI-generated answers or chatbot responses instead of browsing traditional search results. Because of this shift, many companies are experiencing a noticeable decline in website traffic.

How to Adapt: Optimizing content for AI platforms

1. Expand your marketing across multiple platforms: Build your brand beyond your website. Post consistently on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and invest in long-form video content on YouTube. A broader presence increases your chances of being surfaced by AI platforms.
2. Create authentic content: Focus on producing original, experience-driven content. Avoid generic content that could be ignored. Add a blog page on your website to seamlessly integrate firsthand perspectives and encourage clients to leave positive reviews of your product or service.
3. Communicate clearly and directly: Structure your content to answer user questions quickly and effectively. Highlight essential details such as location and pricing of your service early and clearly. Use simple, direct language and tailor every message to your target audience so AI tools can easily extract and deliver your information.

Though the search landscape is changing, there are ways to overcome these new obstacles by adapting marketing techniques from current SEO strategies to AI platforms. Prioritizing multiple content streams, authenticity, and a clearly defined brand message will help set your business up for success in this new environment.

However, that behavior is changing fast.

Today, discovery doesn’t just happen on search engines. It happens on social media. Instead of typing queries into a browser, people are opening apps and scrolling for answers.

And for brands, that shift changes everything.

The Search Methodology Has Flipped

A major behavioral shift is underway:
41% of Gen-Z now starts their discovery journey on TikTok or Instagram instead of traditional search engines.

Users are actively searching for:

• Restaurant recommendations
• Product reviews
• Tutorials
• Travel ideas
• Fitness routines

Social platforms have become search engines, just with a different interface. Instead of links, users get videos. Instead of blog posts, they get real people explaining, demonstrating, and reviewing products or services in real time.

Why Social Search Is Winning

1. The Trust Gap

Traditional search results are increasingly seen as less trustworthy. When users search on Google, they often encounter:

• Multiple sponsored results before any organic content
• Articles optimized for algorithms, not humans
• Generic visuals that lack credibility

This creates annoyance and skepticism.

Social media, on the other hand, feels more authentic.

2. Real People, Real Proof

On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, users see:

• Real people using real products
• Unfiltered demonstrations
• Immediate visual results

There’s no guessing if something works, you can literally watch it happen.

3. Built-In Validation

The comments section has become a powerful trust layer.

Before making a decision, users scroll comments to see:

• Other people’s experiences
• Honest feedback
• Questions being answered in real time

It’s peer-to-peer validation at scale, and it’s something traditional search can’t replicate.

The Strategic Shift for Brands

This isn’t just a trend, it’s a fundamental change in how people discover and evaluate brands.

If your strategy is still focused only on posting polished content, you’re missing how people actually search today.

To stay visible, brands need to rethink how they show up.

1. Optimize for Intent, Not Just Aesthetics

Stop asking: “What should we post?”
Start asking: “What are people searching for?”

Your content should answer real questions:

• “Best protein powder for beginners”
• “How to fix dry skin in winter”
• “Affordable night out ideas”

If your content solves a problem, it becomes searchable.

2. Video Beats Everything

In the era of social search, demonstration > description.

Instead of telling people your product works:

• Show it working
• Show the results
• Show the process

Video content doesn’t just capture attention, it builds trust instantly.

3. Your Captions Are Your New SEO

Social platforms are now indexing content based on keywords, just like search engines.

That means:

• Your captions matter
• Your on-screen text matters
• Even your spoken words matter

Think of your caption as a meta description:

• Include searchable phrases
• Answer specific queries
• Be clear, not clever

The Bottom Line

Search hasn’t disappeared, it’s evolved.

People still want answers. They just want them:

• Faster
• More visual
• More trustworthy

And right now, social media delivers that better than traditional search.

If your brand isn’t showing up where people are actually searching, you’re not just behind, you’re invisible.

For years SEO meant one thing, ranking on google. But today, that definition is slightly outdated. Consumers are no longer searching for things in just one place, they are discovering brands through TikTok search bars, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and even AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini and so on. Search behavior has been drastically changed and brands that still optimize only for Google are missing massive opportunities for their business.

Search Everywhere Optimization means structuring your content so it can be discovered across multiple platforms, not just the traditional search engines. This involves things like platform specific keyword research, optimizing captions and video descriptions, using searchable hashtags strategically, creating content that answers direct questions, and structuring content for AI readability. This doesn’t replace traditional Search Engine Optimization however it is expanding it.

The Shift in Search Behavior

When users want information today, they don’t automatically go to Google. They might search on TikTok for product reviews, use YouTube for tutorials, ask AI for answers, or use Instagram to find local businesses. Younger audiences especially are using social platforms as search engines and if your brand isn’t optimized for those environments, your brand may be invisible. This can be the case even if you are ranked number one on Google.

Practical Steps to Implement Search Everywhere Optimization

Here’s some tips on how to start:

1. Expand Keyword Research

Don’t Just use Google Keywords.

Research:

• TikTok search suggestions
• YouTube autocomplete
• Reddit threads

2. Write Searchable Captions

Use natural language phrasing like:

• “How to…”
• “Best way to…”
• “Why does…”

These mirror real search queries.

3. Optimize Video Text and Descriptions

Many platforms now index on screen text, captions, and even spoken words. That means that your keywords should appear naturally within your video title, or the first lines of your caption. Say your main keyword early, include it in on screen text, and write descriptions clearly. When platforms can easily understand your topic, they are more likely to surface your content in search results and reccomended feeds.

4. Repurpose Strategically

There are certain things that you can repurpose to fit into the new search everywhere optimization. You can:

• Turn blog posts into short form videos
• Videos into carousels
• Carousels into Pinterest pins

Each version should be optimized for the platform it is going on.

The Bottom Line

SEO is not dying; it is evolving into something way bigger. If your strategy still revolves around optimizing a website alone, you’re optimizing for yesterday’s internet. Search Everywhere Optimization ensures your brand is discoverable where people research, compare, engage, and decide. The question isn’t whether you should expand your SEO strategy, its whether you can afford not to.

It starts with inclusivity. 

What is inclusive web design?

Inclusive web design is creating digital products that can be used by a wide variety of people. It acknowledges that everyone using a website has a different background, which requires different accommodations. 

In order to grow your brand, you want your website to be as inclusive as possible. Here are three ways to do it:

1. Choose widely legible fonts.

In order for as many people as possible to use your website, consider choosing a font that is easy on the eyes, and is easy to read. Using widely legible fonts makes your website more accessible. According to the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), the following fonts are some of the best choices for your website, as people with vision impairments and cognitive disabilities are able to use them: 

1. Arial
2. Verdana
3. Helvetica 
4. Calibri 
5. Times New Roman

Additionally, ensure that all text on your webpages is at least 12 px. Stay away from fonts that have complex characters, since these can be challenging to read. 

2. Ensure strong contrast between text and background. 

Make sure your text color stands out against the background color. For easy legibility, stay away from choosing colors that are too similar to one another. You want to make sure that a customer can easily read the text in front of them. For example, if you have a white background, consider using black or grey text to have your text stand out. If you have a tan background, consider using dark blue or dark green text. Additionally, take caution when placing text over a photo. Without the proper contrast, the text can easily get lost in the details of the background, and valuable information can be lost. Instead, choose a solid background to place your text over. 

3. Use consistent navigation buttons throughout the site. 

Keeping buttons and menus in the same place on each page will allow the pages to be uniform. This will eliminate possible confusion from the user, since they will always know where to find what they are looking for. Additionally, keeping these buttons in the same location makes it easier when creating new pages, since you can save time by reusing a page layout. 

Inclusive design goes hand in hand with design accessibility, since as many people as possible can easily navigate your website. By implementing these design elements, more people will be able to use your website, which will ultimately grow your business. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technical component of digital marketing that can be intimidating for our new marketing strategists yet is vital to transform a client’s digital presence. The ideal outcome for a client’s website when focusing on SEO is for it to rank higher than its competitors on search engines such as Google or Bing. SEO involves various tactics and steps to follow to succeed. I have created an SEO starter guide to gain a basic understanding of the daunting, yet crucial digital marketing strategy.

First, let’s learn about a couple of useful SEO tools:

HubSpot Website Grader

HubSpot Website Grader is a great starting point to understand where your client’s website is currently at in terms of performance, SEO, mobile responsiveness, and security. The website gives a score for the website out of 100, where 100 is the highest possible score. Each category is further broken down and highlights areas that need to be improved. Since website cleanup and SEO have many elements, this website offers you some key areas to focus on while improving a client’s website and SEO strategy.

SEM Rush

A great tool to explore a website’s current SEO practices is SEM Rush! SEM Rush has many valuable features that give the user an insight into a domain’s keywords, authority, digital accessibility, and backlinks. This is where a lot of SEO research happens. SEM Rush also has a great blog about all things SEO that I recommend reading to learn more about any of these areas outlined below and additional SEO metrics.

5 Key SEO Terms to Know:

Now that we have learned about a couple of great SEO tools, let’s learn about 5 key SEO terms!

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a vital initial step in an SEO project. Keyword research allows you to see what keywords your website is already ranking for and allows you to come up with more keywords that you should be ranking for. An ideal keyword in SEM Rush has a low difficulty score and a high search volume. However, it is smart and realistic to find keywords that have a range of scores in each category. The keywords that you find to be relevant in this research process will then be added to meta descriptions, alt text, header tags, and on-page content.

Domain Authority

Domain authority is a search engine ranking metric that indicates SEO factors such as keywords, backlinks, and website content that are affecting a website’s rank. Ranking for relevant keywords, removing toxic backlinks, and creating quality content will all help in improving a page’s authority and ranking. A higher authority score in SEM Rush correlates to a higher-ranking website. It is also helpful to compare domain authorities to a client’s competitors, to see where they fall and where they should shoot to be after making improvements.

Alt Text

Alt text, short for alternative text, is the text that appears in the HTML code to describe an image to search engine crawlers and those that may be visually impaired. This is a great way to add the keywords you are trying to rank for. This alt text helps users find your images when searching in Google images.

Meta Descriptions

A meta description is the block of text that appears below a website’s domain after searching for it on Google. This block not only gives the user a sense of what the web page covers, but more importantly it is another way to rank the site higher using relevant keywords. This is also a great way to increase a page’s click-through rate (CTR) because this description is the first block of content that a user sees when deciding what page to click on. An ideal meta description for a desktop display is 160 characters and 120 for a mobile display.

Backlinks

A backlink is when an external site links back to your website. The higher number of backlinks a website has, the more authoritative it is in the eyes of search engine results pages. It is essential to get rid of toxic backlinks as they hurt SEO.

Google Software:

Since there are 4.3 billion Google users worldwide, it is a good idea to be familiar with and use Google software. Many of our clients in Voice Z Digital use Google Analytics and Google Business Profile … so let’s learn about them.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool that offers insights into what a user is doing once on a website highlighting common yet revealing metrics such as total number of users, bounce rate, and click-through rates. After working with a client, they must understand the power of Google Analytics, the frequency that they should be checking it, and what they should be focusing on.

Google Business Profile

Another Google feature to understand is the Google Business Profile that appears on the right-hand side of Google after searching for a business. This gives a user basic but important information about a business such as links to the website, directions, and a call button. Information such as the company address, hours, and phone number must be correct as potential customers use this as a shortcut to this information as it pops right up on Google and is user-friendly. It also shows Google customer reviews, ratings, and questions. This picture shows a portion of one of our client’s Google Business Profile!

This is only a starter kit for SEO so please check out the links below and do additional research to learn more about SEO!

Sources

https://website.grader.com/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/domain-authority

https://www.semrush.com/blog/meta-description/?kw=&cmp=US_SRCH_DSA_Blog_EN&label=dsa_pagefeed&Network=g&Device=c&utm_content=622080548613&kwid=dsa-1754979158565&cmpid=18348486859&agpid=145169413590&BU=Core&extid=60113850698&adpos=&gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwr82iBhCuARIsAO0EAZy8zXe7sgPX9gquki5bnEhwTUMeNhK5pcRghOcQxszX1JDAoy-mRqUaAnPBEALw_wcB

https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-search-statistics/

https://sitechecker.pro/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Knowledge-base-part-3_what-is-seo.jpg