Every business needs to invest in marketing – but not all businesses have an unlimited budget to spend on promoting their brand. This is especially true for startups and small to medium-sized local businesses. Understanding where – and how – to spend whatever funds you have budgeted for marketing purposes is essential.
Key Insights
- Businesses must understand how and where to spend their marketing budgets, and no matter how large or small they may be, marketing investment is non-negotiable if they wish to compete.
- The right marketing channels will differ for different businesses, but every business should make at least a basic investment in its website (including content), SEO (which also incorporates the needs of AI searches), social media, and, for some businesses, high-intent Paid Ads.
- Local SEO and community-focused engagement are essential for local businesses.
- Twelve12 is an Irvine- and Newport Beach-based marketing firm. For many years, we’ve worked with businesses of all types and sizes in Orange County and throughout the USA to deliver the bespoke branding and marketing solutions they need to succeed.
Your marketing budget should be spread across five core stages of the customer journey:
- Lead generation/customer attraction
- Nurturing leads
- Converting website visitors
- Product/service delivery
- Customer retention
How Do I Improve Marketing ROI?
The ideal way to spend your marketing budget must be determined by your business goals. In 2026, the highest returns overall for most businesses are to be found in combining search engine optimization (SEO) that incorporates optimization strategies for AI searches with investment in branding, Paid Ads, social media marketing, and other marketing strategies as your budget allows (and tailored to suit your target audience).
Improving your marketing ROI (return on investment) requires that you spend on channels that are profitable, highly converting, and that you continuously measure, personalize, and optimize your campaign strategy.
- Identify and narrow your target audience
- Build customer profiles
- Leverage retargeting strategies
- Understand and track the entire customer journey
- Use automation (e.g. email automation)
- Balance brand building with performance marketing
- Understand the value of investment into long-term strategies (e.g. SEO) rather than simply chasing fast but fleeting results
How Do I Know Which Marketing Channels Are Profitable?
The best results won’t come from a single or set group of marketing channels. Rather, you need an ideal mix for your own brand that’s tailored and aligned to your budget, audience, and goals.
Besides a trial-and-error approach if you’re doing DIY marketing, the best way to understand which channels are going to be most profitable for your brand and business is to partner with an experienced professional marketing agency near you.
An agency like Twelve12 has the expertise and local insight to understand your business, audience, and goals – and tailor a strategy to your unique needs.
What’s The Best Marketing Strategy For A Local Business?
Local businesses need to combine a hyper-localized digital presence with community engagement. The core focus should be on dominating local searches and building local trust.
Strategies to achieve this include:
- Local SEO: optimize your website for local searches, including Google Business Profile, Google Maps, and location-based keyword optimization. This includes having relevant location-based landing pages on your website.
- Harness genuine local reviews and social proof to build trust and authority.
- Use social media to build brand awareness and B2C (or B2B, where relevant) relationships.
- Join and participate actively in local community groups online and offline. E.g. consider sponsoring a local community social sports team, a local school event, or community cause.
- Team up with non-competing, complementary local businsses for cross-promotional collaborations.
- Consider using high-intent Paid Ads (Google Ads) if you offer urgent, one-off local services like emergency locksmithing, electrician services, emergency dental, etc.
- Target local paid social media ads.
So, How Should I Spend My Marketing Budget?
Twelve12 is here to work with you to understand your business, your audience/customers, and your goals, and tailor an effective strategy to meet these needs and suit your budget.
Smaller marketing budgets should have a core focus on the essentials: website design and landing page creation, SEO (including for AI penetration), social media marketing to drive awareness, and possibly high-intent lead generation via Google Ads.
Larger budgets might expand on basic SEO (e.g. adding more target keywords), content marketing, video marketing, retargeting, and wider branding/identity strategies.
Big budgets enable full-funnel, comprehensive marketing campaigns that incorporate TV, radio, public relations, and much more.
Don’t take risks on a generic campaign, unless you want generic results!
Let us identify what will work best for you – and deliver it seamlessly!
Contact us today!
+1 (949) 288 6790
+1 (844) twelve12