Digital-Marketing-101: From Likes to Leads

Facets of Digital Marketing

• Brand and Marketing Strategy
• Educational, SEO-Optimized Blog Articles
• Multimedia Content Development
• Newsletter and Email Marketing
• Social Media Optimization & Management
• Local Directory Listings (Local SEO)

Strategic Monthly Marketing Plan 

All of these marketing tactics are a component of organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll want to approach these digital marketing tools in various phases, and based on your business goals.

You can have a strategic, step-wise marketing plan that is conducted over a 3-month period. Your 1st month may be devoted to cultivating brand awareness, while your 2nd and 3rd months may be to generate leads and then to convert those leads into paying customers, respectively.

Month 1 – Brand Awareness & Launch

Focus: Visibility, trust, clarity

Deliverables:

• Marketing strategy creation
• Social media platform setup
• Brand awareness content rollout
• Introduction posts & service overview
• First introductory, thought-leadership blog posts
• Visual brand consistency across channels

Outcome:

Your business establishes a credible, polished, and consistent presence that clearly communicates who they are, who they serve, and how they help. 

Month 2 – Engagement & Education

Focus: Authority building & audience nurturing

Deliverables:

• Educational social content
• Audience-focused messaging
• Blog articles focused on educating target audience
• Engagement-based posts (questions, insights)
• Stronger CTAs (learn more, visit website, contact us)

Outcome:

Your audience begins to engage, recognize value, and associate your business with expertise and trust.

Month 3 – Lead Generation & Conversion Support

Focus: Traffic, inquiries, and client readiness

Deliverables:

• Lead-focused social content
• Clear service CTAs and value positioning
• Blog posts tailored to client solutions
• Refinement based on previous analytics
• Optional lead-magnet promotion (consultations, guides, checklists)

Outcome:

Your business converts awareness into conversations and qualified leads.

From Likes to Leads — Turning Social Media into a Business Tool

From the plethora of ways to market your business online, let’s discuss Social Media in more detail. A huge part of the Digital Marketing process above is social media marketing. Many businesses overlook the importance of social media when it comes to marketing their brand or selling products. More commonly, business owners get caught up in normal daily tasks management and simply run out of time to develop content and market their own brand. 

Connecting the Pieces 

Social media can be a great way, however, to not only connect with your ideal clientele, but to also cross-connect and share all of the other pieces of your digital marketing tools. The more web of links you can build online, the better. This is also important for local SEO, which is why local directory listings (Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google Business Profile, etc.) often help you rank higher in Google’s algorithm. Sharing blog posts on your social media from your website and cross-linking all of your channels helps build a network tree which tells Google and other search engines that you are an established brand. Offering educational content on top of this affirms that your business is a credible, reputable brand that is providing value to their audience.  

Set Your Intention and Provide Value 

Social media isn’t just for selfies—it’s one of the most powerful business tools out there. The trick is to use it with intention. Of course, the myriad of options can be daunting, especially for a new business owner, in terms of knowing which platform to focus on or having the resources to plan, develop, post, and manage all of the content. Not all business owners will have the time to dedicate to researching hashtags or producing multimedia content (graphics, images, videos), much less understanding how to use the various software to develop this content.

If you are a DIY-er, and do have the ability to devote a few hours per week to marketing your own brand, then start small. Start by defining your brand voice and choosing the right platform(s) for your audience. You may want to focus on just one social media channel first, like a Google Business Profile or a Facebook Business Page. Then, create content that educates, entertains, or inspires—not just sells. That’s how you build community and credibility.

Strengths of Each Social Media Platform

Each platform has its own strengths as far as what goal it is optimally suited to fulfill and the audience it caters to. For instance, LinkedIn is professional and insight-driven, with thought leadership content dominating the platform. LinkedIn is a great place to post informative blog articles in order to provide value, show credibility, and earn trust—while connecting with individuals in your industry. 

Facebook on the other hand, is highly accessible and more conversational, appealing to a much more broad audience. That said, with a Facebook Business Page and the meta-ads manager, you can target key demographics, industry professionals, and more in order to hone in on your target audience. 

Facebook’s partner, Instagram, is primarily short-form, scroll-stopping, and value-focused. You’ll want to take advantage of the fact that most people don’t want to leave the platform when they’re ‘doom-scrolling.’ Instead, users want to accomplish what they want instantly (i.e., gain clarity, download information, make a purchase) directly on the platform. 

Google is similar these days, with consumers taking advantage of AI’s ‘overview’ when searching for an answer. This gets into AI-focused SEO which is another topic in it of itself, but is strongly associated with organic, ‘white-hat’ SEO tactics. In short, this predominantly boils down to providing value and connecting with your audience long-term. 

Last but certainly not least, YouTube is one of the best ways to market your business online. Whether it is promotional content, educational, or simply entertaining— short or long-form video is one of the best storytelling modalities there is to showcase your brand story and connect with your audience on an emotional level. It’s not a wonder why this platform has exploded over the past decade. 

While each platform differs in its ideal mode of communication, you don’t necessarily have to re-create new content for each social media channel. You can repurpose content and modify it slightly to suite each channel respectively.

So, to review:

LinkedIn: Professional & Insight-Driven (Thought Leadership Articles)

Facebook: Educational, Conversational & Accessible (Graphics/Images, Sponsored Posts)

Instagram: Engaging, Scroll-Stopping & Value-Focused (Short-Form, Audio-Visual) 

YouTube: Informative, Inspirational & Entertaining (Long-Form Videos)

Anna Maria Media’s Commitment to Help You Grow

At @AnnaMariaMedia, we help small businesses turn casual followers into loyal fans. Our social strategies mix personality with purpose—storytelling, visuals, and consistency that feel real, not robotic. 

We’ll help grow your business authentically, and gradually over time. Our practices are rooted in old-fashioned values, with a modern touch. 

We’ve been helping our surveyor friends over at @SkateLandData to help launch their social media channels and to manage their online presence. Check out their LinkedIn page to see how they’re leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to modernize surveying workflows by centralizing land data in the cloud. 

Whether it is writing SEO-friendly blog articles, producing short-form business promo videos, writing social media captions or designing the visuals for Instagram, Anna Maria Media can help market your business so you can focus on your business and convert visitors into loyal customers.