They don’t work for every business.

Our in-depth 2026 benchmarking study of 13,474 US Google Ads campaigns found that the average conversion rate was 8.18% and the average cost per lead was $66.69.

I have spent more than 15 years managing Google Ads accounts and millions of dollars in ad spend, and I can tell you that the answer to the question “do Google Ads work” is “it depends.”

When the three criteria outlined above hold, Google Ads is often the best-performing customer acquisition channel I work with. When any one is missing, the campaigns can lose money, and can lose it in a way that feels like the platform is broken when it is really the setup.

In this guide, I’ll walk through the criteria for making Google Ads work for your business, the industries where the math works and where it may not, and a framework to test which camp you are in without burning a big budget to find out.

Contents

• When Google Ads work and when they don’t
• Average Google Ads performance by industry
  • Benchmarks Lookup Tool
• The three conditions that determine if Google Ads will work
• The break-even math: How to tell if Google Ads will work for you
  • Google Ads Break-Even Calculator
• Industries where Google Ads reliably work
• Industries where Google Ads often do not work
• Why some Google Ads campaigns fail
• How to test Google Ads without wasting money
  • Google Ads Viability Scoring Tool
• Google Ads vs SEO and AEO vs social: When each is the right bet
• What changed in Google Ads in 2026
• When your Google Ads are not working: The diagnostic
• Where to go next with Google Ads
• Frequently asked questions

See how your Google Ads are really performing. Try our Free Google Ads Performance Grader >>

When Google Ads work and when they don’t

Google Ads work when three independent conditions hold at once:

1. People search for what you sell: There is commercial-intent demand to capture.
2. You can profitably pay the click cost: Unit economics allow you to reach those searchers without losing money.
3. You have the capacity to manage the account: Either the time to do it yourself or the budget for someone else to do it for you.

Search demand ebbs and flows depending on the vertical. As more and more businesses use Google Ads, prices have risen in most verticals due to the fact that Google Ads works as an auction-based system. Whether or not you have the capacity to properly manage your own account is often dependent on the first two factors: how much demand there is (how large is your account) and how good the economics are for your business.

Lots of businesses can check all three of these boxes and run Google Ads very profitably (some businesses even power most of their demand generation efforts with Google Ads alone), and there are plenty of businesses who start Google Ads campaigns, lose money, and abandon the channel.

Average Google Ads performance by industry

Across the Google Ads benchmarks I mentioned, search click-through rate was 6.64%, the average cost per click (CPC) was $5.42, and the average conversion rate was 8.18%, with wide variation by vertical.

CPCs swing hard depending on what you sell:

1. High-CPC verticals: Attorneys and Legal Services near $9.87 per click; Dentists around $8.00 per click.
2. Low-CPC verticals: Restaurants near $2.05, travel near $2.14.
3. Average cost per lead across all industries: $66.69, which in 2026 was actually the first year-over-year drop in cost per lead in five years.

The variation matters more than the average. A $5,000 monthly budget buys roughly 500 clicks at legal services CPCs and more than 2,000 clicks at restaurant CPCs, so the same spend produces very different amounts of data to learn from. The combination of your CPC and your conversion rate (and most importantly, your personal cost-per-conversion weighted against how you value a lead or sale), not the headline average, decides whether paid traffic can pay for itself.

There are two honest ways to use benchmark data:

• Before you launch, set expectations: If your projected cost per lead is half the benchmark for your industry, your assumptions are probably too rosy. If it is three times the benchmark, you are likely underestimating cost or overestimating conversion rate.
• After you launch, triangulate: An account running 40% below benchmark does not prove Google Ads “do not work.” It points at something specific and fixable, and the failure-reasons table later names the usual culprits.

INTERACTIVE TOOL

Google Ads Industry Benchmarks

Pick your industry to see typical CTR, CPC, conversion rate and cost per lead. Based on WordStream's 2026 benchmarks study of 13,474 US search campaigns.

INDUSTRY

Get the Full 2026 Benchmarks Study →

Source: WordStream 2026 Google Ads Benchmarks (Search Network).

wordstream.com

The three conditions that determine if Google Ads will work

Here’s a deeper dive into the factors that lead to bad or good Google Ads outcomes.

Condition 1: Commercial-intent search volume exists

Your offering has to be something people search for with buying intent, not just “top-of-funnel” curiosity:

• “What is hyaluronic acid” is research demand.
• “Hyaluronic acid serum” is commercial demand.

Google Ads works for the second, but not typically for the first. You can quickly get a rough sense of demand for your target terms by:

1. Pulling your top ten transactional keywords into Google Keyword Planner.
2. Summing up the monthly search volume for your target geography.
3. Looking at the available clicks and spend, and determining if that’s interesting enough for you to invest in Google Ads.

Condition 2: Unit economics support the CPC

For each conversion, your gross profit has to clear your cost to acquire it by a comfortable margin. The math is basically:

• Divide clicks by conversion rate to get clicks per conversion.
• Multiply by CPC to get cost per acquisition (CPA).
• Subtract that from your gross profit per conversion (order value times margin).

If the number left over is reliably positive, and ideally more than about 30% of gross profit, the channel can work at scale.

The failure pattern I see most is a business with a $25 to $50 order value, thin margins, and no repeat purchases. The break-even math rarely works for them in any paid channel, not just Google Ads. The fix is not better ad copy. It is a different model or a cheaper, more scalable channel.

Condition 3: Operational discipline

Google Ads in 2026 can be a managed product. Google has features like automated bidding, Performance Max campaigns, and smart campaigns, which can require almost no input from the advertiser.

The problem with those campaigns is that they don’t guarantee lead quality and will be optimized to spend your budget, even if it’s not generating a profit for your business. Before you start a campaign, you need to have a few things in place to make Google Ads work for you:

• Be able to build a quality landing page that is likely to convert.
• Be able to measure not just how many leads you’re getting, but the actual quality of the leads and the impact on your business.
• Have a point person monitoring performance and looking for opportunities around ad copy, keywords, negative keywords, and bidding to squeeze more volume and revenue from the campaigns over time.

A high-converting landing page helps make the Google Ads math work.

Ready to make Smart Bidding work for you? Get The Fool-Proof Guide to Smart Bidding (+How to Get Started Fast)

The break-even math: how to tell if Google Ads will work for you

The break-even math for Google Ads is simple for many businesses: divide your gross profit per conversion by your cost per conversion, where cost per conversion is your CPC divided by your conversion rate. Then compare the result to your target cost per acquisition or payback window to see whether the numbers hold at scale.

Your business and your niche will always perform differently than benchmarks and industry standards. But that data can be a useful place to get a rough sense of whether Google Ads is likely to work for you. You can run the math three ways:

• At industry benchmarks (the calculator pre-fills these): If it fails at averages, you have a structural problem, not a tactical one.
• At your best case: the lowest plausible CPC and highest plausible conversion rate. If it fails even here, do not run Google Ads. The optimistic case rarely survives contact with a real account.
• At your worst case. If the math still holds when you are pessimistic, you have enough margin of safety to absorb the surprises that always come.

Some important caveats:

• Live data: Using data in your actual account against your actual landing page as part of a test is always better than rough estimates.
• Benchmarked estimates: These don’t account for day-to-day fluctuations or conversion quality (again, something you have to monitor over time).
• Lifetime value data that’s relevant to the value of a conversion, and/or multiple values across conversions, could impact the value you get across conversions.

INTERACTIVE TOOL

Google Ads Break-Even Calculator

Will Google Ads make money for your business? Enter four numbers to see the math.

AVERAGE ORDER VALUE OR LTV ($)

GROSS MARGIN %

EXPECTED CPC ($)

SMB Search median: $5.42 (WordStream 2026 benchmarks)

EXPECTED CONVERSION RATE %

SMB Search median: 8.18% (WordStream 2026 benchmarks)

Run the math →

Math reflects steady-state CR after 60+ day learning period. Initial 30 days typically run 30 to 50% worse.

wordstream.com

Industries where Google Ads reliably work

These businesses tend to have a higher success rate:

• Local service businesses: Plumbers, HVAC, electricians, roofers, dentists, attorneys, and accountants. High commercial intent, high gross profit per job, and a defined geographic audience. The CPCs run high, but a single won job can cover weeks of ad spend in some of these verticals.
• B2B SaaS with a proven customer profile: Once you know who buys, what they search for, and what they will pay, Google Ads is one of the most predictable ways to capture demo requests and trial signups. The operative word is proven. Pre-product-market-fit SaaS rarely works.
• Ecommerce with healthy margins: Apparel and specialty goods at 40% or better margin, low-competition niches, and branded stores with repeat purchase fit here. Performance Max in particular tends to work well here once you have a clean product feed and enough conversions to feed Smart Bidding.
• Professional services with high lifetime value: Financial advisors, business coaches, executive search, and premium consulting fall into this category. Cost per lead runs high, but the lifetime value of a client justifies it. Judge it on lifetime value, not first touch.
• Education with concrete outcomes: Trade schools, certifications, and continuing education with documented job-placement or income results. The conversion path is long, but the offer is specific enough to support paid search.

Local Services Ads are a particularly useful form of Google Ads for service-based businesses.

Industries where Google Ads often do not work

These are hard-and-fast convictions, but these types of businesses may want to look hard at the numbers before investing in Google Ads.

• Pre-product-market-fit startups: No proven conversion mechanism, no validated audience, and no lifetime-value data. Google Ads can scale demand once you have found fit. It cannot find fit for you.
• Low-margin commodity ecommerce: Anything where the economics live or die on retention and first-purchase margin is under about 20%. The break-even math is upside down on the first transaction in any paid channel, so this is not a Google Ads problem.
• B2B with long sales cycles and small deal sizes: Sales cycles beyond six months paired with contract values under roughly $10,000 rarely justify paid search. The payback stretches too far, and attribution gets noisy.
• Brand awareness with no existing intent: Google Ads is a demand-capture channel. If nobody is searching yet, paid search cannot manufacture the demand. That budget does more in content, social, or display advertising to generate demand.
• Businesses with a broken funnel: If your process leaks at the demo or proposal stage, paid traffic just fills a leaky bucket faster and more expensively. Fix the funnel before you scale acquisition into it.

Display ads are great at generating and influencing demand with buyers before they use search.

Why some Google Ads campaigns fail

In the “Google Ads do not work for us” accounts I audit, a short list of patterns explains most of the failures, and none of them are evidence that Google Ads is broken. They are evidence that the account was set up or maintained in a way that violated one of the three conditions above.

INTERACTIVE REFERENCE

Why Most Failed Google Ads Campaigns Fail

14 recurring patterns from account audits, ordered by how much damage they usually do. Tap any row for what it actually means and the fix.

Expand all

Source: WordStream account audit patterns and the WordStream Google Ads mistakes guide.

wordstream.com

How to test Google Ads without wasting money

If you’re completely new to Google Ads, I like to start with a 90-day project designed to be a “pass/fail” to help determine whether you should keep the campaign running. A few notes on how to think about this:

• Give it around 3 months to run before determining if it’s been effective.
• Budget will depend on your niche and how expensive clicks are, but for most small to mid-sized businesses, a $3-10K total budget is a good range to get a sense of whether Google Ads can work.
• Set a target cost per acquisition (CPA). Your campaigns actually don’t necessarily need to hit this by the end of the window, but they should be trending in the right direction and close enough that you have some confidence they’ll get inside that target CPA and become profitable soon.

This type of campaign setup and monitoring can be a good service to work with an experienced Google Ads pro on, particularly if they’re willing to do this setup and early monitoring for a fixed fee.

Phase 1: Setup (days 1 through 14)

• Set up conversion tracking and verify it actually fires. Everything downstream depends on it.
• Construct two or three tight ad groups around your highest-intent transactional keywords, phrase match as the backbone with exact match for proven winners.
• Build a starter shared negative keyword list.
• Launch on Maximize Conversions, sized to generate 50 to 100 clicks a week at benchmark CPC.
• Do not touch the bid strategy in this window.

Using tight ad groups will help make your results more actionable.

Phase 2: Controlled testing (Days 15 to 60)

Remember that on small budgets, you can’t make a lot of changes at once and get an actual signal from those tests or tweaks.

• Smart Bidding enters its learning phase, so do not pause or swing the budget during the first few weeks.
• Review the Search Terms Report weekly and add a handful of negatives with each pass.
• After about two weeks of conversion data, ask one question: Are you generating conversions at a cost per acquisition below your gross profit per conversion?
  • If yes, you are on track. If no, run the diagnostic before you spend another dollar.

Phase 3: Scale or stop (Days 61 to 90)

Once learning settles, you finally have a clean signal, and there are three honest outcomes:

• Profitable and scalable: Raise budget gradually, roughly 20% at a time, so you do not knock Smart Bidding back into learning.
• Profitable but capped: Expand into new ad groups.
• Unprofitable or empty: Run the diagnostic, fix the most likely cause, and either pivot or stop with a clear conscience.

The test is not optional overhead. It is the cheapest way to find out which of the three conditions your business actually meets. Most accounts I see that “did not work” never finished it. They paused around day 20, before Smart Bidding had learned anything.

INTERACTIVE TOOL

Google Ads Viability Score

Eight questions, about a minute. Get a 0 to 100 score across the three criteria that decide whether Google Ads will work for your business.

Three criteria: search intent, unit economics, account discipline.

wordstream.com

Google Ads vs. SEO and AEO vs. social: When each is the right bet

The three channels solve different problems on different clocks, and choosing well starts with being honest about what you actually need next quarter.

• Choose Google Ads when you need predictable leads inside 90 days, your economics support paid CPCs, and commercial-intent demand already exists. It is a demand-capture channel: it works because people are already searching. Time to first results is days, cost is variable but controllable, and volume is something you can turn up or down.
• Choose SEO and AEO when you have 12 to 18 months of patience, your buyers research before they purchase, and you can produce good content consistently. SEO and AEO compound. The first six months can show almost nothing (depending on the niche), and the next twelve can build a moat paid channels cannot match. Time to first results is months, cost is mostly upfront, and volume scales with content velocity.
• Choose paid social when you have a visually compelling offer and a defined audience that Meta or LinkedIn can target. Paid social is a demand-generation channel: it works when people are not searching yet. Time to first results is days, cost is variable, and volume scales with how fast you can refresh creative.

Social ads work well when you have a visually compelling story to tell.

Most established businesses I work with run two or three of these together: Google Ads to capture existing intent, SEO/AEO for the compounding long-term moat, and paid social for awareness against new audiences. The common mistake is treating them as substitutes when they are complements with different timelines.

What changed in Google Ads in 2026: AI, Performance Max, Smart Bidding

The 2026 Google Ads landscape differs in a few ways that actually change the “does it work?” question:

• Performance Max is default: Available to all advertisers since November 2021, it is now the default recommendation for many SMBs, folding Shopping, Display, and YouTube into a single AI-managed campaign.
• Smart Bidding matured: Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and Target ROAS are the baseline for any campaign with enough conversion data, which is why account discipline and clean tracking now matter more than manual bid tweaking.
• Privacy reshaped measurement: Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (iOS 14.5, April 2021) cut into app and cross-site attribution. Consent Mode v2, required for advertisers serving EEA traffic since March 2024, changed how conversions get modeled and reported. Enhanced conversions and server-side tagging moved from nice-to-have to baseline.
• Clicks got more expensive: As we saw in the benchmarks data, the average Google Ads CPC is now $5.42, more than double the $2.32 average from 2016.
• AI arrived in Search: Ads now show alongside or below AI-generated answers on many queries. The early pattern is that transactional queries keep monetizing while informational traffic shifts toward AI answers, which sharpens the case for focusing paid search on commercial intent.

The fundamentals did not move. Commercial-intent demand, unit economics that support the CPC, and account discipline still decide whether Google Ads work for a given business. The execution layer got more complex. The strategic question is the same one it was in 2015.

When your Google Ads are not working: The diagnostic

If you have an account running and the performance feels off, work the diagnostic from symptom to root cause instead of jumping to “Google Ads do not work.” The interactive tool below ranks the likely causes for whatever combination of symptoms you select.

The pattern of symptoms tells you where to look first:

• No impressions usually points to budget, bid, or targeting limits (such as keywords not being broad enough, or negatives blocking relevant traffic).
• High impressions, low click-through points to ad copy or query relevance.
• Clicks without conversions points to the landing page, the tracking, or wrong-intent traffic.
• Conversions reported but no real sales points to a tracking error, the single most common root cause across every symptom.
• Conversions that lose money points to unit economics or keyword strategy.
• Performance that fades after a strong start points at ad fatigue, a disrupted learning phase, or rising auction competition.

High impressions but a low CTR suggests a need for stronger, more emotionally driven ad copy.

Before you conclude that Google Ads do not work for your business, run the diagnostic. In my experience, the verdicts break down roughly like this, and I would treat the proportions as directional:

• Most turn out to be tracking errors, missing negatives, or landing pages that do not match the ad.
• A smaller share is due to the wrong campaign type or an unrealistic budget.
• A small remainder are businesses where the three conditions genuinely do not hold.

Doing the diagnosis before drawing the conclusion is what separates “we tried it, and it did not work” from “we ran the math, found the failure pattern, fixed it, and now it works.” The conclusion is usually the same: Google Ads work for businesses that pass the three gates and get managed with discipline. The honest path runs through diagnosis, not hope.

Where to go next with Google Ads

A few ways to take the next step:

• Get a free read on an existing account: Run the Google Ads Performance Grader. It benchmarks your account against thousands of others and surfaces the failure patterns above.
• Have a partner run it: Find a partner that manages Google Ads campaigns with monthly performance reviews and a dedicated strategist.
• Do it yourself: The tools throughout this guide (break-even calculator, viability score, benchmark lookup, and failure diagnostic) are meant to be used in order. Start with viability, run the math, set up the test, and diagnose what is not working as you go.

The honest answer to “do Google Ads work?” is “yes, for some of you, under specific conditions, with consistent execution.” If you are one of those businesses, the next step is the 90-day test. If you are not, the next step is a different channel, and knowing that early is worth more than another month of spend.

Frequently asked questions

Here are answers to some common questions about the effectiveness of Google Ads.

Do Google Ads actually work in 2026?

Yes, for businesses that clear three conditions: real commercial-intent search demand for the offering, unit economics that support the cost per click in the vertical, and the discipline to manage the account weekly. Outside those conditions, Google Ads tends to lose money, and fairly predictably. The platform has not gotten worse. The gap between accounts that meet the conditions and those that do not has widened.

Are Google Ads worth it for small businesses?

Google Ads are worth it for a small business when your profit per sale clears your cost per sale at your vertical’s CPC. For most local service firms, B2B SaaS with a proven customer profile, and higher-margin ecommerce, they usually pay off. For pre-product-market-fit startups, low-margin commodities, and businesses with no proven way to convert a visitor, they usually do not. It is a math question, not a yes or no.

How much should I spend on Google Ads to see if they work?

Plan for enough budget to buy roughly 100 clicks a month at your vertical’s average CPC, and run it 60 to 90 days so Smart Bidding can finish learning. For most SMB verticals, that lands somewhere around $1,500 to $5,000 a month for a real test. Spending less than that usually just buys noise, not a decision.

Why are my Google Ads not converting?

Google Ads usually stop converting for one of four reasons: broken or double-counted conversion tracking, a landing page that does not match the ad’s promise, broad match running without a negative keyword list, or a budget too thin to clear Smart Bidding’s learning phase. In the accounts I audit, these are the usual causes, and most are fixable within about 30 days once you find the real one.

Should I do Google Ads or SEO first?

If you need leads inside 90 days and your economics support paid clicks, start with Google Ads, since it captures demand that already exists. If you can invest over 12 to 18 months and your buyers research before purchasing, start with SEO. Most established businesses I work with eventually run both, because they solve different problems on different timelines.

Asking “Do Google Ads Work?” is a great place to start

Google Ads is an investment in the growth of your business. And like any investment, the outcome can be a gain or a loss. That’s why asking this question first and following the steps in this guide are so important.

Google Ads delivers a big return for many businesses from many industries and of just about every size. With the right approach, it can accelerate your business growth, too.

If you’re ready to try Google Ads, or if you’ve dabbled and would like the support of technology-backed experts, reach out!

The post Do Google Ads Work? Pros, Cons, & Tools to Guide You appeared first on WordStream.

However, like all digital marketing strategies, it comes with challenges. Nailing down display ad campaign performance can be tricky. Since these media-based ads show passively across sites as people surf online, they pack on impression numbers quickly.

To help navigate this lucrative but complex channel, we analyzed over 60,000 LocaliQ display and video advertising campaigns from two different data sources to bring you our first-ever Display & Video Advertising Benchmarks, including performance averages for key metrics like click-through rate, cost per click, cost per lead, and viewability.

As mentioned, the data is split two ways: industry benchmarks covering display ads running across properties like Google, Microsoft, and YouTube, then overall performance averages for display ads running solely across the USA TODAY Network.

You can use these benchmarks to gauge how your display ads are performing and find out where you may need to improve—whether it be your audience targeting or display ad creative.

Let’s get into it!

Contents

• How to read this data
• Display and video ads benchmarks by industry
• High-impact display ads benchmarks
• Video display ads benchmarks
• Native display ads benchmarks
• Tips for the best display ads

On the go? Take this data with you! Download our free 2026 display and video ads benchmarks report here.

How to read our display and video ads benchmarks data

This report contains our new display and video ads benchmark data to help you better understand and maximize your campaign performance and budget. A couple of things to know about this report:

• Display ad industry metrics include average click-through rate, average cost per click, and average cost per lead.
• High-impact, video, and native display ads metrics include click-through rate, video completion rate, and viewability.

The metrics we chose to look at are specific to the nature of display ads. Display ads impact conversion rates indirectly (which is a measurement called view-through conversions), but they naturally have lower conversion rates attached to them directly, which is why we decided to omit that metric.

“My biggest advice when evaluating visual ad formats is to honor that they might not be delivering conversions themselves. Even when they do, they should not be held to the same benchmarks as search formats,” said Navah Hopkins, Ad Product Liaison at Microsoft.

Meanwhile, display ads yield tons of impressions, so even though their click-through rates look quite low if you compare them to other tactics like search ads, that can still equate to a lot of impactful clicks in the grand scheme of impressions versus clicks.

“Most people aren’t going to immediately click a display ad. They’ll come back to your site directly, weeks or months later, when they need you,” said Greg Carter, Vice President of Marketing at Clutch.

Ultimately, you want your display ads to get seen (or watched) and turn into real results, which is why we included viewability, video completion rate, cost per click, and cost per lead.

Display and video ads benchmarks by industry

For our first round of display ads benchmarks, we’ll look at click-through rate, cost per click, and cost per lead for standard display campaigns broken down by industry. These ads run on over 350 exchanges, networks, and publishers, including Google, YouTube, Meta, and Yahoo, and include multiple formats, such as banner ads, video, and more.

Here are some examples of these types of display ads in the wild.

Here are the display and video ads benchmarks for cost per click, cost per lead, and click-through rate for each industry.

Click to enlarge

While click-through rate isn’t a make-or-break metric for display ads (because they’ll naturally yield way more impressions than clicks), it can be an initial indicator of how enticing or clickable your image or video creative is.

The industry with the highest click-through rate for display ads was Education and Instruction at 0.40%, followed by Arts and Entertainment at 0.27%. Arts and Entertainment is a very visual industry to begin with, so it makes sense that people would be more likely to click on those ads.

Costs per click and lead for display ads vary. Typically, clicks are cheaper for this ad type compared to search ads. Beauty and Personal Care had the highest cost per click at $5.58, which checks out, as this particular industry is extremely competitive.

Want to optimize your Google display and video ads fast? Start with a free, instant account report using our Google Ads Grader!

High-impact display ads benchmarks

High-impact display ads running specifically on the USA TODAY Network show in larger, more visible placements across USA TODAY-owned sites. They tend to be full-screen, cinematic experiences. They can include GIFs and interactive, clickable features to grab lots of attention, and in turn, make a big impact on your business’s display advertising goals.’

Here is how high-impact ads on the USA Today Network typically perform in 2026:

• The average viewability rate for high-impact display ads is 62%.
• The average click-through rate for high-impact display ads is 0.26%.

Video display ads benchmarks

Video display ads showing on the USA TODAY Network are playable ads that viewers can watch, replay, and click on. Video is the preferred ad format for many, with 75% of consumers making a purchase after watching a video ad in the last year.

So, what results can you expect from a typical video ad in 2026? Here’s what we found.

• The average viewability rate for video ads is 71%.
• The average click-through rate for video ads is 0.09%.
• The average video completion rate of video ads is 67%.

A lower CTR isn’t a cause for concern with this ad type because viewers tend to watch the video, absorb the content, and move on. But video ads can make a memorable impression, and viewers are more likely to come back to your business’s offer later.

Native display ads benchmarks

Native display ads integrate your brand directly into the USA TODAY experience. These ads blend in across headline pages, articles, and newsletters, so your message seamlessly shows up in context where audiences are already engaged.

Native display ads had similar click-through rates and viewability rates to the other USA TODAY Network ads we looked at. In 2026:

• The average viewability rate for native display ads is 70%.
• The average click-through rate for native display ads is 0.28%.

Tips for the best display ads

Whether you’re new to display advertising or a seasoned display campaign veteran, this benchmark data can be a practical reference point when assessing and optimizing your strategy.

“I read these benchmarks as targets. I want to be above the number for my industry,” Greg said.

Ready to take your display and video ads to the next level? Here are some display advertising tips (based on this data) to help you get started.

1. Try a variety of placements

On average, all of the display ad types we covered in this report brought in a good number of clicks and views. For maximum reach, be sure to have display ad creative that’s flexible across major placements on the Google Display Network (including YouTube), Microsoft Audience Network, USA TODAY Network, and more.

“Display can add depth to your strategy—just simply getting in front of your target audience and reinforcing your position in their mind is deeply valuable,” said Brett McHale, Founder of Empiric Marketing.

2. Prioritize your display budgets when allocating ad spend

It can be easy to let your display campaigns fall by the wayside when planning your budgets, but it’s not that search ads are better than display or vice versa; they’re complementary to one another. Your display ads are part of your pre-marketing strategy, meaning you want them to be familiar with your business before it’s even time to buy the types of products and services you offer. This drives users to search for your business later.

“What makes display advertising so useful is that it can be leveraged at the beginning of the customer journey to inspire awareness, just as easily as it can remind a customer to complete their transaction towards the end with remarketing,” Navah said.

So, while you can factor in that display ads have a lower average CPC than search ads, you’ll want to treat budget allocations similarly. With display ads, you’re often paying per view or impression, rather than per click. You’ll need a competitive budget to get seen as much as possible.

“One way to improve display performance is to have a larger budget allocated for these types of campaigns. More budget means more impressions, and more data to optimize with,” said Rhett Chassereau, Supervisor of Programmatic Buying & Optimization at USA TODAY Co.

3. Continuously test different creative elements

While you’ll want to leverage multiple placement types across networks in your display strategy, you should also constantly test various creative elements. For example, see if your audience is more receptive to certain color schemes, image types, calls to action, and more.

“Cycle in new creative and make multiple copy variations for each. Launch a number of ads and find out which one performs the best,” Brett said.

“From there, you can take the top-performing and make more variations of them,” he added.

Like anything with PPC advertising, testing your display ads will be a bit of a balancing act that requires both patience and agility.

“Give the channel time, then be proactive about your display ad creative. Judge individual ads fast and rotate them out as soon as the data is clear. But judge overall display campaigns more cautiously, because they’re a brand play that won’t necessarily pay back on a short timeline,” Greg said.

4. Use AI to scale your display ads

AI, when used thoughtfully, can help you quickly scale your display campaigns. For instance, it can help you brainstorm test ideas or quickly duplicate and tweak current creative your team has designed. Just be sure to give any AI-generated display assets a final, manual edit before you set them live to avoid any glaring AI fails or off-brand elements.

What these display and video ads benchmarks mean for your business

Whatever your industry, you can make display ads work for your business. Display ads help you reach a wide but highly qualified audience. You can remarket to potential customers already interested in your business and pre-market to brand-new potential customers, too. Just be ready to flex your display strategy according to test results and placement trends, so your display ads always catch the attention you’re looking to grab.

For more help making the most of your display ads, see how our solutions can maximize your campaign strategy!

About the data

The display and video ad industry data is pulled from 7,074 LocaliQ customer display advertising campaigns running from April 2025 through June 2026. High-impact, video, and native display ads benchmarks data is based on 55,798 location-based display advertising campaigns run on the USA TODAY Network between July 2025 and June 2026. “Averages” are technically median figures to account for outliers. All currency values are posted in USD.

The post Display & Video Ads Benchmarks 2026: Exclusive Data & Insights for Every Industry appeared first on WordStream.

The framework has staying power for a reason. In the Competitive Intelligence Alliance’s State of SWOT report, nearly half of respondents had run at least one SWOT in the previous two months, and 76% said no other framework could replace it. That survey ran in 2023, but in my experience the pattern holds: SWOT is still the default starting point for strategic planning.

The problem is that most SWOTs die as a list on a whiteboard. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to do a SWOT analysis with examples, questions to ask, and a free template. Then I’ll show you how to convert the finished grid into actual strategies using a TOWS matrix. There are interactive tools throughout so you can build yours as you read.

Contents

• What is a SWOT analysis?
• Breaking down the SWOT analysis definition
• SWOT analysis internal and external factors
• How to do a SWOT analysis
  • SWOT Analysis Builder
• SWOT analysis questions
• What makes a good SWOT entry?
  • SWOT Quality Scorer
• A full SWOT analysis example
• SWOT analysis example: acting on your results
• Turn your SWOT into strategy with a TOWS matrix
  • TOWS Matrix Generator
• 8 common SWOT analysis mistakes
• How often should you update a SWOT analysis?
• What is PEST analysis?
• Benefits of SWOT analysis for small businesses
• Free SWOT analysis template
• SWOT analysis FAQs

What is a SWOT analysis?

A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning framework that maps your business’s internal Strengths and Weaknesses against external Opportunities and Threats in a four-quadrant grid, so you can see in one view what to build on, what to fix, what to pursue, and what to defend against.

The framework is commonly credited to Albert Humphrey’s research at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, though management historians still argue about its exact origin. What nobody argues about is its reach: it has been a fixture of business planning for more than half a century.

SWOT analyses can be applied to an entire company or to individual projects within a single department. Most commonly, they’re used at the organizational level to gauge how closely a business is tracking against its growth benchmarks. But they also work well at the campaign level, for example, to assess how a paid search program is performing against initial projections.

Whatever you apply it to, the output is a grid-like matrix with four distinct quadrants, one for each element. That format has two real benefits: it separates internal factors from external ones at a glance, and it compresses a lot of information into something the whole team can read in a minute.

Prefer to watch first? Our video covers the whole framework:

Want this info to go? Download the guide >> How to Do a SWOT Analysis (With Examples & Reusable Template)

Breaking down the SWOT analysis definition

We know SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Here’s what each element actually covers.

Strengths

The first element of a SWOT analysis is Strengths.

• Things your company does well. Capabilities you can point to with evidence, not aspirations.
• Qualities that separate you from competitors. A defensible unique selling proposition (USP), not “great service.”
• Internal resources. Skilled, knowledgeable staff; strong leadership; a proven engineering team.
• Tangible assets. Intellectual property, capital, proprietary technology, distribution.

Strengths can be intangible (brand attributes) or concrete (the USP of a specific product line). The test I use: would a competitor agree this is an advantage? If yes, it belongs here.

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are internal, harmful factors: the gaps holding your business or project back.

• Things your company lacks. Missing capabilities, missing roles, missing infrastructure.
• Things competitors do better than you. Be honest here. This row only helps if it hurts a little.
• Resource limitations. Budget, headcount, time.
• An unclear unique selling proposition. A common one in crowded markets.

Weaknesses can include organizational challenges like a shortage of skilled people or budget constraints, as well as competitive gaps like the lack of a clearly defined USP.

Opportunities

Opportunities are external, helpful factors: openings in the market you could capture.

• Underserved markets for specific products. Demand that existing players aren’t meeting.
• Few competitors in your area. Geographic or niche gaps.
• Emerging needs for your products or services. Trends moving toward you.
• Press or media coverage of your company. Attention you can convert.

Can’t keep up with the volume of leads your marketing generates? That’s an opportunity. Developing something that opens a new market or demographic? Also an opportunity. This quadrant covers everything you could do to grow sales or advance the organization’s mission.

Threats

Threats are external, harmful factors: anything that puts your company’s success or growth at risk.

• Emerging competitors. New entrants or established players moving into your space.
• Changing regulatory environment. Rules that could raise your costs or limit your model.
• Negative press or media coverage. Reputation risk you don’t fully control.
• Changing customer attitudes. Shifts in how your market perceives your category or brand.

Threats also include financial risks and market volatility: essentially anything that could jeopardize the future of the company or project and sits mostly outside your control.

Free Guide >> The 37 Best Ways to Promote Your Business

SWOT analysis internal and external factors

The four elements above are common to all SWOT analyses, but the more useful cut is the one running through the middle of the grid: internal versus external.

Internal factors

Strengths and Weaknesses are internal factors. They result from decisions and conditions under your company’s control. A high churn rate is a weakness, but improving churn is within your control, which is what makes it internal.

External factors

Opportunities and Threats are external factors. An emerging competitor is a threat, but there’s very little you can do to stop a competitor from existing, which is what makes it external. This is why you’ll sometimes see SWOT analyses called Internal-External Analyses or IE matrices.

Subcategorizing this way isn’t strictly required, but it tells you something practical: how much control you have over each item on the grid. That tends to change what you do about it.

How to do a SWOT analysis

To do a SWOT analysis, gather a cross-functional team, set up the four quadrants, fill each one with specific evidence-backed entries, prioritize the top three to five per quadrant, and then convert the grid into strategies with owners and deadlines.

You can get the full walkthrough in our video below. The rest of this article expands on every step.

Here’s the process step by step:

1. Gather your team. Sales, marketing, operations, and customer-facing staff each see different things. Bring candy. This should be a meeting people want to attend.
2. Set up your quadrants. Whiteboard, projector, or our free template below.
3. Start with Strengths. Work through the strengths questions listed in the next section.
4. Repeat for Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Same drill, same honesty.
5. Pressure-test every entry. Each one should be specific enough to argue with and backed by at least one data point. “5-star Google rating with 312 reviews” beats “great reviews.”
6. Prioritize and document. Cut each quadrant to its top three to five entries and send the document to the team with notes.
7. Reconvene to assign action items. A second meeting converts the analysis into strategies, owners, and deadlines. The TOWS matrix section below is built for exactly this.

You can build yours right here as you work through the article:

INTERACTIVE TOOL

SWOT Analysis Builder

Fill in each quadrant. Your work saves automatically in your browser. Export to CSV or copy as Markdown when done.

YOUR BUSINESS OR INITIATIVE

Download CSV Copy as Markdown Clear all

Saves to your browser. The TOWS Matrix Generator below can load these entries.

wordstream.com

SWOT analysis questions

The fastest way to fill the grid is to ask a structured series of questions for each quadrant. Here are the ones I use.

Strengths questions

• What do your customers love about your company or product(s)?
• What does your company do better than other companies in your industry?
• What are your most positive brand attributes?
• What’s your unique selling proposition?
• What resources do you have at your disposal that your competitors do not?

Answer those, and you’ll have a solid starting list of organizational strengths.

Positive brand attributes associated with WordStream, as identified by our customers.

Weakness questions

• What do your customers dislike about your company or product(s)?
• What problems or complaints come up repeatedly in your negative reviews?
• Why do your customers cancel or churn?
• What could your company do better?
• What are your most negative brand attributes?
• What are the biggest obstacles in your current sales funnel?
• What resources do your competitors have that you do not?

You may find that strengths and weaknesses come together much faster than opportunities and threats. That’s expected. Internal factors are visible from inside the building. External factors usually require more data and more digging.

Opportunities questions

• How can we improve our sales, onboarding, or customer support processes?
• What kind of messaging resonates with our customers?
• How can we further engage our most vocal brand advocates?
• Are we allocating departmental resources effectively?
• Are there budget, tools, or other resources we’re not using to full capacity?
• Which advertising channels exceeded our expectations–and why?

Identifying opportunities often requires real competitive analysis or an examination of wider economic trends. But opportunities can be internal too, surfaced directly from your own strengths and weaknesses.

Want a look at what your competitors are doing? Free guide >> How to Spy on Your Competitors: 7 Ways to Become a Competitive Supersleuth

Threat questions

Threats tend to surface without much prompting. Most teams can list them cold: emerging or established competitors, changing regulatory environments, market volatility, or internal threats like high staff turnover that could derail current growth. If you want a structured starting point, run the opportunities questions in reverse: where are we losing ground and to whom?

What makes a good SWOT entry?

A good SWOT analysis entry is specific, evidence-backed, and prioritized: “website last updated in 2019” is a usable weakness entry, while “outdated web presence” is wallpaper. In the SWOT analyses I’ve reviewed, vague entries are the single most common reason the exercise produces nothing.

Three tests I apply to every entry:

• Specific enough to argue with. If nobody could reasonably disagree with it, it’s too vague to act on.
• Backed by at least one data point. A review count, a churn rate, a traffic number, a named competitor move. If you can’t cite one, downgrade the entry.
• Ranked, not just listed. Three to five entries per quadrant. Twenty sticky notes is a brainstorm, not an analysis.

Score your own SWOT against the full eight-point checklist here:

INTERACTIVE TOOL

SWOT Quality Scorer

Most SWOTs fail because the entries are vague, opinion-based or untestable. Check off what's true of yours, then score it against 8 quality criteria.

Score my SWOT →

Eight criteria from analyst-grade strategic planning practice.

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If you score under 75%, tighten the entries before you take the analysis to a planning meeting. A weak SWOT confidently presented is worse than no SWOT at all.

A full SWOT analysis example

To show how this works in practice, here’s a SWOT analysis example for a fictional family-owned restaurant: single location, urban area, competing against chains. Here’s the completed matrix:

As you can see, this matrix format allows you to quickly and easily identify the various elements you’ve included in your analysis.

Strengths examples

• Excellent, well-trafficked location
• Good reputation in local community
• Seasonal menu, locally sourced

Weaknesses examples

• Higher costs than comparable chain restaurants
• Single location means limited reach
• Modest advertising budget
• Not currently on food delivery apps

Opportunities examples

• Growing interest in locally sourced ingredients
• Seasonal menu keeps the offering fresh and newsworthy
• Potential growth via delivery apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats

Threat examples

• Intensifying competition from established chain restaurants
• Uncertain economic environment
• Rising cost of ingredients

The matrix format makes the tradeoffs readable at a glance: a strong local brand with real cost and reach disadvantages, in a market where delivery demand is growing. If you run a restaurant yourself, our restaurant marketing ideas guide pairs well with this example.

SWOT analysis example: Acting on your results

A completed SWOT matrix is a diagnosis, not a plan. The value shows up in the two moves that follow: matching strengths to opportunities and converting weaknesses into strengths. Here’s how that works with the restaurant example.

1. Harness your strengths

The best thing about your strengths is that you’re already doing them.

In our example, the location, reputation, and seasonal menu are all strengths. The play is to keep investing in what’s working: keep experimenting with the seasonal menu and keep nurturing the regular-customer relationships that built the reputation.

Acting on strengths mostly means doing more of what you’re already good at, deliberately instead of accidentally.

2. Shore up your weaknesses

Acting on weaknesses is trickier, not least because it requires being honest about them in the first place.

Some weaknesses resist direct attack. A single-location restaurant can’t out-purchase a chain. But it can compete where the chain structurally can’t: deep, personal customer relationships. And some weaknesses are just unfinished tasks. Not being on delivery apps was a weakness in this example; joining DoorDash or Uber Eats converts it directly into an opportunity captured.

3. Seize opportunities

The opportunities quadrant is the most actionable part of the grid, by design.

In this example, growing consumer interest in locally sourced ingredients is a major opening, but it doesn’t capture itself. It might mean sourcing local produce more aggressively to bring costs down or building the delivery-app presence to widen reach. Two cautions from experience: opportunities decay if you don’t fund them. Even an iron-clad advantage erodes if you stop maintaining it.

Every business’s opportunities differ, but every business needs the same thing: a clearly defined roadmap for capturing each one, internal or external.

4. Mitigate threats

Threats are mostly external, so full mitigation is usually impossible. The goal is monitoring plus positioning.

In this example, all three threats are hard ones. Competing with chain prices could force a choice between cheaper ingredients and thinner margins. Economic uncertainty can’t be mitigated at all, only planned around.

But look for the crossovers between quadrants. Locally sourced ingredients showed up as an opportunity while chain competition showed up as a threat. Highlighting the restaurant’s relationships with local farmers reinforces its community position AND blunts the chains’ main advantage. When one move captures an opportunity and reduces a threat at the same time, that’s usually your first priority.

Turn your SWOT into strategy with a TOWS matrix

A TOWS matrix converts a finished SWOT analysis into four types of strategy by crossing internal factors against external ones: SO strategies use Strengths to capture Opportunities, WO strategies fix Weaknesses to capture Opportunities, ST strategies use Strengths to defend against Threats, and WT strategies minimize Weaknesses to avoid Threats.

The framework comes from Heinz Weihrich’s 1982 paper “The TOWS Matrix: A Tool for Situational Analysis”, published in Long Range Planning. It’s the standard answer to the most common SWOT complaint: “we made the grid, now what?”

Here’s how each intersection works:

• SO (Offensive). Your strongest assets meet the best market openings. These tend to be the highest-leverage plays on the board.
• WO (Catch-up). The opening is there, but a gap blocks you from taking it. These are investment plays.
• ST (Defensive). Use existing assets to neutralize incoming threats. This is where you protect your position.
• WT (Survival). Vulnerabilities meet incoming threats. Triage these first, even if the work is unglamorous.

In practice, SO and WT pairs are the easiest to spot. The WO and ST intersections are where I most often find strategies a team hadn’t considered.

Here’s a worked example using a dental practice’s spring marketing plan, so you can see what evidence-backed entries and month-level strategies look like side by side:

And here’s a generator that crosses your own entries automatically. It pulls from the SWOT Builder above. You can also paste entries directly:

INTERACTIVE TOOL

TOWS Matrix Generator

SWOT is a list. TOWS turns it into action. Load your entries from the SWOT Builder above or paste your top entries below, one per line.

Load from SWOT Builder →

YOUR TOP STRENGTHS (S)

YOUR TOP WEAKNESSES (W)

YOUR TOP OPPORTUNITIES (O)

YOUR TOP THREATS (T)

Generate TOWS strategies →

TOWS matrix framework: Heinz Weihrich, Long Range Planning (1982). Four strategy types from SWOT crossings.

wordstream.com

Generate the candidates, then pick two or three to actually commit to, each with an owner and a deadline. A strategy without an owner is a suggestion.

8 common SWOT analysis mistakes

The most common SWOT analysis mistakes are vague entries, mixing internal with external factors, treating the exercise as an unfiltered brainstorm, skipping supporting evidence, stopping at the list instead of converting it to strategy, running it solo, letting it go stale, and letting confirmation bias inflate the strengths quadrant.

I see the same failure patterns over and over. The full breakdown, with what each mistake costs you and how to fix it:

REFERENCE TABLE

Eight Common SWOT Analysis Mistakes

These patterns turn an analysis into wallpaper. Each row pairs the mistake with the cost and the fix.

THE MISTAKE

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

HOW TO FIX IT

THE MISTAKE

1. Vague entries

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

"Strong team" or "good reputation" tell you nothing. The SWOT becomes wallpaper and cannot drive resource decisions.

HOW TO FIX IT

Every entry must pass the "specific enough to argue with" test. "5-star Google rating with 312 reviews" beats "great reviews."

THE MISTAKE

2. Mixing internal and external

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

Putting "competitor X is winning" in Weaknesses (it is a Threat) or "we should hire a marketer" in Opportunities (it is a TOWS action).

HOW TO FIX IT

S and W are about your business. O and T are about the market. If you control it, it is internal.

THE MISTAKE

3. Treating it as a brainstorm

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

20 sticky notes per quadrant. No prioritization. No filter. The output is a noisy list, not an analysis.

HOW TO FIX IT

Cap each quadrant at 3 to 5 top entries. Forced ranking surfaces the real signal.

THE MISTAKE

4. No supporting evidence

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

"Our customer service is amazing" with no NPS data, review analysis or churn numbers to back it. Opinion masquerading as analysis.

HOW TO FIX IT

Every entry needs at least one anchoring data point. If you cannot cite one, downgrade the entry.

THE MISTAKE

5. Stopping at the list

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

SWOT alone is description. Without TOWS, you have not produced a single decision or action.

HOW TO FIX IT

Always pair SWOT with TOWS. Generate SO, WO, ST and WT strategy candidates and pick 2 to 3 to commit to.

THE MISTAKE

6. Doing it alone

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

A founder running SWOT solo misses sales-team objections, customer-success patterns and operations gaps invisible from the top of the org chart.

HOW TO FIX IT

Include sales, marketing, customer success and operations. Each lens surfaces different entries.

THE MISTAKE

7. Updating once a year (or never)

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

An annual offsite SWOT goes stale by month four. Market shifts, competitor moves and internal capability changes all invalidate entries.

HOW TO FIX IT

Refresh quarterly at minimum. Do a full rebuild if a major event (new competitor, regulatory change) reshapes your market.

THE MISTAKE

8. Confirmation bias

WHAT IT COSTS YOU

Strengths inflate, Weaknesses shrink, Threats get minimized. The SWOT becomes the story the team wants to tell, not the one the market is telling.

HOW TO FIX IT

Assign a "red team" to attack the SWOT. Use AI tools for devil's advocate prompts. Pressure-test before committing.

Source: WordStream practitioner notes from SMB strategy engagements.

wordstream.com

Two of these deserve special emphasis:

• Stopping at the list. SWOT alone is description. Without a conversion step like TOWS, the meeting produced a poster, not a plan.
• Confirmation bias. Strengths inflate, weaknesses shrink, threats get minimized. Assign someone to red-team the grid before you commit to it. It’s a lot cheaper to be wrong in the meeting than in the market.

How often should you update a SWOT analysis?

I recommend refreshing a SWOT analysis quarterly, with a full rebuild whenever a major event reshapes your market: a new competitor, a regulatory change, a pricing shift from a key player, or a big swing in your own capabilities.

An annual offsite SWOT tends to go stale within a few months, because the external half of the grid is a snapshot of a moving picture. Competitor moves and market shifts don’t wait for your planning cycle.

A practical cadence that works for most small businesses:

• Quarterly: 30-minute review. Re-read every entry and ask “is this still true?” Update what changed.
• Annually: Full rebuild with the whole team, starting from a blank grid rather than editing last year’s.
• Event-driven: Rebuild the external quadrants any time a major competitor, regulation or technology shift lands.

If you’re tracking competitors between refreshes, a lightweight competitive analysis template makes the quarterly pass much faster.

What is PEST analysis?

While we’re here, it’s worth covering a related but separate framework: PEST analysis.

External pressures like regulatory change and market volatility can be listed as threats in a SWOT, but they’re often driven by dozens of underlying factors, which puts them beyond the scope of a typical SWOT session. That’s the gap PEST fills. A PEST analysis works much like a SWOT analysis but focuses entirely on four external forces:

1. Political
2. Economic
3. Sociocultural
4. Technological

Pros of PEST analysis

Many of the factors that land in a PEST matrix are also relevant to the Opportunities and Threats quadrants of your SWOT. Political and economic volatility can pose real threats (and open real opportunities) for many businesses, but these forces tend to be more complicated than typical SWOT entries, with broader scale and messier underlying causes. PEST gives them the dedicated treatment they need.

Cons of PEST analysis

PEST obstacles usually sit on much longer timeframes. It’s a lot faster to fix high staff turnover than to wait out an economic cycle.

Image via Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue/Hofstra University

For most small businesses, SWOT plus a quarterly refresh covers it. Add PEST when regulation or macro conditions are a first-order driver of your business.

Benefits of SWOT analysis for small businesses

If you run a small business, you might wonder whether a SWOT analysis is worth the overhead. In my experience, it usually is, for three reasons:

• Get a bird’s-eye view. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day weeds. A SWOT analysis forces a broader look at your business and the position it occupies in your market. Pairing it with a clear mission statement makes the “where are we going” half of planning much easier.
• Improve specific campaigns and projects. The framework scales down well. You can SWOT a forthcoming ad campaign, a content project, or a trade show appearance, not just the whole company. Here’s an example of a project SWOT analysis:

Source

• Develop tangible roadmaps. The exercise surfaces what you do well, where you lag, and what’s coming, then hands you the raw material for budgets, hiring plans, and mid-term strategy.

The overhead is one or two meetings. The return is a shared, prioritized picture of the business that everyone in the room helped build.

Free SWOT analysis template

Ready to put it all into practice? Here’s our free, editable SWOT analysis template.

It’s a Google Sheet, so you can add and remove rows, edit and answer the questions, paste the grid into a slide deck, and more. We’ve included a blank version too.

Grab your copy of the free SWOT analysis template here.

If you’d rather work in the browser, the interactive SWOT Builder earlier in this post exports to CSV and Markdown as well.

SWOT analysis FAQs

What does SWOT stand for?

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal factors within your company’s control, while Opportunities and Threats are external factors coming from your market, competitors, or operating environment.

What is a SWOT analysis used for?

A SWOT analysis is used to assess a business, department, or project before making strategic decisions. Common uses include annual planning, evaluating a new campaign or market entry, preparing for competitive shifts, and building a shared, prioritized view of the business across a leadership team.

How do you do a SWOT analysis?

Gather a cross-functional team, draw a four-quadrant grid, and fill in Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats using structured questions. Make each entry specific and evidence-backed, prioritize the top three to five per quadrant, then convert the grid into strategies with owners and deadlines.

What’s the difference between SWOT and TOWS?

SWOT is the diagnosis; TOWS is the prescription. A SWOT analysis lists Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, while a TOWS matrix crosses those quadrants (SO, WO, ST, WT) to generate four types of strategy, from offensive plays to survival moves.

How often should you update a SWOT analysis?

Review your SWOT quarterly and rebuild it annually; in my experience, the minimum for keeping it decision-grade. Also rebuild the external quadrants after any major market event, such as a new competitor entering, a regulatory change, or a major pricing move by an incumbent.

What’s the difference between SWOT and PEST analysis?

A SWOT analysis covers internal strengths and weaknesses plus external opportunities and threats. A PEST analysis is external only, examining Political, Economic, Sociocultural, and Technological forces. Larger companies often run both: SWOT for near-term action, PEST for longer-term strategy.

Who invented the SWOT analysis?

The SWOT framework is commonly credited to Albert Humphrey’s research at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, though its exact origin is debated among management historians. The TOWS matrix extension was introduced by Heinz Weihrich in a 1982 Long Range Planning paper.

What are examples of strengths and weaknesses in a SWOT analysis?

Strength examples include a 4.8-star Google rating, long-tenured staff, or a high-traffic location. Weakness examples include an outdated website, no paid acquisition program, or limited hours. The common thread: each is internal, specific, and verifiable rather than a vague label like “good reputation.”

Where to go next

A SWOT analysis is worth the meeting it takes to build, but only if you convert it: prioritize the entries, cross them in the TOWS generator, and leave with two or three owned, deadlined strategies. Then put a quarterly review on the calendar before everyone forgets.

From here, the natural next steps are a proper competitive analysis, a look at your competitive positioning, and, if you compete in search, a competitor keyword analysis to see where rivals are winning attention you could own.

The post How to Do a SWOT Analysis (with Examples, a Free Template, & Tools) appeared first on WordStream.

But one area that they’re not great at: positioning our businesses in the way we want to be. The AI algorithms can craft compelling messaging that speaks to our customers’ desires, but they’re not always great at making sure that the messaging is compatible with your brand voice and market position.

The solution: AI Brief. It’s a new tool announced by Google in May 2026 that aims to help advertisers leverage AI systems that can get better results, but with direct advertiser input to make sure the messaging Google uses passes the sniff test. Here’s the full rundown.

Contents

• What is AI Brief in Google Ads?
• Which Google Ads campaigns have AI Brief?
• Where will Google Ads AI Briefs be applied in campaigns?
• Which parts of Google Ads won’t be impacted by AI Brief?
• When will AI Brief roll out?
• Benefits of Google Ads AI Brief
• AI Brief potential limitations and drawbacks
• Tips for using AI Brief in Google Ads

What is AI Brief in Google Ads?

In the shortest terms, AI Brief is a new feature that lets advertisers provide context to Google’s AI to help give direction on the type of messaging to use, searches to match for, and audiences to engage with.

In the image below, you can see what this new input system looks like. You start by defining your ideal ads. This is a simple open text box for you to give directions in.

There are additional areas to help craft messaging. Specifically, you can add words to avoid, as well as longer messaging to include or exclude from messaging.

While the image doesn’t show it (and I haven’t seen this live in any of my accounts yet), you can also give direction on the queries your ads match to, as well as the audiences you serve for.

Which Google Ads campaigns have AI Brief?

This feature was announced for AI Max campaigns in Google Ads, but has since been expanded to include AI Max for Shopping, and will be rolling out to Performance Max as well.

Essentially, any area of the Google Ads platform that leverages the “asset optimization” feature is likely going to get access to the new AI Brief functionality.

AI Max campaigns will now have an AI Brief option during the creation process.

Where will Google Ads AI Briefs be applied in campaigns?

AI Brief specifically impacts three areas in AI Max search campaigns:

• Messaging: Tell Google AI what it can and can’t say in assets (ad text) that it customizes for you.
• Matching: Provide guidelines for the types of queries you want to show for and those you want to avoid. This is more of a broad direction than keywords or negatives. Don’t say “Exclude ‘free,’ ‘cheap,’ ‘discount,'” etc. Instead, give broad directions like “We’re a premium brand and want to avoid all queries where someone might be looking for discounts or low-cost products”.
• Audience: Create a portrait or persona you want to target with your ads and have Google’s AI find users in line with that group rather than using specific audiences from their prebuilt library.

Which parts of Google Ads won’t be impacted by AI Brief?

While you are able to give direction on matching and audiences, AI Brief is not intended to be a replacement for keyword targeting, audience signals, Smart Bidding, or landing pages. It’s essentially just another layer of signals that can help Google get you the best results based on your account or campaign goals.

When will AI Brief roll out?

While Google hasn’t released a fixed rollout calendar, AI Brief will roll out in AI Max for Search campaigns (English-only to start) over the coming months before expanding to Performance Max and AI Max for Shopping campaigns. Any of your existing text guidelines will be migrated into AI Brief once the feature is activated in your account(s).

Once that rollout is complete (or close to it), AI Brief functionality will begin rolling out to Performance Max and AI Max for Shopping campaigns.

Benefits of Google Ads AI Brief

Ask any of us old-timers; we’ll tell you search behavior has changed quite a bit over the last 10 years. Searches are regularly longer and more conversational than they were in the past. Users are no longer trying to distill their query into the shortest amount of text they can, because the machines can understand their intent much better now. Google can now serve ads to people based on the intent signals it gathers from those queries.

Additionally, Google tends to have a decent handle on what messaging the user wants to see at that moment. The introduction of automated messaging helps businesses serve a compelling message to someone in the midst of a high-intent interaction with Google.

The problem really comes down to making sure that the compelling message Google serves in that high-intent moment is in line with your business. With AI Brief, you’re able to give direction to the AI exactly like you would with a creative agency or copywriter.

AI Brief potential limitations and drawbacks to be aware of

At this point, everything AI Brief has to offer probably sounds pretty good. No business is ever too disappointed when they’re able to make sure the brand messaging is followed while getting good results, right?

But that’s just one side of the situation. Here are some things to keep in mind with AI Brief:

• Garbage in, garbage out: It’s still on you to give good direction to AI Brief. Without clear direction, the system still might target the wrong users, leverage the wrong brand voice, and so on. Put in the effort for this area of the account to make sure you’re leveraging it fully.
• Guidance, not hard rules: The direction you give in the AI Brief is still just that: direction. The language you use here won’t categorically override certain bid decisions, auction choices, asset combinations, or matching to specific queries if Google thinks it can see results. If you need more firm rules, address those in your campaign settings.
• It only works for AI Max (and other highly-automated options): I don’t know about you, but I’ve tested AI Max for many of my accounts, and the results are….well, I later turned it off. Performance Max has a better track record for me, but it’s still on thin ice in some places. AI Brief isn’t a feature for regular Search campaigns. You must be opted into AI Max. If you’ve already tested this and didn’t see results (i.e., me), it might be worth another round of testing, but just be aware that AI Max is part of the deal you opt into with AI Brief.

For best results, you should treat your AI Brief as you would any other AI prompt.

Tips for using AI Brief in Google Ads

Once AI Max is rolled out to your account, here are some things I think you should keep in mind when you begin to leverage it for the first time:

• Use natural language in your direction, but keep it clear. Don’t try to get too fancy with your direction or “game” the AI for one thing or another.
• Be clear about the messaging you want included or excluded.
• Highlight the differentiators between you and your competitors.
• Give a clear picture of who your target audience is based on the keywords you’re leveraging in that campaign.
• Review Google’s suggested assets and search queries before finishing up. If you notice something’s amiss, you can adjust your inputs to get what you’re looking for.
• This isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it tool. Regularly review your AI Brief if your business, audience, campaign strategy, or some other portion of the ecosystem changes.

How to turn AI Briefs into your next go-to Google Ads tool

It’s been said for a while that advertisers in Google Ads are slowly shifting from campaign managers to machine managers to make the campaigns work. AI is a part of every system in the platform, but AI Brief is the most direct example of this shift. Advertisers simply give direction, then lean on the machine to execute.

Again, it’s not a full solution, but it’s the first step in that direction. This can be a great tool for getting better results from AI Max campaigns, but it is also likely a skill advertisers are going to need to develop to see success in the future.

For more ways to run efficient, automated advertising campaigns on Google and beyond, see how our solutions can help!

The post Google AI Brief: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on WordStream.

These are the questions our team has been asking for months. So we’ve been using an AI analytics tool to track all the activity originating from AI bots on our sites to understand what they’re doing behind the scenes.

And let me tell you…it was quite interesting. In some cases, it was interesting in a good way; we could see the pages that AI is scraping the most and glean insightful takeaways from that. In other cases, it was not so good; we could see for sure that while AI bots are scraping our site millions of times, they’re certainly not sending millions of visits our way (we’re not surprised, but a girl can dream).

So if, like us, you’re curious what AI bots are doing on your site, what types of content they’re interested in, and what ratio of traffic they’re potentially sending your way, I’ve got you covered.

Contents

• AI bots scraped our site millions of times but referred a much lower volume of traffic
• Our most resource-intensive data studies are the pages most frequently scraped
• AI bots and real people have different reading habits
• Some pages have a higher scrape-to-referral ratio (AKA they’re easier to plagiarize)
• OpenAI was by far the top scraper
• The AI scrape-to-referral ratio is getting worse over time

6 crazy things we found from tracking our AI analytics data

Here are the most interesting, kind of scary, or just plain maddening takeaways from tracking our AI scraped data.

1. AI bots scraped our site millions of times but referred a much lower volume of traffic

Here’s the headline: AI scraped our site over 4.45 million times in just six months. What do we have to show for it? A scrape-to-referral ratio of 201:1. Which, to spell it out, means that we received one visit for every 201 times AI bots scraped our site.

That means that AI systems consumed our content at a rate more than 200X higher than they referred users back to our site.

I’m being a little redundant, but it’s worth driving the point home.

Especially when you consider that AI bots scraping your site does have an impact on your site. With bots now making up over half of web traffic, their frequent visits to your site can actually increase your hosting bandwidth and any costs associated with that.

It’s also getting harder to track and mitigate any potential issues that arise from their frequent visits.

“It used to be easier to classify the bots visiting our sites and to know if they were malicious, or search crawlers, or RAG bots,” said Justin Al-Qudah, director of web strategy and growth for LocaliQ.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in the number of bots hitting our sites, and with that increase, the majority have an unknown classification. This means more time reading up on the purpose of the bots and determining whether we block their crawls.”

“Not only that, but some have found fun new ways to sneak into our analytics, which means troubleshooting just to get a clear view into your analytics,” Justin said.

Looking for more ways to drive people to your site? Free guide >> 25 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

2. Our most resource-intensive data studies are the pages most frequently scraped

When we looked at the most-scraped pages on our site, we noticed almost all of them had something in common: they were data-focused.

Top scraped pages:

1. Facebook Ads Benchmarks (2025)
2. Our homepage
3. ChatGPT Plus vs. Free
4. Google Ads Benchmarks (2025)
5. Best Time to Post on Social Media
6. Conversion Rate Benchmarks
7. Average Cost Per Click
8. Facebook Ads Benchmarks (2017)
9. 2026 Video Marketing Trends
10. Facebook Ads Benchmarks (2024)

Our benchmarks (Google Ads, Facebook ads, and conversion rate), a post around the average cost per click, and data on the best time to post on social media hit the top 10. These are some of our most resource-intensive posts—requiring hours of data analysis, time identifying and reaching out to experts to contextualize the data, and design resources to create our data visualization pieces. To know that these pages are getting scraped most frequently without, in many cases, driving traffic or even credit is pretty frustrating.

Funnily enough, the main post that doesn’t really fit the mix—ChatGPT vs. Free—is one that doesn’t get a ton of traffic, but it was one of our top-scraped pages. Which begs the question: Does AI love reading about itself?

But I digress. Aside from that post, this list shows that AI bots heavily favor (at least on our site) data, statistics, and definitions. Which isn’t a surprise—GEO experts have been preaching the importance of first-party data if you want to get sourced in AI search—but it’s definitely validated with this list.

Download some of our best reports: 2026 Google Ads Benchmarks + our Facebook Ads Benchmarks >>

3. AI bots and real people have different reading habits

While there is some overlap in our most-scraped pages and our most-visited pages on our website (for instance, our advertising benchmarks are consistently top performers), there’s a lot of variation. Strange, almost like bots and real people have different goals. People are looking for ideas, tools, and data to help inform their strategies. And bots are looking for first-party data and research they can take and use as their own.

Our most-visited pages overall—not from AI referrals—include two of our free tools (our Free Keyword Research Tool and our Free Google Ads Performance Grader if you want to check them out ) and some more evergreen content or ideas-related posts.

As we’ve talked about in our blog before, free tools are a bit of an AI-search buster—AI search bots can’t replicate these tools in search results, and there’s not much for them to crawl, aside from recommending them when someone asks for a set of tools.

4. Some pages have a higher scrape-to-referral ratio (AKA they’re easier to plagiarize)

When we look at the pages that are generating the lowest scrape-to-referral ratio, we see data-related posts winning again, along with in-depth learning resources. This is likely because people are seeing the data sourced in AI search results and then clicking to get more details, validation, or (in our dreams) expert insights to explain the data.

When we look at the pages with the highest scrape-to-referral ratio, we see that they are probably instances where someone is getting the full answer directly from an AI search result.

If you ask for social media image sizes, an AI platform like ChatGPT is probably just replicating (or simply stealing) a chart from our post (or from a smattering of posts) and calling it a day. There aren’t many opportunities to follow up. (AI search platforms, you’re welcome!)

5. OpenAI was by far the top scraper

And…we’ve got a stalker. It’s OpenAI with by far the largest share of AI crawler traffic to our site. I’m talking nearly 3X the number of scrapes compared to Meta. This isn’t surprising, as OpenAI, which powers ChatGPT, is one of the largest AI chatbots around, with an over 77% market share.

Speaking of Meta, we were surprised to see them and ByteDance not only on the list, but so high on the list. Are people really using their AI search functions frequently enough to warrant this level of scrapes? Curious. Especially considering Google is so low on the list, and we actually see a good number of referrals from AI Mode. However, our SEO analyst did inform me that he’s seeing Meta AI start to send some referrals our way.

6. The AI scrape-to-referral ratio is getting worse over time

Annoyingly, AI is sending us less traffic over time. The scrape-to-referral ratio worsened by 19.2% from 207:1 to 248:1 over a three-month period.

Could this be because as more people rely on AI search, they’re clicking into results less frequently? Perhaps. Google searches now end without a click nearly 70% of the time, up from just over 60% two years ago.

Searchers seem to be getting more comfortable getting their answers directly from AI chatbots without validating the information directly from the source.

AI chatbots have also adjusted the way they present and source information, oftentimes removing or hiding the original data or source.

This search result from ChatGPT answers my question without a single source listed.

This shift has caused what Daniel Stanica is calling “the great blogging collapse.” As blogs have seen traffic decline due to AI search (in his study, the average blog had lost 85% of organic traffic over four years), many businesses have stopped publishing altogether. And even news publishers are feeling the heat—with many beginning to consider blocking AI bots from crawling their websites at all.

As bots continue crawling at such high rates without sending meaningful traffic back to websites, this problem is only going to compound. Which means less relevant, insightful, and useful content for humans to consume (and less good content for bots to learn—or steal—from).

What this all means

Why share this data? Well, first of all, our team found it particularly interesting as we’ve been hearing how important it is to optimize your content to get found in AI search results. To do that, obviously your site is going to need to be scraped.

As evidenced by some of the most-scraped pages on our site, AI bots are simply taking our first-party data, research, and insights and replicating it directly within their results. This isn’t surprising; we understand what the modern search experience looks like. But between this and our data on whether or not you should try to optimize for AI Overviews, it does beg the question:

Is the rate at which AI bots are scraping our site really worth the measly amount of traffic it’s sending our way?

Many other website owners have the same concerns, as evidenced by this note on Reddit:

Secondly, it is interesting to see the pages that AI bots are scraping and sending traffic to at a higher rate. Those are areas we might want to focus on to play the GEO game.

Overall, we know that AI search isn’t going anywhere, and the modern search experience has made AI a big piece of the puzzle. So, we’ll take this data and use it to continue adjusting and optimizing our own content plan for the channels, topics, and strategies that work best for us (not necessarily the bots).

The post We Analyzed Millions of AI Bot Scrapes. Here Are 6 Crazy Things We Found appeared first on WordStream.

The options can feel endless (read: overwhelming). The good news is you don’t need all of them. In the businesses I’ve worked with, 5-8 tactics executed consistently beat 15 tactics executed halfway, every time.

In this article, I’ll cover the 30 most effective ways to promote your business, whether you have no budget, a limited budget, or some wiggle room. I’ve also included tools to help you pick the right tactics for your situation and a 30-day plan to get started.

Contents

• How to pick the right ways of promoting your business
  • Promotion Plan Builder
• How to promote your business on Google
• How to promote your business using online directories
• How to promote your business on social media
• How to promote your business in your community
• Other effective ways of promoting your business
• How to promote your business in AI search results
• How to track which promotion tactics are working
  • Promotion Tactic ROI Estimator
• How long does it take to promote a business?
• Your first 30 days: where to start
  • Promotion Starter Plan
• 8 common business promotion mistakes
• How to advertise your business: The full list
• FAQs

How to pick the right ways to promote your business

To pick the right ways to promote your business, match each tactic to your budget, your available time, your business type, and how fast you need results, then commit to 5 to 8 tactics for at least 90 days. Spreading a small budget across everything is the most reliable way to make nothing work.

A useful way to sort the options is effort versus expected impact. The high-impact, low-effort quadrant (your Google Business Profile, emailing your existing list, review collection) is where most small businesses should start. The high-impact, high-effort quadrant (Google Ads, SEO, email automation) is worth the work but needs real commitment.

Answer four questions in the builder below, and it will rank the tactics that fit your situation:

INTERACTIVE TOOL

Promotion Plan Builder

Answer four questions. Get a ranked shortlist of the promotion tactics that fit your budget, time and business.

MONTHLY MARKETING BUDGET $0 (time only) $1 to $500 $500 to $2,500 $2,500 to $10,000 $10,000+

TIME AVAILABLE PER WEEK Under 2 hours 2 to 5 hours 5 to 10 hours 10+ hours

BUSINESS TYPE Local service business Ecommerce B2B Professional services Restaurant / hospitality

WHEN DO YOU NEED RESULTS? Within 30 days 2 to 6 months Long-term (12+ months OK)

Build my promotion plan →

Ranking logic: WordStream practitioner framework matching tactic profile to business context. Budget ranges and timelines are practitioner rules of thumb, not guarantees.

wordstream.com

Treat the output as a starting shortlist, not gospel. You know your market better than any scoring model does.

Looking for more ways to promote your business? Download now >> 30+ Ways to Promote Your Business (On Any Budget!)

How to promote your business on Google

Not every business needs to do SEO and run Google Ads, but most businesses could benefit from some form of promotion through Google. StatCounter puts Google at roughly 90% of global search market share, which means it’s where your customers are already looking for solutions. Here are the best ways to use Google to get your name out there.

1. Create and verify your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (Google’s term for your Google listing) is what allows your business to show up in Google Maps results, the local section of Google Search results, and, when someone types in your business and location, the right-side Knowledge Panel in Search results. As Google keeps getting better at catering its results to the searcher’s location, this free listing should be a top priority.

The key to using your Business Profile to promote your business is to verify ownership of your listing through your free Google Business account. Once you have ownership, you can optimize your listing to show up higher in search results and for more relevant searches.

If you’re ranking on Google Maps or showing up in the Local Pack of regular results pages (this is very doable), your business is basically promoting itself 24/7. Even better, you can publish posts directly to your Google listing, putting attractive promotions in front of your audience at a time when they have high intent.

For a deeper dive into this very free, very effective method of promoting your business, visit our Google Business Profile optimization guide.

2. Get a website

A website is a must-have piece of marketing collateral no matter how old-fashioned your business or clients may be. Your website is the go-to for current and prospective customers. Even if they find you on social media or Google, they will want to go to your website and, like your Google listing, it serves to promote your business around the clock.

A good business website does two jobs. It tells the story of your business: what you offer, how to contact you, and what makes you different. And it’s the measurement hub for everything else.

When you run ads, you need landing pages, which live on your website. When you post on social media, the post should link back to your site. With all of your channels flowing into your website, analytics can show you which strategies are working best.

There are free ways to get a basic site up, but if you’re serious about promoting your business, you’ll almost inevitably want a professionally managed website including your own domain name, a clean and fresh look, and the ability to add features as you grow.

3. Implement search engine optimization

It’s one thing for you to promote your business; it’s another thing for Google to promote your business. SEO (search engine optimization) is the set of practices that align your site with how Google ranks results. And because Google’s systems have evolved to reward what actual searchers find useful, optimizing for search engines is mostly optimizing for searchers, particularly the ones looking for what you offer.

Every result here is for a local business website.

SEO isn’t one tactic but many that work together. Because Google’s location-based results are strong, a local business has a real shot at page one without spending a dime (aside from the website itself). SEO tactics include:

• Adding relevant keywords (industry- and location-based) to specific places on your website.
• Producing original, high-quality content regularly, with tagged images.
• Maintaining fast page loads and site security.

For more SEO tips, check out our post on the top Google ranking factors and how to optimize for them: The Most Important Google Ranking Factors (+How to Optimize for Them).

When your business ranks high in results, Google is promoting it for you to the exact people actively searching for what you sell. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Get updated tips for your SEO strategy with our free guide >> How to Do SEO Right—Right Now!

4. Create a business blog

Content is such an important driver of SEO that it deserves its own slot. A blog is not LiveJournal for businesses. You can post about milestones and events, but a lucrative business blog produces educational content, in your brand voice, around the questions and terms your ideal customers are typing into Google.

Those questions and terms are keywords. The more quality content you produce targeting them, the more chances your business has to show up in search results (and now in AI answers too, which I’ll get to later in this post). Great blog posts can be:

• How-tos and instructional posts
• Lists of strategies and resources
• Q&A or interview write-ups with an industry expert
• Thought leadership posts
• Example and template posts
• Guest posts
• Customer testimonials or case studies
• Seasonal posts

For help finding keywords and creating SEO-friendly blog posts, start with WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool, our guide to creating SEO content, and our SEO checklist.

5. Share your content

A blog that shows your expertise, approachability, and genuine desire to help your audience is the perfect promotional tool. So don’t just publish posts. Promote them on social media, in email newsletters, or as downloadable guides that collect leads. If you produce content with shareability in mind, other credible sites will mention and link to your content, promoting your business for you.

One technical note: the more traffic you get, the more page speed matters. For large or growing sites, a CDN (content delivery network) keeps load times down; Cloudflare’s free tier covers most small business sites.

6. Run Google Ads

SEO is one of the best long-term strategies, but it can take weeks or months to pay off. If you have the budget and want immediate exposure, Google Ads is the way to go. Google Ads appear at the very top of search results pages, above organic and local listings.

Google is the most popular place to run search ads, not just because it has the largest share of search traffic but because of its flexibility, ad-building features, and detailed performance reporting. Mastering it takes time and plenty of trial and error, but an optimized campaign is well worth the investment. You can run text ads on the Search Network or banner ads on the Display Network.

If you’re ready to get started, follow our step-by-step tutorial on how to run Google Ads. Already advertising on Google? See how your campaigns are really performing with our Free Google Ads Performance Grader.

How to promote your business using online directories

Consumers routinely visit online directories to search for and vet businesses. These sites tend to be high-traffic, long-standing domains, so your profile page can show up on page one of Google through them. Listings are quick to create and promote your business to nearby, high-intent customers.

7. Create listings on the major directories

Smaller directory sites pull data from larger ones, so creating listings on the major sites means you’ll likely start showing up on smaller directories automatically. Begin with these; all are free with paid upgrades available:

• Google (see tactic #1)
• Yelp
• Facebook
• Applicable niche directories like TripAdvisor and Angi
• Better Business Bureau
• Glassdoor
• Foursquare (the consumer app is gone, but its Places data still feeds thousands of other platforms)
• Yellow/White Pages
• Bing

For a deeper dive, check out our post on the top free local listing sites.

8. Optimize your listings

It’s one thing to create a listing, but it’s another to optimize it. Fill out every field, add photos, and collect reviews to improve your appeal and rank above competitors in searches.

Make sure the information in all of your listings matches the information on your website; inconsistencies can cause the Goog to raise an eyebrow about your trustworthiness. And monitor your listings to fix inaccuracies, which creep in when listings auto-populate.

9. Get online customer reviews

Word of mouth is one of, perhaps the most, powerful way of promoting your business to the right people. Testimonials on your own website are great, but reviews on official platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp are even better.

These platforms increase your exposure. And because they have measures in place to prevent fake or spam reviews, people trust reviews there more than anywhere else. Reviews are also a major ranking factor for local search results.

To get more reviews, start with our posts on how to ask for reviews and the tried-and-true tactics for getting more Google reviews.

10. Monitor and respond to reviews

Many directories let anyone add a listing, so your business may already be on a site collecting reviews without you. Claim your listings wherever possible and monitor them.

Responding to reviews is itself a promotion tactic: you can resolve (and sometimes reverse) negative reviews. The way you answer all reviews also shows potential customers what it’s like to do business with you.

Get all the tips you need to collect more reviews in this free guide download >> How to Get More Reviews: 8 Tips to Boost Ranking, Reputation, & Revenue

How to promote your business on social media

Social media is another free way to get the word out. The most-used business platforms are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X. Niche platforms like Pinterest, Reddit and TikTok can matter more than the big ones depending on your audience.

11. Prioritize Facebook

Facebook remains one of the two or three most-used social platforms on earth by any counting method, per DataReportal’s global social media data. It’s a solid way to keep in touch with existing customers and reach new ones. The basics:

• Create a Facebook business page with your contact information and a CTA (call to action).
• Use Facebook events to promote and maximize attendance to your events.
• Run Facebook live sessions of tutorials or behind-the-scenes sneak peeks.

And don’t forget Facebook ads. Facebook advertising reaches highly specific audiences, since you can target by profile information like occupation and interests.

For more, see our Facebook marketing tips for small businesses and our roundup of free Facebook ads courses. Grade existing campaigns with the Free Facebook Ads Performance Grader.

12. Connect and contribute on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become more than a place to post your resume. It’s a place to join group discussions, connect with potential customers, form partnerships, and do general online networking. Potential customers can check out you or your company before doing business with you.

You can also promote your business indirectly by contributing perspectives in group discussions and linking to relevant content on your website. Just make sure you’re not always promoting your own content. The 80/20 rule applies: mostly help, occasionally pitch.

13. Upload videos to YouTube

Video marketing is a great way to promote your business. YouTube lets you do it for free. A quick overview video of your business gives you a sales tool for your homepage and prospect emails. Educational videos, tutorials, and how-tos get you discovered by people searching for what you offer. Videos often show up at the top of results for niche searches.

There are plenty of affordable options for making videos; check out our post on the best video editing software for beginners.

14. Advertise on YouTube

As with the other paid strategies in this post, YouTube advertising is an investment that pays off if it’s done right. You run video ads that play before videos in relevant categories or target high-intent searches in your category.

15. Engage your audience on Instagram

Instagram is one of the three or four most-used social platforms worldwide, depending on which count you use, per DataReportal. With its range of formats (feed posts, Reels, Stories, live sessions, Story Highlights), there are plenty of ways to engage your audience:

• Promote your sales and deals with hashtags to expand your reach.
• Run contests with a free or discounted product to generate buzz (and collect leads).
• Offer advice and tutorials to stand out as a go-to resource.

For more ways to promote your business on Instagram, check out our Instagram marketing tips.

16. Share on X (formerly Twitter)

X can still work as a free promotion channel, mainly if your customers already spend time there: think media, tech, sports, finance and local news niches. It takes consistent activity to build an audience, but posting your products, deals and updates costs nothing. Local businesses can use it to invite nearby customers to stop in.

17. Give Pinterest a shot

Pinterest is fundamentally about sharing images, but the fact that your images link back to your website makes it a real traffic channel. It’s especially powerful for ecommerce businesses reaching a predominantly female audience. If that fits your profile, get active on Pinterest.

18. Try out TikTok

TikTok’s advertising tools reach an estimated 2.21 billion users, more than X, LinkedIn, Snapchat, or Pinterest, per DataReportal.

Its editing tools make compelling short videos easy. It’s no longer just a young person’s platform. Jump on to post how-tos, tutorials, or behind-the-scenes videos, then cross-promote your TikTok content on your other networks.

19. Join online communities

One of the best ways to get a leg up is to offer a hand up to others. Join communities relevant to your business on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook. Offer good advice when people have problems or questions. (Make sure your profile points back to your business.)

This builds genuine reputation and connections. And while you’re helping one person, a thousand silent others see your name and what you’re doing.

20. Try an influencer marketing collaboration

Influencers are celebrities within your niche: highly respected, widely followed, and deeply trusted. Getting mentioned or featured by one can promote your business to a large, relevant audience.

It’s a careful strategy, though. Before reaching out, familiarize yourself with their accounts across networks; comment on, like, and share their content; and approach with a specific ask plus something of equal value in exchange. You might offer a month of free classes in exchange for a review or write a high-quality guest post for their blog that benefits their audience and earns you a backlink.

21. Invest in social media advertising

Paid social puts your business in front of a precisely targeted audience. The pool is enormous: DataReportal counts 5.79 billion social media user identities worldwide as of April 2026. Done right, it delivers:

• Familiarity: Meet people on the channels they use most.
• Cost-effectiveness. Advanced targeting shows your ads to only the most relevant audience.
• Supporting content. Your organic posts back up your sponsored posts.
• Brand loyalty. More followers means community around your business.
• Analytics: Know what’s working so you can allocate your budget accordingly.

How to promote your business in your community

For local businesses, the community is a critical component of success. Retailers and restaurants understand this implicitly. Even businesses focused on a wider market have real attachment to the places where they operate. Here’s how to market your small business locally.

22. Strive to get local press

Pitching your business to the local press feels intimidating, but local blogs, newspapers, and online publications are always hunting for fresh content.

Reach out to local news sources and see if you can contribute an article: a thought leadership piece, a list of resources or a newsworthy update about your business. If your story is compelling enough, someone else may write the feature for you. You can also write about an event you’re hosting or invite a local writer to attend free in exchange for a recap.

With more budget, consider a PR partner or firm. With less, you can publish your own press releases through services like PRWeb; they sometimes get picked up by outlets and the links help your SEO. You can learn how to write a great press release in our guide

23. Form partnerships

Partnering with non-competitive businesses that serve the same clientele is a great way to promote your business in your local network. Once the relationship exists, cross-promote through each other’s email lists, in-store flyers, coupons, or social accounts. Get creative to maximize the promotional value.

24. Network, network, network

Attending local networking events raises your presence in your community. It works better for some businesses than others: if you serve other local businesses or consumers directly, networking pays off much faster than if you sell products online. But every kind of networking helps, even if it’s just trading ideas with other owners.

And if you do partake (I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, but you should), do not miss out on our nine networking email templates, like the one below:

25. Attend, host, or sponsor local events

Even in an increasingly digital world, events in your community are a great way to promote your business while strengthening your connection with local customers.

Run a class at your location, teach one at a school or library, or simply host a fun seasonal or family-oriented event. Make the time do double duty: have a friend film you teaching, then put that video on your website and YouTube.

26. Try out direct mail

Despite digital’s dominance, postcards, flyers, and letters can still promote your business effectively to nearby customers. The challenge is targeting: you can’t narrow a mailing the way you narrow an ad audience, so volume matters. The benefit is repeatability; once a mailer works, it tends to keep working.

Also consider small gift packages for loyal customers during the holidays. They come back. And they talk.

27. Advertise locally and offline

Newspapers, magazines, radio, and even television remain traditional paid channels. If you go this route, the key is tracking: use a dedicated phone number or URL on every placement so you know what it produced. For more, head to our local advertising ideas for small businesses.

Other effective ways of promoting your business

These three are last but not least. They just didn’t fit neatly into the groups above.

28. Attend trade shows

If you target a national audience and sell to retailers, a big trade show might make sense. Unsure of the value? Attend as a visitor first. If you have a good relationship with a company already exhibiting, they may let you hang out in their booth, where you can observe, learn, and maybe even promote your business free of charge.

29. Run email marketing campaigns

Email marketing has been around for ages, and it remains the workhorse: Litmus pegs average email ROI at $36 for every $1 spent, the highest of any major channel. Email works because:

• People like to stay informed, and they check email constantly.
• Reporting is detailed. You know exactly who opened and clicked.
• Segmentation works. Targeted, personalized emails outperform blasts.
• The platforms are easy. Modern email tools handle the heavy lifting.

For more tips on using email marketing, check out our post on writing promotional emails people do not delete.

30. Make advocates out of your employees

Good leadership and proper treatment of your employees naturally turns them into advocates. Hold brainstorm sessions, encourage employee blog contributions, get them involved in local events, run family-and-friends promotions. Value them, and they’ll value the business they work for. Then equip them with news and tools to spread the word effortlessly.

How to promote your business in AI search results

To promote your business in AI search results, publish content that directly answers the specific questions your customers ask, keep your Google Business Profile and reviews current, and add FAQ (frequently asked questions) content with structured data, because tools like Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT assemble answers from retrievable passages and trusted business data.

This is the newest channel on this list, and it’s compounding fast. A few practical moves:

• Answer one question per page section. AI systems retrieve passages, not pages. A clear heading plus a direct 40-to-60-word answer is the retrievable unit.
• Keep your business data clean. AI assistants lean on the same listings and reviews covered in tactics 1 and 7 through 10. An unclaimed or inconsistent profile can’t be recommended.
• Show first-hand expertise. Named authors, real photos, and specific numbers get cited; generic summaries don’t.

AI answers are probabilistic, so treat this as a durability play rather than a faucet you can turn on. If you want to go deeper on how AI systems break a question into sub-queries and pick what to cite, I wrote up the mechanics in our query fan-out guide.

Get everything you need to know about showing up in AI search in our free guide: The AI Search Toolkit >>

How to track which promotion tactics are working

To track which promotion tactics are working, set up conversion tracking before you spend, tag every campaign link with UTM parameters, and ask every new customer how they heard about you. If you can’t tell which tactic produced which customer, you can’t scale what works. Every dollar after that is guessing.

The minimum viable stack for most small businesses:

• Conversion tracking in Google Ads and GA4 (Google Analytics 4) for anything paid.
• UTM parameters on every link you place in an email, ad, listing, or sponsorship.
• A “how did you hear about us?” field on your forms and in your intake script. Low-tech, surprisingly accurate.

Then estimate what your chosen mix should produce, so you have a benchmark to judge it against:

INTERACTIVE TOOL

Promotion Tactic ROI Estimator

Select 3 to 5 tactics, enter your average customer value and monthly goal, then see the projected effort, cost and customer acquisition for the mix.

AVG CUSTOMER VALUE ($)

NEW CUSTOMERS / MONTH GOAL

SELECT TACTICS (3 TO 5 RECOMMENDED)

Estimate ROI →

Effort, cost and customer figures are directional practitioner estimates assuming typical execution at typical SMB budgets; actual results vary by market, offer and execution quality. Revenue, CAC and ROAS outputs are computed from your inputs.

wordstream.com

Review the numbers monthly. Cut the lowest performer, double down on the highest, and keep the mix at 5 to 8 tactics.

How long does it take to promote a business?

Business promotion pays off on three time horizons: quick wins like Google Business Profile optimization and emailing your list show results in 0-2 weeks, compounders like short-form video and email automation take 2 weeks to 3 months, and long bets like SEO and cornerstone content need 3 to 12+ months.

Build a mix across all three bands. Quick wins fund the patience to wait for the compounders and long bets.

The most common 12-month regret I hear from small businesses is skipping the long bets because they’re slow. The second most common is quitting a tactic right before its payoff window. Match your commitment to the tactic’s timeline before you launch, not after the first slow week.

Your first 30 days: where to start

The best place to start promoting your business is a 4-week starter plan: claim your free foundations first in week 1, activate existing demand in week 2, test one new channel in week 3, and measure and decide in week 4. This ordering front-loads the free, high-impact moves before any money goes out the door.

Work through it here; your progress saves in your browser:

INTERACTIVE TOOL

Your First 30 Days: Promotion Starter Plan

A sequenced week-by-week plan covering the highest-leverage starting moves. Check items as you complete them. Progress saves in your browser.

PROGRESS

0 of 0 complete

0%

Plan applies to most SMBs. Adjust for budget, business type and current channel mix.

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At the end of the 30 days, you’ll know what produced leads, what didn’t, and what deserves the next 30.

8 common business promotion mistakes

The most common business promotion mistakes are trying every tactic at once, skipping the free foundations, quitting before a tactic’s payoff window, running without tracking, copying competitors blindly, treating promotion as a one-time effort, burying a vague offer, and ignoring existing customers.

I see the same patterns in almost every stalled account. The full breakdown, with what each mistake costs and the fastest fix:

REFERENCE TABLE

Eight Common Promotion Mistakes

The patterns we see in SMB marketing audits. Each row maps the mistake to the cost it imposes and the fix that recovers performance fastest.

THE MISTAKE

WHY IT COSTS YOU

HOW TO FIX IT

THE MISTAKE

1. Trying all 30 tactics at once

WHY IT COSTS YOU

Splitting limited time and budget across 15 channels means none get enough attention to work. Effort dilutes to nothing.

HOW TO FIX IT

Pick 5 to 8 tactics. Commit for 90 days. Track each one's contribution. Cut what underperforms and scale what works.

THE MISTAKE

2. Skipping the free tactics

WHY IT COSTS YOU

Jumping straight to paid ads while leaving your Google Business Profile unclaimed, customers un-emailed and reviews unanswered ignores your highest-leverage starting moves.

HOW TO FIX IT

Do the free foundations first. Paid amplifies what is working. It cannot fix what is broken.

THE MISTAKE

3. Quitting too early

WHY IT COSTS YOU

SEO tends to need 6 to 12 months. Automated bidding needs weeks to learn. Email automation needs a month or two to show a pattern. Pulling the plug at week 3 wastes the setup investment.

HOW TO FIX IT

Match commitment to the tactic's timeline. Document your kill criteria before launching, not after the first slow week.

THE MISTAKE

4. No tracking, no decisions

WHY IT COSTS YOU

If you cannot tell which tactic produced which customer, you cannot scale what works. Every dollar after that is guessing.

HOW TO FIX IT

Set up conversion tracking before launching any paid tactic. Use UTM parameters religiously. Ask new customers how they heard about you.

THE MISTAKE

5. Copying competitors blindly

WHY IT COSTS YOU

Doing what your biggest competitor does, badly, with a smaller budget, produces predictable underperformance. Their tactics fit their economics, not yours.

HOW TO FIX IT

Match tactics to your specific business, budget and audience. Use the Plan Builder above to filter for your situation.

THE MISTAKE

6. Treating it as one-time

WHY IT COSTS YOU

Set-it-and-forget-it promotion fails. Channels decay, audiences shift, ads fatigue and content goes stale. Without ongoing attention, performance trends down.

HOW TO FIX IT

Block recurring weekly time for marketing review. Treat it like an operational function, not a project.

THE MISTAKE

7. No clear offer or CTA

WHY IT COSTS YOU

The fanciest channel tactic with a vague offer ("Visit our website!") underperforms a simple tactic with a clear offer ("Free quote in 24 hours, text us").

HOW TO FIX IT

Write the offer first. Test it on three friends. If it does not provoke an "I would actually click that" response, rewrite it before launching.

THE MISTAKE

8. Ignoring existing customers

WHY IT COSTS YOU

Your list already knows and trusts you, which makes them far cheaper to activate than strangers. Chasing new acquisition while skipping email and referrals is bad math.

HOW TO FIX IT

Allocate 30 to 40% of promotion effort to existing customers: email, referrals, review collection and retention offers.

Source: WordStream practitioner notes from SMB marketing audits. Timelines and allocation ranges are practitioner rules of thumb.

wordstream.com

If you only fix one: set up tracking. Every other mistake is survivable if you can see it happening.

How to advertise your business: The full list

There’s a long menu of options for promoting your business, no matter your budget. Here’s the full recap:

1. Create and verify your Google Business Profile
2. Get a website
3. Implement SEO
4. Start a business blog
5. Share your content
6. Run Google Ads
7. Create listings on the major directories
8. Optimize your listings
9. Get online customer reviews
10. Monitor and respond to reviews
11. Prioritize Facebook
12. Connect and contribute on LinkedIn
13. Publish videos to YouTube
14. Advertise on YouTube
15. Engage your audience on Instagram
16. Share on X
17. Give Pinterest a shot
18. Try out TikTok
19. Join online communities
20. Collaborate with an influencer
21. Advertise on social media
22. Seek local press
23. Form partnerships
24. Network, network, network
25. Host, attend, or sponsor local events
26. Send direct mail
27. Try local offline advertising
28. Attend trade shows
29. Send marketing emails
30. Turn employees into advocates
31. Get found in AI search

Implementing these strategies pays off, especially if you review and revise the mix regularly.

FAQs about promoting your business

What is the best way to promote your business?

The best way to promote your business is usually the free foundations first: claim and optimize your Google Business Profile, email your existing customer list, and build a steady flow of Google reviews. These reach people with existing intent and cost only time, which makes them the highest-leverage starting moves for most small businesses.

How can I promote my business for free?

Free ways to promote your business include optimizing your Google Business Profile, listing on directories like Yelp and Angi, collecting and responding to reviews, emailing your customer list, posting organic content and short-form video, basic SEO, joining online communities, and pitching local press. Free means it costs time, so still pick a handful and commit.

What’s the fastest way to promote a business?

The fastest ways to promote a business are Google Business Profile optimization, an email to your existing list, and Google Ads on transactional keywords. The first two can produce results within days because they reach people who already know you or are already searching. Paid search adds immediate visibility while slower channels build.

How much does it cost to promote a business?

Promoting a business can cost nothing but time (Google Business Profile, reviews, organic social, SEO basics), under $500 a month (local ads tests, direct mail, email tools, sponsorships), or scale with budget (Google Ads, Meta ads, agencies). Most small businesses do best mixing tactics from at least two of those cost buckets.

How many marketing tactics should a small business use?

Most small businesses get the best results from 5 to 8 promotion tactics run consistently for at least 90 days. Spreading limited time and budget across 15 channels means none get enough attention to work, while relying on 1 or 2 leaves you exposed when a channel shifts.

How do I promote my business in AI search results?

To show up in AI search results, publish content that directly answers specific customer questions, keep your Google Business Profile and reviews accurate and current, use FAQ content with structured data, and demonstrate first-hand expertise with named authors. AI tools assemble answers from retrievable passages and trusted business data, so clean data and direct answers win citations.

How long does it take for business promotion to work?

It depends on the tactic. Google Business Profile optimization and email to your list can pay off in 0 to 2 weeks. Short-form video, email automation, and ad tests typically need 2 weeks to 3 months. SEO, cornerstone content, and sponsorships usually need 3 to 12+ months. Build a mix across all three horizons.

How do I know if my business promotion is working?

You know promotion is working when you can attribute customers to tactics: conversion tracking on paid channels, UTM parameters on every placed link, and a “how did you hear about us?” question at intake. Review monthly, cut the weakest tactic and reinvest in the strongest.

Where to go next

You don’t need all 30 of these ways to promote your business. Pick 5 to 8 that fit your budget, time, and business type, run them for 90 days with tracking in place, then prune and reinvest. The plan builder, ROI estimator, and 30-day checklist above exist to make those three decisions faster.

From here, it’s worth understanding who you’re up against with a proper competitive analysis. And if AI search is where your customers are heading, the query fan-out guide explains how to get your content cited there.

The post How to Promote Your Business No Matter Your Budget appeared first on WordStream.

That said, I find that LinkedIn is the platform I hear the most failures from. Many, many people come to me and say they tested on LinkedIn, but they just couldn’t make it work. More often than not, it’s only because they tried to apply best practices and assumptions from other platforms onto LinkedIn, rather than adjusting for the unique channel that it is.

In this comprehensive LinkedIn advertising guide, I’ll review everything you need to know to get started.

Contents

• What is LinkedIn advertising?
• LinkedIn advertising benefits
• How to advertise on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn advertising costs
• LinkedIn advertising tips

What is LinkedIn advertising?

LinkedIn advertising is the practice of placing paid promotions for your business across the LinkedIn platform, which is a social media site and app that’s geared towards professionals, students, and businesses of all stages and industries. Advertising on LinkedIn is an effective way for both B2B and B2C businesses to reach prospective customers. LinkedIn has nearly 900 million active users, so this is a major paid channel you’ll want to consider when planning your marketing strategy.

 LinkedIn Ads can fill gaps in your marketing strategy! Learn more in this free guide to marketing gaps that cost you customers (and how to fix them).

LinkedIn advertising benefits

LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media platforms, so odds are, your ideal customers are on there and ready to see your business’s LinkedIn ads. After all, LinkedIn is the most trusted social network in the US.

Businesses trust and like this platform just as much as consumers, too. It’s been found that LinkedIn is the third most popular platform for small business marketing, with 48% of businesses currently using it.

Plus, LinkedIn Ads offers tons of different ad format options for you to reach your target audience. In fact, there are many to consider—even some that aren’t available anywhere else. With all that diversity, there’s a lot you can do to stand out.

As for lead generation, LinkedIn Ads can be beneficial in that regard as well. I’ve been in the advertising space for well over 10 years now, and for lead-generating ads, nothing holds a candle to LinkedIn. The targeting options are by far the best, and the results are the most accurate when trying to reach a certain persona.

Here are some other LinkedIn advertising statistics to consider:

• LinkedIn ads can increase purchase intent by over 30%.
• 80% of B2B advertisers use LinkedIn Ads (and B2C advertisers love it, too!)
• Businesses that post on LinkedIn each week get a 2x higher engagement rate than those that don’t
• LinkedIn generates up to three times more conversions than X and Facebook.
• 79% of businesses see LinkedIn as a very good source of leads, and 43% say they sourced at least one customer from LinkedIn.

Source

How to advertise on LinkedIn

Here are the four steps to run LinkedIn advertising for your business:

1. Set up your LinkedIn advertising account
2. Choose your campaign objectives
3. Test your LinkedIn ad types and formats
4. Set your target audience

Once you have these components all set, you can set your campaigns live and run LinkedIn ads! Let’s take a deeper dive into each step.

 Ready to get started on LinkedIn? Get help with our free, definitive guide to social media marketing (simplified!) >>

1. Set up your LinkedIn advertising account

You’ll run LinkedIn Ads directly within the LinkedIn Ads manager. You’ll need to have a LinkedIn company page created that will be attached to your ads. Once your initial simple sign-up steps are all set, the first thing you’ll want to do is familiarize yourself with the LinkedIn Ads account structure.

LinkedIn Ads has gone through a bit of a reorganization as of the beginning of 2026, and if you’ve been running LinkedIn ads (or have tried them in the past), you might still have the old naming convention in your accounts. Here’s how your LinkedIn ads will be grouped:

• Campaigns: This is the highest level of organization. There are some settings you can use at a campaign level, like campaign objective, budget, and schedule, but for the most part, this level is a container that houses your ad sets.
• Ad sets: Ad sets were previously known as campaigns. This is where the majority of settings live. Here, you’ll choose an objective (if you haven’t done so at the campaign level), find your target audience, select an ad format, choose your bidding strategy, and more.
• Ads: This tab is pretty self-explanatory. This houses all of the creatives you have in a given ad set or campaign.

Now that you know the basic structure of an account, let’s start getting into the details of setting up your campaigns.

2. Choose your campaign objectives

Each campaign objective in LinkedIn is unique and has been created to achieve specific goals. Here’s a quick rundown of each:

• Brand awareness: Reach an audience of users with a post. Designed to gain impressions.
• Website visits: Drive clicks from your target audience to a page on your website.
• Engagement: Increase social engagement on your LinkedIn posts, such as comments, likes, shares, etc.
• Video views: Get your video in front of more users.
• Lead generation: Generate leads for your business with a form housed on LinkedIn.
• Talent leads: Identify potential candidates interested in open positions.
• Website conversions: Drive users to your website and optimize for leads, purchases, or more on-site events that you’ve identified as valuable.
• Job applicants: Generate more job applicants for your company’s open positions.

It’s important you select the right objective because each comes with its own set of options. For example, not all ad formats or bidding strategies are available in every campaign type.

Additionally, if your KPIs for your efforts are tied to traffic and engagement, selecting a conversion campaign, for example, could cause you to severely underperform those goals.

Here’s an example of how engagement and website conversion campaign performance can differ. All of the audiences, bidding, targeting, and creatives are the same. The only difference is the campaign objective.

In this example, the LinkedIn platform is being much more selective with who it’s serving ads to with the website conversions campaign because it’s optimizing for those actions. That’s causing the click-through rate (CTR) to be much lower and the cost per click (CPC) to be much higher than the Engagement campaign, where it doesn’t have to be as selective.

If you need help selecting a campaign objective, check out this post for a more in-depth rundown.

3. Test your LinkedIn ad types and formats

LinkedIn has many different ad formats you can select from, and each has a different look and feel, and some have different placements they can show in.

Single image ads

These are likely the ads you see the most (or second most) in your personal newsfeed because they’re the most common on the platform. They leverage a single image along with some introductory text, a headline, and a call to action.

• Placements: LinkedIn Feed (desktop and mobile)
• Benchmark CTR: ~0.35% – 0.65% CTR
• Best practices:
  • Use clean, high-contrast visuals that stand out in the feed
  • Write strong copy that gets the user’s attention
  • Align your image and headline well so the ad unit flows well
• Single image ads specifications

LinkedIn video ads

Video ads are very similar to single image ads except the creatives you can use are, you guessed it, videos instead of images.

• Placements: LinkedIn Feed (desktop and mobile)
• Benchmark CTR: ~0.30% – 0.55% CTR
• Best practices:
  • Use video ads when you want to tell a more complex story than what a single image ad can support.
  • Have a compelling hook in the first few seconds to keep the user engaged and watching.
  • Assume the viewer will have their sound off for at least the beginning of the video.
  • Videos of any length can work, but most sources suggest a 30-second or shorter video.
• Video ads specifications

Carousel ads

Carousel ads allow advertisers to add multiple images (cards) to the same ad creative that the end user can swipe through. Each card can have its own headline and destination URL, so they’re highly customizable.

• Placements: LinkedIn Feed (desktop and mobile)
• Benchmark CTR: ~0.40% – 0.70% CTR
• Best practices:
  • Make the first card the most attention-grabbing so as to stop the user from scrolling, then use the rest of the cards to give the details.
  • Be creative with your story progression between cards. Highlight different products, create a single scene, showcase customer reviews. Don’t just put together 2-10 ways to ask for a demo request.
• Carousel ads specifications

Text ads

Text ads are a very small, throwback-style ad format that leverages only a very short headline, description, and a small thumbnail image.

• Placements: Right rail (desktop only), Top banner (desktop only)
• Benchmark CTR: ~0.02% – 0.08%
• Best Practices:
  • These ads tend to have high impression counts and very, very low CTRs. They’re great for remarketing to known audiences.
  • Test lots of variants to see what sticks and can stand out.
  • Be very direct in the short text space you’re given.
  • Use simple, single focal images like a logo or a single item. Large scenes will get lost and muddied.
• Text ads specifications

Message ads

Message ads operate similarly to a user-to-user message on LinkedIn. They show up in their inbox, so they can feel a bit more invasive than the other ad formats, so you need to earn that privilege.

• Placements: LinkedIn Messaging Inbox (desktop and mobile)
• Benchmark CTR:
  • Open Rate: ~40% – 55%
  • CTR: ~3% – 5%
• Best practices:
  • Focus on a single, clear CTA that is meaningful enough to warrant the perceived privacy invasion. A demo request is a bad idea for this ad format, but a special event invite or an offer for a significant discount could work.
  • Personalize the message with dynamic fields when possible
  • Keep your messaging conversational and not overly salesy.
• Message ads specifications

Conversation ads

Conversation ads are effectively Message Ads but souped up. They allow for more of a chat-like experience and give you the option for multiple call-to-action buttons that can help the user effectively “choose their own adventure”.

• Placements: LinkedIn Messaging Inbox (desktop and mobile)
• Benchmark CTR: ~4% – 6% (expect your metrics to vary based on your branching paths)
• Best practices:
  • Avoid decision fatigue/confusing options by limiting to 2-4 options
  • Use clear, action-oriented CTAs
  • Build your conversation branches based on how a user makes their way through your buyer funnel.
• Conversation ads specifications

Documents

Document Ads are one of the newer formats in recent years and, quite frankly, I’m a huge fan of them. This format lets you upload a document, a PDF, for example, and tease a portion of the document, maybe the first 2-3 pages, as the ad creative, then require the user to fill out a form to get access to the rest.

• Placements: LinkedIn Feed (desktop and mobile)
• Benchmark CTR: ~0.40% – 0.80%
• Best practices:
  • Design your first page to be compelling and easy to understand what the document is about.
  • Use strong lead gen messaging in the lead generation form you use to capture the user data.
  • I’ve found that using 10%-25% of an asset is usually enough to get someone to bite.
• Document ads specifications

Dynamic LinkedIn ads

Within Dynamic ads, there are three separate options: Follower, Spotlight, and Jobs Ads. Each is designed to do pretty much what the name says and uses the user’s information in the ad itself.

• Placements: Right rail (desktop only)
• Benchmark CTR: ~0.08% – 0.30% (varies widely by type)
• Best Practices:
  • Lean into personalization
  • Ensure landing pages match the personalized intent
• Dynamic ads specifications

With the exception of a new beta test, all ad sets only let you use one ad format. So if you want to test Image ads and Carousel ads, you would need to create two different ad sets. While this might not seem like a big deal, that means your budget will be separated by ad set.

If you have too many different ad formats being tested (and you’re not using campaign-level budget controls), you may run into an issue with having too little budget for each ad set.

4. Set your target audience

In my opinion, the targeting options on LinkedIn are really the bread and butter of the platform. The specificity we can leverage just makes this platform a no-brainer for many businesses we work with, but the targeting is only good if you know how to use it!

The first thing you need to know is the highest-level breakdown of how targeting works. In the image below, the biggest categorization is audiences versus audience attributes. As a shorthand, Audiences means a group of users you’ve put together by one method or another, and audience attributes are targetable characteristics of that user based on what LinkedIn knows about them from their profile, behaviors, etc.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s a rundown of the majority of targeting options on LinkedIn Ads:

List upload targeting

This feature allows you to upload a CSV file of companies or individual users to target on the LinkedIn platform. You start by downloading the templates provided, add your information, and make sure your formatting is correct; then LinkedIn will try to find those users or companies based on the info you provided.

For users, you’ll add first and last name, email, and other fields (if you know them) like job title, company, etc. LinkedIn will then match the information you have to users on the platform and compile them into a list for you to target. Super slick and very easy.

These audiences (company or contacts) can be used for upselling, winning back lost accounts, or supporting an ABM campaign.

Predictive audiences

These audiences let you leverage LinkedIn’s AI and platform data to build audiences that are similar to your existing audiences or converters.

Predictive audiences let you select your source audience, then target location(s), then find new users LinkedIn believes are similar. This could be a good option for expanding your reach beyond your known contacts while honing in on their characteristics to maintain quality.

Retargeting

On the whole, retargeting is advertising to a list of users who have already engaged with your company in one way, shape, or form. LinkedIn gives tons of different ways you can do that.

The most common, and the retargeting you’ve likely heard of, is website visitors. Here, you’ll make a list of everyone who has been to your site before (or a subset of them based on certain pages, timing, etc.) and then use them as a targeting list in your account.

But there are other options for retargeting as well.

On LinkedIn, you can still use website audiences, but you can also retarget on all of the different sources above. If someone engaged with your video ad, submitted a lead gen form, responded to an event ad, or any of the other options above, you can make a list of them and target them in your campaigns.

Third-party audience lists

The last option I want to cover in the Audiences section is a third-party list.

These are still lists of users and can be companies or contacts, but the thing that sets them apart is their source.

Rather than downloading a CSV from your CRM and then uploading it to the LinkedIn Ads platform, you can simply integrate your CRM to automatically sync audiences. This is a huge time saver and can help keep your lists fresh so long as your CRM regularly adds new users and purges old users from those lists.

As you can see above, the most common CRMs are Salesforce, Dynamics 365, and HubSpot, but there is an option to request access to other CRMs if you want. You can get more information on this integration here.

Audience attributes

If you click around in the Audience Attributes section of the LinkedIn Ads campaign builder, you’ll quickly find there are A TON of different options to target. If I were to list all of them, this post would be 5x longer than it already is. So with that said, here is a selection of my favorite targeting options from most of the different portions of the Attributes lists.

• Company: In this section, the parameters you’ll be using to find your audience are based on the company (or companies) they work for and interact with. For this section, you can target users based on their company’s growth rate, the industry they’re in, their specific names, annual revenue, size as measured by employee count, and more. These types of targeting options are best when you might know the types of accounts you want to work with, but may not know the exact personnel involved. They’re also great when you do know the types of job titles you need, but might not be able to support folks in all industries.
• Demographics: Demographic targeting is pretty simple to understand. With it, you’re able to target users based on their inferred age or gender. To use either of these targeting options, you must first check a box to certify that you’re not discriminating based on either age or gender in your advertising and staying compliant with LinkedIn’s guidelines and any other protected characteristics.
• Education: If your target audience has a certain level of education, a special degree, or went to a specific school, you can use the Education section to narrow down to those targets and focus only on users who are right for your ads.
• Job experience: In total transparency, this is where I do the majority of my target audience building for my clients. That’s not to say the others aren’t useful, but for most of the companies I work with, this section is the lifeblood of our LinkedIn success. In this group, you’re able to target users based on their individual work history. This includes their job functions, how senior they are, their titles, the skills they need, and the years of experience they have in their current role. While everyone loves a job title-targeted campaign, I can attest that sometimes, the combination of job function and job seniority can make just as qualified of an audience at an often lower price.
• Interests and traits: The last group is focused on how people behave around the LinkedIn network. This can include the member groups that they opt into, the interests they express based on the content they engage with, or the traits they have that are noticed by LinkedIn. Those traits have a predefined list that’s relatively short, but could be super impactful if it hits exactly who you’re looking for.

My advice for using the audience attributes section

Unless you have a clear picture of your target audience, you likely will find the Audience Attributes section a bit intimidating to navigate and browse.

Instead of clicking into each section and seeing what’s predefined, I encourage you to simply start typing into the search box above the targeting options. Start looking for job titles, skills, and more that you believe are relevant to your audience and start from there. This can give you an idea of what’s available, and maybe open up some ideas you hadn’t thought of before.

LinkedIn advertising costs

Once you get your LinkedIn campaigns running, how much can you expect them to cost? Here’s a quick breakdown of LinkedIn advertising costs:

• On average, data shows LinkedIn Ads cost about $5-10 per click. In comparison, the average CPC in Google Ads is $5.42.
• For campaign budgets, LinkedIn suggests $25 for new advertisers and $50-$100 for existing advertisers.

Know that your LinkedIn advertising costs might fluctuate depending on your industry and which campaigns, ad formats, or audiences you’re using.

6 LinkedIn advertising tips and best practices

Before you go, I want to leave you with a few best practices to help give you some guardrails for your first set of campaigns on LinkedIn.

1. Keep audience size in check

From my experience, most campaigns that have a target audience size between 20K and 80K tend to do very well. That’s not to say that an audience that’s larger or smaller can’t perform well (larger usually for lower-ask CTAs like engagement, smaller usually for tougher asks like a free trial), but getting down to extremely small or up to extremely large folks can easily spend all of your money quickly with no return.

2. Avoid audience expansion and the LinkedIn audience network

Both of these options are expanding the reach of your carefully crafted campaign either from the audience or placement standpoint. Both can be a huge waste of money, so uncheck those boxes when you get to that portion of the campaign build.\

3. Manual bidding all the way

Speaking of things that can waste your money quickly: “Maximum Delivery” is the bid strategy that will absolutely do that. Instead, opt for manual bidding and set a very, very low floor. If you need more volume or when you start to see results, increase the bid and get more traction.

The screenshot below is an actual campaign in one of my accounts. I don’t care that LinkedIn suggests $27. My campaign is doing well and spending its entire budget at $15, so why increase?

4. Campaign objectives can make a huge difference

I showed you the difference in performance for a Website Visits campaign compared to a Conversion campaign in that section earlier, but I want to reiterate it here. The campaign objective you choose can have a massive impact on your outcomes. Make sure you’re choosing the right ones for the KPIs you’re being held to.

5. Create multiple ad variants

We advertising pros are constantly talking about “always be testing,” and that doesn’t stop here. Create 3-6 different variants of your ad to have running at any given point, and you’ll almost certainly see better results than you would with just one.

6. Bottom-of-funnel calls to action are almost always terrible

While we all want a sale in the end, asking for that in a first-touch LinkedIn campaign is a sure-fire way to see lots of impressions, maybe some clicks, and almost no conversions. Get creative and shift up-funnel to engage and entice your audience, then remarket to them with a lower-funnel CTA.

Get started with LinkedIn Advertising today

With the impressive benefits we covered, plus easy setup steps, I think every business should give LinkedIn Advertising a shot, regardless of what industry you’re in or which audience you’re trying to reach. The key is knowing what to do and what to avoid for a high-ROI campaign, like keeping your audience in check and choosing the most efficient bidding strategy for your goals. For more help with LinkedIn advertising, see how our solutions can maximize your approach!

The post How to Advertise on LinkedIn: The Complete Cheat Sheet appeared first on WordStream.

But marketing marches much faster now. To finish the second half of the year strong, we need to think about the shifts from the first six months and what they mean.

Many of the trends I’ve tracked from Q1 and Q2 are, of course, AI-motivated. It’s changing how people search, when you can influence buyers, and how you manage paid ads.

But there are some human-led trends emerging, too. LinkedIn is looking more like TikTok, for example. And big brands, in their ongoing search for authenticity, are tapping “regular people” with a few hundred followers as the next faces of their campaigns.

Let’s dig into eight of the biggest new marketing trends for 2026 and see how you can use them to keep your momentum for the rest of the year.

Contents

1. GEO success is actually built on SEO fundamentals
2. AI is changing the buyer journey
3. Context is the new audience targeting
4. PMax and Demand Gen become must-have strategies for small businesses
5. LinkedIn is becoming a creator economy
6. Big brands are courting small-time influencers
7. Content marketers are choosing sides in the battle of AI
8. Unique tools become a way to AI-proof your content

8 marketing trends you need to know to finish 2026 strong

The dust has settled on the first half of the year. Here’s what happened and how to stay ahead of the curve.

1. GEO success is actually built on SEO fundamentals

There’s been a lot of discussion around how to gain visibility in AI search. For a while, things like llms.txt files, specialized schema markup, and content chunking (the grossest marketing term since SEO juice) were the biggest priorities.

More recently, the prevailing wisdom has evolved to focus more on SEO fundamentals as the best way to get more AI citations and mentions. And some prominent voices in the space corroborated the shift.

Source

But the concept has really taken hold since Google released its first official guidance on how AI Overviews and AI Mode work in May. It clearly mapped the connection between how its AI systems surface answers to the way its algorithms surface links.

Source

“We’ve seen that about 80% of the time, what’s good for SEO is good for GEO,” said Nikiya Griffith, Director of Organic Growth at BX Studio.

“Our most successful strategic initiatives over the last year have been ones where SEO and GEO were approached in unison as one holistic strategy. Of course, you still need to devote time and attention to the considerations that are unique to GEO or SEO, but overall, we really see GEO as an extension of good SEO.”

Want to know which search engine optimization tactics actually work? Get How to Do SEO Right-Right Now !

How to leverage this trend

The new trend is to focus on the basics of good SEO as the foundation of your GEO strategy. 

In part, that means:

• Nail the SEO fundamentals: page speed, mobile usability, site structure, etc.
• Incorporate real-life experiences in your content
• Build local relevance and trust signals (for local SEO)

It’s worth digging into the details of this trend. Get started with this guide to responding to Google’s GEO guidelines.

2. AI is changing the buyer journey

We’ve all heard about how AI search is throttling website traffic (nearly 65% of Google searches end without a click).

But there’s another, possibly more troublesome, trend as more buyers use AI agents to find products and services. Brands are losing the influence they used to have in the middle of the buying journey.

Here’s why. People used to get a list of links when they searched for a lawn care service or yoga studio nearby. Now, AI gives buyers a complete set of recommendations that shapes their perception before they ever click a link.

“The biggest shift in local SEO is that discovery is rarely happening on your website first,” explained Dennis Wilson, VP of Product Management at LocaliQ. “It’s happening across AI-driven platforms, like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Potential customers, even your current customers, are forming and reforming opinions, and comparing options before they ever click.”

How to leverage this trend

The solution is to influence buyers BEFORE they head to search. Generally speaking, that means getting in front of them in the places they trust with relevant messaging earlier in their buying journey.

When you do it right, you can even influence how people search. For example, if you’re the only lawn care service in town that uses environmentally friendly weed control, you can teach buyers to search for that (and be the choice AI recommends).

I explored the origin of this trend and showed some of the specific tactics successful businesses use in this guide.

3. Context is the new audience targeting

Contextual ad targeting—placing ads based on the content around it—is becoming a preferred tactic for marketers. That’s helping marketers show ads that are more relevant to the moment, not just the person.

In part, it’s because of the growing data gap. It’s much harder to collect useful audience data than it used to be. 48% of global internet traffic is now cookie-less.

But an even bigger lever for this trend is AI’s superior ability to understand what’s on a page and match your message to it. It’s no longer about matching a keyword. LLMs can understand intent, semantic context, and nuanced meaning in real time. One study showed that the CPC for contextual ads was 48% less than for similar third-party cookie ads.

With audience targeting, you can show ads to college-educated travelers who have shown an interest in visiting Louisiana. A contextually targeted ad shows right as someone reads an article from their favorite food columnist about the amazing seafood on the Florida coast.

How to leverage this trend

To prepare for this one, audit your ads for contextual relevance, considering where they will likely land. Rethink your keyword and category lists so your ads match the intent and sentiment of a page. Be intentional with negative contextual targeting to keep your ads away from places you don’t want them. And consider adding engagement and relevance metrics, like view time and on-page actions, to your analytics mix.

Additionally, consider some of the contextual placements Google recently announced, like ads in Google AI Mode.

4. PMax and Demand Gen become must-have strategies for small businesses

Google continues to consolidate its advertising products into smaller buckets. This trend continued in early 2026. Two changes in particular are important for small and local businesses to understand.

First, in May 2026, Google announced that standalone Display campaigns will be absorbed into Demand Gen campaigns. The Google Display Network remains, but the way you purchase advertising inventory on it will change.

Display campaigns won’t be a standalone option moving forward.

Second, the Local Services Ads (LSAs) dashboard will sunset, and LSAs will move into the Google Ads interface. After the shift, you’ll run LSAs through Performance Max (PMax) campaigns.

The popular Local Services Ads are moving to PMax campaigns.

Together, these changes mean that many of the businesses that have been holding out on running Demand Gen and PMax campaigns will be pushed towards using them.

“Many small business advertisers have been using standard Display campaigns and legacy LSAs but have been more hesitant to try newer, fully-automated campaign types like Demand Gen and PMax,” said Susie Marino, senior content marketing specialist at LocaliQ. “Now, they’ll have to adapt their strategy to embrace these campaign types in order to still capture the ad placements they want.”

Free resource >> The Fool-Proof Guide to Smart Bidding (+How to Get Started Fast)

How to leverage this trend

There are several actions to consider. But generally speaking, this trend means you’ll see more AI and automated control over your ads, a broader pool of ad placements (for Display), and potential changes to your bidding options.

Get the full scoop on the changes to Display ads here, and the updates to Local Services Ads here.

5. LinkedIn is becoming a creator economy

Like TikTok and Instagram before it, LinkedIn is making intentional moves to turn its platform into a creator economy.

A creator economy is a space (usually digital) where writers, artists, educators, and others grow online audiences to earn money from their content.

Jenna St John, Head of Content and Ops at Grizzle, recently broke down the features LinkedIn has launched so far to make it happen (her whole article is worth a read):

• 2023: Thought Leader Ads
• May 2025: BrandLink (reopened to individual creators)
• March 2026: Top Voices 360
• June 2026: Creator Marketplace

That last one is a big step. It makes it super easy for B2B brands and advertisers to connect with a group of vetted, professional content creators.

That’s the pull that’ll help bring more sponsored content to your LinkedIn feed. The push comes from the tightening job market for content marketers (partly created by AI). Some freshly laid-off in-house marketers and highly qualified freelancers are finding it easier to generate revenue streams through B2B brand partnerships than by hustling for their next direct gig.

Source

The result will be more professional, higher-quality, more promotionally focused content on our LinkedIn feeds.

How to leverage this trend

If LinkedIn is investing in creator-led content, you can bet that’s what its algorithms will favor.

As Jenna succinctly put it, “Every product in that list above moves money, reach, and attention away from company pages and toward individual people.”

The natural reaction for B2B sellers is to find a LinkedIn influencer who works in your niche. But there’s an even better way to leverage this trend: find and foster budding in-house influencers.

The key here is to not just push employees to post about your business on their personal accounts. Instead, give them the tools, training, and encouragement to build their own brand. Help them curate and share your best content (blog posts, videos, etc.), but give them room to do so in their own voice. That will help keep their posts authentic and give them an incentive (a bigger following they can leverage for themselves) to keep going.

6. Big brands are courting small-time influencers

Big brands are betting on budding influencers with follower counts that wouldn’t have interested them in the past.

Micro-influencers (10K to 100K followers) have been a thing for a while. But this new crop of promising promotional YouTubers and TikTokers often have follower counts in the hundreds.

Brands find authenticity and relevance by working with budding content creators.

This trend is fueled by the evolution of social media algorithms. Discovery now plays a bigger part in what you get served, meaning you’ll see more creators you’ve never followed in your feed. And that’s the shift brands are leveraging here.

“The way that the algorithms work on social media now means the majority of what you see comes from someone you didn’t choose to follow,” said Paul Archer, the founder and CEO of Duel, a tech platform for brand advocacy programs, as reported by MSN.

The social platforms are backing this trend with new platform features. LinkedIn’s Thought Leader ads (mentioned earlier) and Google’s integrated YouTube creator partnerships (announced at Google Marketing Live this year) are good examples.

How to leverage this trend

Many of the big brand programs include influencer academies of sorts. Meaning, there will be more ready-to-sell, up-and-coming influencers that still have reasonable rates you can use to promote your business.

I like searching hashtags to find the right persona. Try tags like #DIYAustin or #YogaMomOrlando for locals in your field. Scroll through their account to make sure the vibe is right. And confirm what you get in exchange for what you give. Miscommunication is the biggest killer of influencer program success.

7. Content marketers are choosing sides in the battle of AI

There’s a very civil war brewing in the content marketing corner of LinkedIn. On one side of the trenches are marketers building complex, multi-skill AI content production processes. On the other are marketers who feel most of content creation belongs in human hands.

The pro-AI faction says that, with the right type of layered Claude or ChatGPT skills, you get a great result. It takes trial, testing, and iteration for it to wring out all of the common foibles found in AI content (overusing em dashes, the “it’s X, not Y” structure, etc.). And even more custom-built AI agents to ensure its creations sound like your brand.

Source

Team anti-AI (or, maybe more fairly, team “don’t automate the entire content process”) aren’t necessarily against any use of ChatGPT or Claude. But they say that when it comes to actually writing the thing, the probabilistic nature of AI means it can’t help but create content that’s comfortably in the middle (neither unique nor pushing any boundaries).

Source

How to leverage this trend

Whether or not you use AI isn’t the real question. It’s how you use it that matters here. We’ve detailed some ways it can be very helpful in marketing already. So let’s look at a few ways you shouldn’t.

First, don’t use it to mass-produce LinkedIn posts. Readers don’t want that, and neither does LinkedIn. In fact, it recently added a “Seems like AI slop” option to the post drop-down menu.

And second, don’t use it without transparency.

In general, consumers are becoming more concerned than optimistic about the use of AI. If you use it manipulatively, you’ll land on the wrong side of their fears.

Case in point. We recently stumbled on this comparison between WordStream and the publisher’s own marketing agents.

It’s absolutely full of wrong information, an incorrect timeline, and obvious AI tropes. There are dozens of these published on the same day.  Worst of all, it’s framed as a real first-person account. Duping potential customers is not a strong long-term growth strategy.

8. Unique tools become a way to AI-proof your content

As mentioned, Google and AI chatbots keep more of the search traffic for themselves. But building DIY tools is turning out to be a way to fight AI with AI.

Expect to see more DIY tools in blog and social content.

AI search platforms are great at summarizing the words on your website. But they can’t (or at least don’t) spin up a square footage calculator when you Google “how much will new hardwood flooring cost.” It will, however, share a link to your cost calculator.

How to leverage this trend

AI tools are, at least at this moment, one of the best new ways to extract a little more traffic out of stingy AI search engines.

The best part is that building them is now very accessible, thanks to AI (almost ironic). With a basic Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT account, you can quickly create a working calculator which you can then embed in a blog post.

You don’t even need to go super elaborate. Just focus on niche relevance. For example, we built a local SEO ROI calculator and added it to a local SEO tips blog article. It made the piece more useful overall and can be an AI visibility signal when people search “How do I measure the ROI of my SEO?”

If you’re not sure what to build, this guide from Ahrefs shows how to find “tool” keywords worth targeting.

Mind these mid-year trends for growth in 2026

Somehow this year feels like it’s moving even faster than previous ones. It could be that so much has changed in just the last six months.

The silver lining is that where there’s change, there’s opportunity for those who jump on it first. The trends I covered here are mostly still early-stage (or at least early-ish stage). Take the leap and get first-mover advantage over your competitors.

And if you’d like some help staying way ahead of it all, reach out. We’ll show you how we stay on top of these trends, work directly with advertising platforms, and build solutions into our systems so it all just works seamlessly for you.

The post Mid-Year Check-In: The 8 Biggest New Marketing Trends of 2026 So Far appeared first on WordStream.

So in this article, I’m going to equip you with over 50 unique September marketing ideas, along with real examples from businesses just like yours.

Contents

• September marketing ideas for any business
• More September marketing ideas (not about holidays)
• Highlight list of observances and holidays for your September marketing
• September marketing holidays and national days (full list)

Get social media posts ready for the whole year in our free marketing calendar template!

September marketing ideas for any business

These September marketing ideas based on holidays can flex to any industry or business need.

Just One Human Family Day

Just One Human Family Day occurs every September 12, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a day to remember that no matter where we come from, what language we speak, what we look like, what our abilities and beliefs are, or how we identify ourselves—at the end of the day, we are all just one big human family living on this planet, all deserving of compassion from one another.  You can incorporate this into your business marketing by:

• Share the collateral: Share the lyrics or the YouTube video of the song “We Share Just One Planet” on social.
• Do an earthly act of kindness: Reach out to someone and do something kind for them. Better yet, do something kind for the planet with them, like plant a tree or pick up trash.
• Wear the swag: Sport the t-shirt or stickers to show your support and post on social.

American Business Women’s Day

Women in business are a force to be reckoned with in today’s economy. This holiday occurs on September 22.

• Compile a round-up: Find 10 women leading the way in your niche and write a round-up of them in a blog post. Tag them on social when you promote the post—they might share with their audience!
• Run a stat-themed sale: For example, women started 49% of new businesses in the US last year. Send out a promotional email offering 49% off select products, or run a $49 special.
• Run a poll or quiz: Find some interesting stats about women in business and turn them into a poll or quiz or interactive post series for your followers. Like “What percentage of businesses are owned by women globally,” for example.

Hispanic Heritage Month

National Hispanic Heritage Month, which actually runs from September 15 to October 15, is a time to celebrate the history, culture, and contributions of Latinx and Hispanic Americans. Here are some ways to recognize it in your marketing:

• Recognize Latinx influencers: Do some digging to find Latinx influencers or historical figures in your niche or neighborhood. Depending on their level of celebrity, share information about them, interview them, or spotlight them on social.
• Mark your calendar. The independence anniversaries of Latin American countries is the reason behind its start date. You can share a different fact or stat about each country on its respective day.
  • September 15: El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
  • September 16: Mexico
  • September 18: Chile
  • October 12: Día de la Raza/Columbus Day
• Donate: Consider donating to the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, Latinos for Education, the Latino Equality Alliance, or other organizations dedicated to Hispanic community support.

Self-Improvement Month

It comes as no surprise that September is National Self-Improvement Month. It’s the second new year of the year when people get back into their routines after summer. Here are some ideas for marketing around this evergreen topic:

• Create a video with your own self-improvement tips.

• Share your favorite self-improvement books and ask your followers to comment back with theirs.
• Write blog posts on goal-setting or listicles like “X Ways to Improve Your [memory, credit score, leadership skills]” or “How to Improve Your [X] in 5 Minutes.”
• Run a 30-day challenge on Facebook or Instagram.

Looking for more ways to promote your business? Download our free guide 30+ Ways to Promote Your Business (On Any Budget!)

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

There are several ways to engage your audience and your employees with cause-based marketing in the name of childhood cancer awareness. You could:

• Post eye-opening stats about childhood cancer on social media.
• Register your company for the Great Cycle Challenge and get your employees out on their bikes. Not only will you be fighting kid cancer, but you’ll be promoting good health and friendly competition among your employees. Encourage photo sharing so your audience can follow along throughout the month.
• Host a fundraiser and sell T-shirts to support a particular child or the cause in general.

Food Safety Month

With September being Food Safety Month, this is an opportunity for health specialists and restaurants to promote their services, publicize their best practices, and reassure customers.

You could also tie it in nicely with the back-to-school theme, like with the example below:

Wilderness Month

National Wilderness Month celebrates the anniversary of the Wilderness Act, which was pivotal in the conservation of American land and the creation of national parks. Here are some ways to use it in your marketing:

• Share your favorite hiking trails and ask your followers for theirs.
• Post photos from your own wilderness adventures.
• Share some eye-opening stats or a quote by John Muir.

Back to School Month

So August is actually the official National Back to School Month, but who are we kidding? Any type of business can participate in the back-to-school season. You can:

• Partner with college student organizations or K-12 after-school programs.
• Host or participate in a back-to-school drive.
• Share a list of free online learning resources that pertain to your audience.
• Run student discounts or introduce fall plans if you’re marketing to college students.

We’ve got plenty more with these Easy Back-to-School Marketing Ideas That Work for Any Business.

Labor Day

If it weren’t for Labor Day, the first Monday of September would potentially be the worst Monday of the year. Here are some ideas to try out:

• For businesses that slow down during the summer, host a Labor Day promotion or sale to encourage as many existing customers as possible to come back.
• If you’re in a popular destination, brush up on your local marketing to make sure consumers visiting your town for the long weekend can find you. The higher your business ranks on Google Maps, the more customers you’ll attract.
• Send a Happy Labor Day message to your customers or employees.
• Run a Labor Day giveaway or contest.

For more awesome ideas, check out these Labor Day Social Media Posts, Promotions, & Marketing Ideas To Celebrate.

Patriot Day

This day is dedicated to the 2,977 victims of September 11. Here are some ways to show your support:

• Make it a day of service for your team.
• Display flags in and outside your store.
• Encourage your audience to take a moment of silence at the times of the attacks

NFL Opening Night

Opening night for the NFL falls in September. Celebrate the season opener with some creative marketing for your business. Here are some ideas:

• Engage customers on Facebook by asking about their favorite teams or running a trivia contest.
• Decorate your storefront, restaurant, or studio in team colors.
• Run a football-themed special.
• Offer discounts on game days or when your team wins.

First day of fall

The autumnal equinox (for the Northern Hemisphere) occurs in the last week or so of September, which means that the number of daylight and nighttime hours is the same. This celestial holiday (yay) marks the official end of the summer (sad).

But the first day of fall is a beautiful second new start granted to us each year—hence why September is the new January. So it’s a great opportunity to publish content around fresh starts and fall collections.

And since this day happens at the end of the month, you can run a countdown series all month long.

Source

You may also be interested in using any of these 157 authentic fall hashtags.

Positive Thinking Day

Positive Thinking Day falls on September 13 every year and never gets any less versatile. Any business can use this holiday for just about any reason: to cheer up, motivate, encourage, compliment, thank, help, inspire, or [insert any positive verb your heart desires here]. Dentists can connect this to smiles, physical therapists to recovery, interior designers to decorating, and the list goes on.

Working Parents Day

National Working Parents Day falls on September 16. If your audience includes working parents, humanize your brand and acknowledge their hard work. And don’t forget about your parent employees!

Good Neighbor Day

Good Neighbor Day, on September 28, is a good time to do some outreach across your Instagram, LinkedIn, or geographically local network. Acknowledge fellow neighboring businesses on social media to encourage a sense of community, or come up with a contest where followers or employees can nominate good neighbors for a grand prize.

Read a Book Day

National Read a Book Day is a creative way for preschools, tutors, and other education-oriented businesses to market themselves. If your business isn’t related to education, read a book related to your industry and share your insights and learnings on your blog or social media profiles.

This is also a good time to give back to your community by reading a book to children or the elderly. Volunteering is not only an honorable thing to do, it will also make you feel good and, as a bonus, likely increase brand awareness in your local market.

International Day of Charity

September 5 is the International Day of Charity. Choose a local charity to support and get your employees involved, whether in person or virtually.

Or, if you’re already supporting a charity, feature them on your blog or social media profiles and invite your followers to support them as well.

Give an update on your fall hours

If you have a seasonal business, make sure to reflect any changes in your hours on your Google listing. Additionally, you could share a post on your social media regarding your hours for this fall. After all, when it comes to local marketing, the details are key.

Send out a September newsletter

Our friends at LocaliQ share some great September newsletter ideas, but here are just a few:

• Run an email-exclusive summer clearance promo to boost engagement.
• Include an inspirational quote for Positive Thinking Day.
• Let customers know if you’ve changed your hours for fall.
• Provide some of your most helpful blog posts for staying focused in a September newsletter before the long Labor Day weekend.

Highlight list of observances and holidays for your September marketing

Here are just some highlights of the many holidays and national days of September. You can see a full list of days and dates at the bottom of this post.

• Addiction recovery
• Baby safety
• Better breakfast
• Childhood cancer
• Childhood obesity
• Disaster preparedness
• Fall hat
• Food safety
• Life insurance
• Library card
• Mortgage professionals
• Self-improvement
• Self-care
• Strategic thinking
• Suicide prevention
• Update your resume (international)
• Wilderness
• Patriot Day
• Labor Day
• Voter Registration Day
• No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day
• Read A Book Day
• Grateful Patient Day
• Swap Ideas Day
• Hug & High Five Day
• Day of Encouragement
• Hug Your Boss Day
• Dance Day
• CleanUp Day
• Talk Like A Pirate Day
• American Business Women’s Day
• Family Health and Fitness Day
• Love People Day

Side note: Check out our Labor Day Instagram captions ideas.

Stand out this fall with these free and easy September marketing ideas

Hopefully these September marketing ideas and examples have given you some material to work with for your blog, social media profiles, websites, and other free marketing channels.

Ready for even more ideas?

For more monthly marketing ideas, browse our collection…

• Easy & Engaging August Marketing Ideas (With Examples!)
• Free and Effective October Marketing Ideas
• Simple Yet Superb November Marketing Ideas (with Examples)

September marketing holidays and national days (full list)

As promised, here’s the full list of September social media holidays, courtesy of National Day Calendar:

September 1

• No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day

September 2

• National Tailgating Day

September 3

• Skyscraper Day
• National Housekeeper’s Week

September 4

• National Wildlife Day
• Eat An Extra Dessert Day
• Global Talent Acquisition Day
• Lazy Mom’s Day – First Friday in September
• Food Bank Day– First Friday in September

September 5

• Cheese Pizza Day
• Be Late For Something Day
• Tailgating Day – First Saturday in September
• World Beard Day – First Saturday in September

September 6

• Read A Book Day

September 7

• Beer Lover’s Day
• Grateful Patient Day

September 8

• Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Nurses Day
• Ampersand Day

September 9

• Teddy Bear Day

September 10

• Swap Ideas Day

September 11

• Patriot Day and Day of Service and Remembrance

September 12

• Just One Human Family Day
• Hug and High 5 Day
• Day of Encouragement
• Day of the Programmer – 256th Day of the Year

September 13

• Kids Take Over The Kitchen Day
• Celiac Disease Awareness Day
• Bald is Beautiful Day
• Hug Your Boss Day – Changes Annually
• Pet Memorial Day – Second Sunday in September
• Hug Your Hound Day – Second Sunday in September

September 14

• Parents Day Off
• Live Creative Day
• Sober Day

September 15

• Tackle Kids Cancer Day
• Online Learning Day
• IT Professionals Day – Third Tuesday in September

September 16

• Working Parents Day
• Mayflower Day

September 17

• Professional House Cleaners Day
• Constitution Day and Citizenship Day

September 18

• Air Force Birthday
• HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day

September 19

• Talk Like A Pirate Day
• National Voter Registration Day
• Dance Day – Third Saturday in September
• Gymnastics Day – Third Saturday in September
• Boys’ and Girls’ Club Day for Kids – Third Saturday in September
• Puppy Mill Awareness Day – Third Saturday in September
• Responsible Dog Ownership Day – Third Saturday in September
• CleanUp Day – Third Saturday In September

September 20

• Care for Kids Day
• Wife Appreciation Day – Third Sunday in September

September 21

• Miniature Golf Day
• International Day of Peace
• World Gratitude Day

September 22

• American Business Women’s Day
• Car Free Day
• Autumnal Equinox – Changes Annually

September 23

• Celebrate Bisexuality Day

September 24

• Punctuation Day

September 25

• Tune-Up Day
• Research Administrator Day

September 26

• Compliance Officer Day
• Situational Awareness Day

September 27

• Day of Forgiveness
• Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

September 28

• Drink Beer Day

September 29

• Coffee Day
• VFW Day

September 30

• Love People Day
• Women’s Health & Fitness Day – Last Wednesday in September

The post 58 Free & Creative September Marketing Ideas for Any Business appeared first on WordStream.

Generative AI reads the entire web’s picture of your business: where your name has appeared, what other sources have said about you, how you’ve described yourself across platforms, and whether all of those descriptions are consistent with each other. A well-optimized website is one input into that picture. For most small businesses, it’s the only input they’ve thought about.

The businesses that show up in AI-generated answers tend to have active profiles on platforms where their customers spend time, names that appear in third-party content, and information that stays consistent across every surface AI might check. They’ve given AI systems enough corroborated, coherent information to be confident citing them.

This article covers five AI search trust signals that most business owners underinvest in or ignore entirely when it comes to generative engine optimization (GEO)—and what to do instead to increase your visibility and get discovered in AI search.

Contents

• Earned media (but not the kind you’re thinking of)
• LinkedIn
• Google Business Profile
• YouTube
• Consistency across platforms

The 5 biggest AI search signals businesses ignore

Here, we’ll cover the biggest AI search trust signals businesses are ignoring when it comes to GEO—and what to do instead.

1. Earned media (but not the kind you’re thinking of)

Earned media in an AI search context has nothing to do with landing a feature in Forbes or hiring a PR firm. For a small business, it means any time your name, expertise, or opinion appears on a property you don’t own.

That looks like:

• A quote in a local news article about storm damage trends from a roofing company owner.
• A mention in a city-specific “best of” roundup.
• A guest post on a trade blog your customers actually read.
• An industry association listing or award mention.
• A customer success story published on a vendor’s website.

Source

AI systems use corroboration. A business saying it specializes in roof replacement on its own website is a self-reported claim. Three other sites citing that business in that same context is a much stronger signal. The more places your name and specialty appear together in third-party content, the more confident an AI is when surfacing you for related queries.

Here’s what that looks like in practice: A dental practice owner in Austin gets interviewed by a local parenting blog about kids’ dental anxiety. That article lives on a third-party domain, mentions her by name and specialty, links back to her practice, and stays indexed. That one piece of earned media does more GEO work than a dozen optimized service pages on her own site.

The barrier is lower than most owners assume. Here are some examples of earned media opportunities:

• Trade association newsletters need expert comments.
• Local news outlets quote business owners on topics they cover year-round.
• Industry publications run contributed pieces from practitioners.
• Vendors publish case studies about clients who got results.

None of this requires a PR budget or media connections. It requires making yourself available.

What to do

• Offer a short expert comment to trade association newsletters or industry publications in your vertical.
• Ask vendors, business partners, and satisfied clients whether they’d publish a brief case study or mention.
• Find local “best of” lists and make sure your business is submitted or nominated where eligible.

Get everything you need to know about showing up in AI search in our free guide: The AI Search Toolkit >>

2. LinkedIn

Many local businesses either ignore LinkedIn entirely or treat the business page like a bulletin board for announcements. Neither approach generates GEO signals.

An analysis of 325,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity found that LinkedIn is the second-most cited domain across all three platforms, trailing only Reddit. AI systems cited LinkedIn content in more than 13% of responses on average. For professional and local service queries, it ranks first.

Two surfaces matter here, for different reasons:

1. The business page is where you document what your company does in structured, consistent language. The About section, listed specialties, and regular posts build a pattern of topical signals AI can read. A landscaping company that posts consistently about lawn care, seasonal prep, and soil health builds topic associations over time that shape how AI understands and describes that business. Six months of posts on a theme does more than a perfectly written About section ever will.
2. The owner’s personal profile is often more powerful and more neglected. AI systems treat active LinkedIn profiles as credibility anchors for individual expertise. When someone asks an AI for a good plumber in a specific city, businesses whose owners have active, substantive profiles are better positioned to appear in that answer. Running your personal profile is a business decision, not a personal one.

Source

“Active” doesn’t mean daily posting or chasing virality. It means a complete and current profile, a few posts per month about something specific to the work, and real perspective rather than promotional copy.

A Semrush analysis of 89,000 LinkedIn URLs cited in AI search found that 75% of authors whose content gets cited post at least five times in a four-week period, and follower count matters far less than consistency and expertise. A plumber with 300 followers posting practical, job-specific content regularly is more likely to get cited by AI than a competitor with 3,000 followers who posts once a month.

What to do

• Write the business page About section in plain language that matches how customers describe the problem they’re trying to solve.
• Build out your personal profile fully: headline, summary, services section.
• Post from your personal account about specific jobs, decisions, or lessons from the work.
• Prioritize practical posts about your trade over promotional content.

3. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (GBP) is the signal most SMBs know about but underfill. Claiming and verifying the profile gets treated as done. That’s where most stop.

Google Posts are short updates that appear on the profile. Most SMBs post once at launch and never return. Consistent posting, even once a week, signals that the business is active and adds to the topical record of what the business does.

Photo and video recency matters more than most owners realize. A profile with current, relevant images tells both users and AI systems that the business is operating. An HVAC company that uploads photos from a recent installation job communicates something a competitor’s three-year-old stock photo does not.

Categories and service descriptions are typically set at initial setup and never revisited. A plumber listed only as “Plumber” misses “Water Heater Installation,” “Drain Cleaning,” “Emergency Plumbing,” and others that map directly to how customers search. Each missing category is a missed citation opportunity.

When you expand this business’s GBP services, it has an extremely comprehensive list.

Reviews and responses are an underused vocabulary signal. The words customers use in reviews expand the language AI associates with your business. Responses that reference specific service language add more structured text to your GBP record. A dental practice whose responses say “so glad we could help with your Invisalign treatment” is building topic associations with every reply.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: A family-owned HVAC company in Phoenix that adds a weekly Google Post about seasonal maintenance tips and responds to every review with a specific mention of the job type is generating far more AI search trust signals from their GBP than a competitor who set up their profile two years ago and never returned.

What to do

• Audit and expand your categories to reflect specific services, not just the broad trade.
• Post a short update at least once a week, even if it’s just a completed job or a seasonal tip.
• Respond to every review and use the response to add context about the job type.

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4. YouTube

YouTube is the most underestimated GEO signal on this list, partly because it feels like a production commitment most small businesses can’t meet. That assumption is costing visibility.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. Google owns it. And across AI search platforms, YouTube gets cited 200 times more than its next closest video competitor. The reason goes deeper than distribution: both OpenAI and Google trained their models on YouTube transcripts. 

A video where you explain how you approach a job generates a transcript, a title, a description, and a channel history. All of it is readable by AI, in a way your service page is not. When someone asks an AI how to know if they need a new roof, and a roofing contractor in their area has a two-minute video answering exactly that question, that video creates a citation opportunity the contractor’s service page does not.

The businesses showing up most consistently in local and trade-related AI answers often have the simplest production: phone footage, natural lighting, no script. What they have is specificity.

A lawn care company posting “why your lawn has yellow patches in July,” filmed in an actual client’s backyard, carries more trust signal than a polished brand video that says nothing about anything.

Think about what’s worth putting on video: 

• The three or four questions customers ask most before hiring you.
• A job shown in progress, like a roofing inspection, a dental cleaning, or a drain unclogged from start to finish.
• A decision explained: Why you recommended one approach over another on a specific job.
• Short local context: What older homes in this neighborhood typically need, what Phoenix summers do to HVAC systems, why certain soil types require specific lawn treatments.

What this looks like in practice: A solo electrician in Nashville posts a 5-minute video explaining how to tell whether a circuit breaker is failing or whether it’s a wiring issue—filmed on a phone in a client’s garage. That video, indexed on YouTube with a specific title and description, becomes a citable answer every time an AI handles an electrical troubleshooting question from someone in that market. His service page with the same information does not.

What to do

• Start with one video per month answering one specific customer question.
• Write specific, descriptive titles: “How to Tell If Your Circuit Breaker Needs to Be Replaced” beats “About Our Electrical Services” every time.
• Fill out the video description fully, including your location, services covered, and a link to your website.
• Organize videos into playlists by topic or service type so the channel has a clear structure AI can read.

5. Consistency across platforms

Every signal above is weakened if the information across platforms contradicts itself. This is the connective tissue that turns a collection of profiles into a coherent presence AI can confidently cite.

AI systems corroborate information before surfacing a business as an answer. A GBP that lists one city and a LinkedIn that lists another creates uncertainty. A website phone number that doesn’t match your GBP listing is a discrepancy. An AI dealing with contradictory signals about a business will be less confident citing it than one whose information is uniform across every surface.

Consistency goes beyond name, address, and phone number, though that still matters. It includes how you describe what you do, the categories and specialties you claim across GBP, LinkedIn, Yelp, and industry directories, your business hours after changes, and the photos and logo you use across profiles.

If you run a quick audit of your online presence, you’ll likely find at least three or four inconsistencies you didn’t know existed. For example:

• A car rental company with two locations listed under slightly different names.
• A dental practice whose website mentions Invisalign but whose GBP categories don’t.
• An HVAC company whose LinkedIn still lists the phone number from before they moved offices two years ago.

None of these feel like big problems until you realize they’re introducing doubt into every AI query about your business.

What to do instead

• Run a self-audit:
  • Search your business name in Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
  • Look at what comes back. Note every platform that surfaces.
  • Check whether the description, address, phone number, and specialty language match across all of them.
• Standardize on one core business description paragraph and use it everywhere.
• Update any profiles that still reflect old addresses, phone numbers, or service areas.

You can also try our local citation coverage calculator to get an idea of where you stand:

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Stop ignoring these GEO signals and start getting found in AI search

None of this requires a marketing team or a budget. It requires consistency and specificity, which are things a single business owner who knows their work is better positioned to deliver than most large brands managing hundreds of locations.

The businesses that show up in AI answers are the ones that have given AI systems enough consistent, corroborated, specific information to be confident citing them. Your website is one input. The trust signals covered here are the rest.

AI-generated answers are not a temporary feature. The signal footprint you build across earned media, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, YouTube, and platform consistency today is what determines whether AI is confident enough to cite you tomorrow.

The post The Biggest AI Search Signals You’re Probably Ignoring appeared first on WordStream.