How marketing works, in plain English.

Before anyone becomes a customer, they go through a few steps. They notice you. Something catches their interest. They take a closer look. Then they act: they buy, book a call, or send an inquiry.

Marketing is the work that moves people through those steps. How long that takes depends on what you sell. Someone can see an ad for a pair of shoes, tap it, and buy them two minutes later without leaving their phone. Someone choosing a builder might see your name for months before they get in touch. The steps are the same; the pace is very different.

Good marketing fits the way your customers buy. A gap at any step costs you customers. An ad nobody notices does nothing. An ad that catches interest but leads nowhere clear loses people. And a website that looks out of date loses them at the last moment.

What “digital” means here

Most of this now happens on phones and computers. People spend hours a day on a handful of platforms. A platform is a company whose apps or websites millions of people use every day, such as Facebook, Instagram and Google. Those platforms sell space for ads, and that space is where most digital marketing happens.

Digital ads differ from a billboard or a newspaper ad in two ways. You can choose who sees them. And you can see what people did after seeing your ad: who tapped it, who visited your website, and who got in touch or bought. The rest of this page explains how.

Ads that ask people to act

Most digital ads have one job: to get the person seeing them to do something. That might be buying a product, booking a call or sending an inquiry. When someone does it, it is called a conversion. Ads made for this are called conversion ads, and most of the work in digital marketing goes into them.

A conversion ad shows people what you offer and gives them one clear next step, such as “Shop now” or “Get a quote”. Most steps can be tracked (chapter 5), so you can see which ads bring in customers, and put more behind the ones that do.

Being known

Awareness is how many of the right people know your name and what you do. It is a smaller share of the work, but it helps the rest. When people compare companies, they lean toward a name they recognize. So people who have seen your name before are more likely to respond when a conversion ad reaches them.

Two words describe this. Reach is how many different people saw your ad. Frequency is how many times, on average, each of them saw it. One sighting is soon forgotten. Several, spread over weeks, is how a name sticks.

The balance depends on what you sell

For some businesses, the need is sudden. When a pipe bursts, nobody spends a month researching plumbers. They search, compare a few, and call. Here, nearly all the effort goes into being found and chosen in that moment.

For others, the decision is slow and the stakes are high. Choosing a builder, a law firm or a private school can take months. People notice names long before they are ready to act. Here, more of the effort goes into getting known early, so you are already on the list when the time comes.

Most companies sit somewhere in between, and nearly all lean toward getting people to act. Part of planning is deciding where yours sits.

Who Meta is

Meta is the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads. Until 2021 the company itself was called Facebook. It took the new name to cover all of its apps, which together are used by billions of people.

Facebook and Instagram are where most business ads on Meta run. One advertising account places ads on both, so a campaign can reach people on whichever app they use more.

Where the ads appear

On both apps, people scroll through a feed: a running stream of posts from friends, family and accounts they follow. Ads appear in that stream, marked “Sponsored”. They also appear between Stories, which are full-screen photos and videos that disappear after a day, and among Reels, which are short-form videos.

Who sees your ad

Meta knows a good deal about the people who use its apps: roughly where they live, their age, the interests they have shown, and what they look at and respond to. Advertisers don’t get a list of names. They describe the kind of people they want to reach, and Meta finds them.

So a company can show its ads to adults within twenty miles of its office who have shown an interest in home improvement. Meta also learns from who responds to an ad, and finds more people like them on its own.

How Meta decides which ad to show

Each time someone opens the app, more advertisers want that space than there is space to give. So Meta holds an auction for it, in a fraction of a second. Think of it as bidding for a spot on a shop shelf: each advertiser says what the spot is worth to them.

The highest offer doesn’t always win. Meta also weighs how good the ad is and how likely this person is to respond. Here is why. Meta earns its money from ads, and it can only sell ad space if people keep coming back to its apps. Ads people find useful or interesting keep them scrolling; ads they find annoying drive them away. So Meta favors ads that people stop for. A clear, well-made ad gets shown more, and costs less each time, than a poor one.

Done well, everyone gains. People see ads worth their time, Meta keeps its users, and you reach customers for less.

Each showing of an ad on someone’s screen is called an impression.

Who Google is

Google is a search engine: a website that finds other websites for you. It is the one most people use. Since 2015, Google has belonged to a parent company called Alphabet, which was set up to hold Google and its other businesses. Google also owns YouTube and runs Google Maps.

How a search ad works

When someone types into Google, the words they type are their search. The words an advertiser chooses to show up for are called keywords. A roofing company might choose keywords like “roof repair Tampa” and “roof replacement cost”.

When a search matches, the ad can appear at the top or bottom of the results, marked “Sponsored”. It looks much like the regular free results around it: a headline, a line or two of text, and a link to the company’s website. The ad fits into the natural flow of the search, because it answers the very thing the person asked. Many people don’t realize it is an ad at all.

How you are charged

Most search ads are charged by the click. A click is when someone taps or selects the ad to visit your website. Being seen costs nothing. This is why you will hear search ads called “pay per click”.

What decides who appears first

Google runs an auction for each search, much as Meta does. Again, the highest offer doesn’t decide it alone. Google also judges how well the ad matches the search, and how useful the page behind it is. A relevant ad that leads to a good page can appear above a competitor willing to pay more.

How it differs from Facebook and Instagram

Search reaches people who are already looking. Facebook and Instagram reach people who aren’t looking yet, but may be soon. One meets demand that exists; the other helps build it. Many companies use both, each for its own job.

An ad is only worth running if it leads somewhere. To know where it led, someone has to follow the trail from the ad to the inquiry. Online, that trail is followed by tracking.

The pixel

A pixel is a small piece of code that we add to your website. Code is a set of written instructions a website follows, and this one has a single job. When someone visits your site, or sends an inquiry, the pixel tells Meta. Meta then checks whether that person saw or clicked one of your ads.

Think of it as a receipt. It proves which ad brought the customer in.

The name comes from how it first worked: an invisible dot, one pixel in size, on a web page.

What we use it for

• Proving what worked, so effort moves toward the ads that bring in customers.
• Finding more people like your customers. Once Meta knows who responds, it looks for more like them.
• Reminding people who came close. Someone who visited but didn’t get in touch can be shown a reminder ad at a later date. This is called retargeting.

The Google tag

Google has its own version, called the Google tag. It traces a click on a Google ad to the inquiry it led to.

Link labels

Visits from an email or a post have no pixel of their own. For those, we add a short label to the end of the web address (the line of text that takes you to a page), such as “source=newsletter”. The reports then show where each visitor came from. Marketers call these labels UTMs.

What tracking can’t see

Tracking is never perfect, and no one should tell you it is. Some phones and web browsers (the apps people use to visit websites) let people refuse tracking, and many do. Those visits still happen, but they can’t be traced to an ad.

To fill part of that gap, Meta offers something called the Conversions API. (“API” is a technical term for a connection between two computer systems.) Here is how it differs from the pixel. The pixel works inside the visitor’s phone or browser, so when their settings block it, it can’t report. The Conversions API works from your website’s side instead. When an inquiry comes in, your website tells Meta directly, much as a shop might phone a supplier to say an order arrived. Because it doesn’t rely on the visitor’s phone or browser, it reports more reliably.

Any contact details it sends are scrambled into a code first, so Meta can match them to an account without reading them.

None of this shows us who browsed your site. Tracking gives counts, such as how many inquiries each ad brought in. The only names you receive are from people who contact you. Where privacy laws require it, visitors are asked for permission first.

Where it all ends up

Each month, it comes together in one short report, in plain English: what was spent, what it brought in, and what we are changing next.

Showing up on Google for free

Below the sponsored results, Google lists websites for free, in the order it judges most useful. The work of earning a higher place there is called SEO, short for search engine optimization. It means making sure your website clearly answers what people search for, loads quickly, and is trusted by other websites that link to it.

Then there is your Business Profile: the free listing that shows your company on Google Maps and in search, with your hours, photos, reviews and phone number. For a local business, it is often the first thing people see.

SEO is slow. It builds over months, not days. But a high place in the free results keeps bringing people in, with no charge for each click.

Pages that turn visits into inquiries

When someone clicks an ad, the page they land on matters as much as the ad. A landing page is a page built for one ad and one next step. If the ad is about roof repairs, the page is about roof repairs, says plainly how to get in touch, and asks for nothing else. A homepage that tries to say everything at once often loses the people an ad worked to bring.

Email that brings customers back

The people who already know you are the likeliest to buy again. Email reaches them directly, without paying a platform each time. Here is how we do it:

• We email only people who agreed to hear from you: past customers, and people who signed up.
• We send something worth opening, such as seasonal advice, news or an offer, rather than a stream of sales pitches.
• When someone sends an inquiry, follow-up emails go out on their own, so they hear from you right away, even outside office hours.
• Every email has a clear way to unsubscribe, and anyone who does is not emailed again.

Tracking that shows where each lead came from

This is the work that holds everything else to account, so it has its own chapter:

How we know what worked

Every ad, search result and email ends in the same place: your website. That is where people decide whether you are the company for them. They decide quickly, often on a phone.

How quickly? A well-known study from Carleton University in Canada found that people form an opinion of how a website looks in about a twentieth of a second. That opinion barely changed when they were given longer to look. A first impression forms almost at once, and it is hard to undo.

Three things matter most:

• Speed. A page that is slow to appear loses people before they read a word.
• Clarity. At a glance, people should know what you do, who it is for and where you work.
• A clear next step. Calling, booking or sending an inquiry should be obvious from every page, and work well on a phone.

A slow or dated site doesn’t only look bad. It wastes the ads that brought people there. The same ad does more when it leads somewhere worth arriving at.

An example, not a client.

Say you run a roofing company in Tampa. Here is how one customer might find you.

In the spring, a homeowner in South Tampa is scrolling Instagram and sees your ad: a short video of your crew finishing a roof. She doesn’t need a roof. She keeps scrolling, but she has seen your name. (Chapter 3)

A few weeks later she sees your name again, in a second ad showing a roof before and after. It is starting to stick. (Chapter 2)

In August, a storm tears shingles off her roof. She searches Google for “roof repair South Tampa”. Your sponsored ad is near the top, and she recognizes the name. She clicks. (Chapter 4)

The Google ad leads to a page about storm repairs, with photos of your work and a short form. She fills it in. (Chapter 6)

A minute later, an email arrives confirming her request and saying when you’ll call. (Chapter 6)

Behind the scenes, the Google tag credits the search ad with her inquiry, and it appears in that month’s report. (Chapter 5) The Instagram ads get no credit in that count, though they are why she knew your name. Reading a report well means knowing what the numbers can’t show.