It’s not essential for every business but it is for any growth business. I know many independent contractors in construction and home services related fields that don’t even have a website. You can make good money in those fields just by showing up on time, staying sober, and doing half decent work. Hell I also know some graphic designers without a website or any real digital marketing. You can get a lot of work as an individual just through referrals. When you grow a business it’s a different story. You start to encounter more competition and you have employees. Employees will almost never give even half of a shit compared to what an owner will. They won’t ask for referrals, try to drum up work, or much of anything past their required duties. What this turns into is company leadership being responsible for drumming up enough business to support the employees who still have to be paid regardless of how much has been sold recently. I typically see a digital marketing need acknowledged around the 5 employee mark. This is usually the point where companies have the revenue to support making the investment and the owner takes a look around and realizes it will probably be cheaper to invest 10K+ to keep the pipeline full than shoulder the risk of it drying up and having that amount go up in payroll smoke. Hell one bad sales hire can cost that much + the time wasted. A quality website and digital marketing program will easily become the most cost effective method of generating business over time. The tricky part many owners have is being able to manage cash flow well enough to make the investment. Let’s say a website costs 5k and there was a 1k/mo advertising budget for ppc, total 17k for the year. The investment is going to be front loaded and the returns will likely be backloaded. This isn’t a marketers fault it just takes people time to make a decision after they find you, it takes time to hone in ppc campaigns, and it takes time for a new website to start settling in with seo and ranking for organic terms. Let’s just assume you got a 3x return on investment. In all likelihood you might see a 1x return in the first 6 months (17k in new revenue) and the other 2x (36k in new revenue) in the last 6 months for a total of 51k new revenue.