Your frustration is common. We work with start-ups, small and large businesses every day and they all feel this way at one time or another. Chin up. There is lots you can do DIY style to help increase traffic to your site.

Media is divided in three pillars: owned, earned and paid.
Paid media is traditional advertising (billboards, digital ads, etc.) Earned media is a PR firm's speciality we work to pitch your story to the press and get you into major newspapers, on TV, radio, online in a variety of outlets. If you can get yourself earned editorial media it's technically 'free' as you don't pay for the coverage. Owned media is all the channels you control -namely social media.

If you are strapped for budget you should be focusing on owned and earned media. Let's start with owned.

Make sure you are on all the relevant channels for your target audience. Here are some guidelines for how much you should be updating your various owned channels.
Blog - 3 -5 times a week
Twitter - 8-12 updates a day
Facebook -2 times a day
Instagram - once a day at least

Of course there are hundreds of other channels you could be using (LinkedIn, reddit, Snapchat, Google+ etc...)

This will just give you a sense. The trick here is that the content you upload to your owned channels needs to be truly awesome. Stuff that is shareable and stuff that speaks directly to your customer base. Across all the channels you will have CTAs (calls to action) that help your readers/consumers/customers find you, buy the product, get to your website. However the content you post should NOT be spammy and directly selling to them. It should inform them or entertain them and always provide value.

Let's talk a little about earned media. Anyone can do it definitely and you don't need to hire a PR firm however you do need these things:
-a solid list of relevant media contacts
-TIME - hours and hours to craft your pitch and send personalized notes to each of the journalists
-a newsworthy story to pitch them
-a thick skin
-excellent copy writing skills

Many people have successfully scored their own press. Sign up for things like HARO and you're off to a good start. However many entrepreneurs do hire PR firms because they simply don't have the time or know-how to get the job done well. You are usually busy running your own business and that is your area expertise so it's nice to have a PR professional work on helping market your business.

How to bring traffic to your website in a world so saturated with content is a rabbit hole of conversation that I enjoy going down with business owners. There are so many moving parts to it and it's not simply a matter of getting yourself in Forbes, or NY Times (though that certainly helps!)

What I've mentioned is only the tip of the iceberg.

Hope some of this helps and I'm happy to talk about it further should you want to chat. Every project has it's own unique needs and story to tell so thats where you need to start. What makes you/your business so special? Answer that honestly and you'll have the start of a strategy.

blue skies,
Daniela