1. Driving sales and building brand awareness are top digital marketing goals of small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), as per 2016 Small Business Marketing Trends Report by Leadpages & Infusionsoft.
2. 82% SMBs claim that digital marketing is important to their company’s success, according to Small Business Digital Marketing and Social Media Habits in 2016 by Clutch
3. Primary aims of digital transformation initiatives taken by SMBs are “improving the way our organisation uses data and information” (42%) and “improving our products and services using digital technology” (41%), as per a report from The Economist Intelligence Unit.
4. Social media & email most popular content marketing tactics used by the SMBs, as per Leadpages & Infusionsoft report.
5. 73% SMBs chose social media as the digital marketing channel of choice in 2016, as per the Clutch report.
6. SMBs use a mix of online & traditional marketing tools, as per the State of Small Business Report by Waspbarcode.
7. 54% of SMBs list email and 51% list websites as the top online marketing tools, as per Yelp Small Business Pulse.
8. Facebook remains the favorite of SMBs, but use of Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram have increased, as per the Waspbarcode report.
9. 38% of SMBs use social media to gain likes and fans, as per the Waspbarcode report.
10. 45% of SMBs use social media to sell to potential customers, as per the Waspbarcode report.
11. Roughly 1 in 15 (6.6%) small business owners mainly use online ads to market their business online, as per Vistaprint Digital.
12. 92% of millennials at SMBs lead with social media in their marketing strategy, according to a Magisto survey titled Unlocking The Most Powerful Shift In SMB Marketing
13. In the research findings by Bellycard, which surveyed 429 SMBs, social media, customer loyalty program & email marketing were the top channels used by SMBs to promote their business.
14. For SMBs company website is the bread and butter of the marketing strategy. 71.6% of respondents use their websites as a marketing channel, with about half planning to spend more on the website in 2016, as per the Leadpages & Infusionsoft report.
15. 85% of SMBs are currently using marketing videos, as per the Magisto report.
16. 69% SMBs dedicated less than $10,000 in 2015 and only 22 % plan to increase their advertising and marketing budget in 2016, according to the Clutch report.
17. SMBs allocate on average 14 to 15 % of their total expenses to marketing-related activities, as per a report by Thrive Analytics.
18. In a research published earlier this year by Borrell Associates, 60% of SMBs plan to increase digital advertising in 2016.
19. In 2015, website development & SEO took 60% share of marketing budget, as per a Hubshout report.
20. Female SMB owners are more likely to use social media than male SMB owners as the main way to market their business online, as per the Vista Print report.
21. 92% of millennials at SMBs lead with social media in their marketing strategy; while 79% of baby boomers lead with word of mouth marketing, as per the Magisto report.
22. Millennials are 136% more likely than baby boomers to create videos for social media, as per the Magisto report.
23. Reasons SMBs don’t have a website
24. 68% of SMBs with websites are mobile-friendly ones, as per the Clutch report.
25. Go Daddy remains the patriarch of SMB websites, as per the Alignable’s SMB Trust Index
26. As per the Clutch report, the most anticipated website improvement areas in 2016 are
27. Turning leads into customers, generating web traffic, finding the time and resources for digital marketing & turning web traffic into leads are the biggest digital marketing challenges faced by SMBs, as per Leadpages & Infusionsoft report.
28. Lack of organisation-wide digital transformation strategy is one of the greatest challenges SMBs face. Just 7% of SMB executives report that their employer has an organisation-wide digital transformation strategy, as per the Economist Intelligence Unit report.
29. Hiring employees & increasing profit are the top 2 challenges SMBs face, as per the Waspbarcode report.
30. SMBs’ biggest hindrances to growth, in order, are lack of funding, lack of resources and not investing enough in marketing, according to the report by Thrive Analytics.
31. 58% of small business owners are using social media in their marketing, but less than half are creating any other kind of content to help them get leads and sales, as per a report by Leadpages & Infusionsoft.
32. Only 80% of small businesses use social media and many continue to underutilize SEO, blogging, and video, as per the Waspbarcode report.
33. Email marketing is another channel that SMBs aren’t leveraging; about 60% of SMBs said they don’t use email marketing. And less than half of small business owners have an email list that prospective customers can opt into, as per a report by Leadpages & Infusionsoft.
34. 74% of SMBs in the US did not use any tools to monitor or measure the performance of their online marketing, according to the report by Thrive Analytics.
35. 48% of small businesses do not track their inventory or use a manual process, as per the Waspbarcode report.
36. 55% of small businesses do not track assets or use a manual process, as per the Waspbarcode report.
37. Due to lack of measurable marketing tactics, 48.5% of SMBs said they don’t know if their marketing efforts are effective, as per a report by Leadpages & Infusionsoft.
38. Nearly half (47%) of small business owners handle marketing efforts on their own, as per the Leadpages & Infusionsoft report.
39. 54% of small businesses outsource graphic design and website design, as per the Waspbarcode report
40. 12% of small businesses outsource their marketing, public relations and advertising, as per the Waspbarcode report.
To know the SMB marketing scenario in 2015, check the insights here.