How are SMB Marketing Budgets Shaping Up for 2014?

SMB Marketing Budgets Evolving Quickly

According to ChamberOfCommerce.com and BrightLocal SMB marketing budgets are shifting to digital. In fact:

• 21% of SMBs  expect to increase their digital budgets
• 45% of SMBs might increase their digital budgets
• 32% of SMBs will not increase their digital budgets

This shift, coming from a crowd whose largest source of leads is garnered from word-of-mouth, indicates a growing trust in digital mediums. Approximately 54% of small business believe that digital mediums such as email, landing pages, and ppc are better than print equivalents such as flyers, posters, and billboards.  Interestingly, direct mail seems to be finding a resurgence, as businesses are realizing that as mailboxes are less cluttered, it is easier to reach target customers with personalized messages and get feedback online.

Expectedly, many SMBs are adopting a strong inbound marketing policy that helps tie in every aspect of a digital marketing program including blogging, social media, landing pages, email marketing, and SEO.

Boingnet’s take – SMB marketing budgets should reflect today’s multichannel reality

Smart marketers are realizing that “all of the above” is typically the right answer for questions regarding the allocation of marketing dollars. Consumers expect to receive timely, personalized and targeted offers from brands that they trust, large or small. Segmentation based on experience is now driving channel priority, and marketing automation solutions within reach of SMB marketing budgets need to be flexible enough to enable marketers to run cross channel campaigns that will provide evidence of customer channel preference. While many SMB’s rely on email marketing as their primary means of outreach, many are learning that high quality landing page and microsite strategies can act as hubs of campaigns that reach across email, direct mail, social, PPC and mobile. Marketing automation that supports SMB efforts are increasingly affordable and easy to use with template driven approaches that easily enable campaigns to reach out in all channels.

Taken from a another resource, here is an informative infographic that documents how SMBs are spending their marketing dollars as compared to larger businesses.