More Evidence Regarding Small Business Marketing Practices

A few weeks ago, I published a post that discussed some of the major findings of a survey conducted by Target Marketing magazine regarding the marketing practices of small and mid-size companies. Recently, Clutch (a B2B market research firm based in Washington, DC) published the results of its 2017 Small Business Digital Marketing Survey. Because these two studies addressed similar topics, I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast their findings.

Both of these studies focused on smaller companies. In the Target Marketing survey – which produced 725 responses – 50% of the respondents were with companies having less than $5 million in annual revenue, and 22% were with companies having annual revenue of $5 million to $50 million.

In the Clutch survey – which produced 350 responses – 46% percent of the respondents were with companies having less than $1 million in annual revenue, and 26% were with companies having annual revenue of $1 million to $5 million.

Both studies indicate that marketing spending by most small companies will increase or hold steady in 2017. In the Target Marketing survey, 37% of respondents said their 2017 marketing budget would be higher than in 2016, and 40% said their budget would stay the same compared to 2016. In the Clutch survey, 49% of respondents said their marketing budget would increase in 2017, and 33% said it would remain flat.

Both surveys also asked participants how their spending on specific marketing methods would change in 2017. The following table shows the percentage of respondents in each survey who said they plan to increase spending on each identified method or channel. (Note:  The Clutch survey focused exclusively on digital marketing methods.)

The Clutch survey also provides a couple of additional data points regarding small business marketing practices:

• Over two-thirds of the survey respondents (68%) reported spending less than $100,000 on marketing and advertising in 2016, and 41% said they spent less than $10,000.
• About half of the respondents (49%) have 1 or 2 employees working on digital marketing activities, while 28% said they have 3 or 4 digital marketing employees.