Seventy percent of small to medium sized businesses polled said they will increase their digital/web-based marketing budgets in the new year.
That’s according to GetResponse, an email marketing software solution serving over 350,000 small businesses, marketers and brands.
GetResponse recently commissioned a study to examine expected digital marketing investments among US-based small and medium-sized businesses in 2017.
The study polled 200 US-based small to medium sized business decision makers at the end of 2016, and also looked into the channels most likely to drive spending. The study findings were eye-opening.
Of the companies indicating in the poll they would increase their budgets, 30 percent said the budget will “increase considerably,” while 40 percent said it will “increase somewhat.”
Projected Digital Marketing Spend in 2017
According to the GetResponse study, 28 percent of the remaining businesses polled said their budget would remain unchanged. Only 2 percent said their digital marketing budgets would decrease in 2017.
“Digital marketing is vital for SMBs and our survey numbers bear that out,” said Simon Grabowski, GetResponse CEO and Founder. “Marketers are investing accordingly, given the substantial return on investment delivered through web-based campaigns.”
Social, Mobile and Email to Drive Digital Marketing Spend
The study also noted that social, mobile and email are poised to drive the spending surge this year. Of the small to medium sized business executives surveyed that projected increased marketing budgets in 2017, 59 percent said marketing on social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will primarily drive that growth.
The next channel projected to drive digital marketing spend in 2017 is said to be mobile marketing (50 percent) — either app or web-based — followed by email marketing (42 percent).
Other channels driving growth are: video production (28 percent), “search marketing, including paid search” and “content creation and management” (both at 26 percent), “data collection and analytics” and “corporate website maintenance and development” (both at 23 percent), and, “commerce experiences” (16 percent).
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This article, “70 Percent of Small Businesses Plan to Increase Digital Marketing Spend” was first published on Small Business Trends