In December 2015, Keap and LeadPages surveyed a panel of 1,026 self-identi ed small business owners from across the U.S. via an online questionnaire they accessed with a mobile device. Respondents were not necessarily customers of Keap or LeadPages, and the survey did not identify us as sponsors.
We asked these small business owners a slate of 10 questions (shown with their answers in charts throughout this report). While not all respondents answered all questions, we received at least 1,000 responses for each question.
Summary of Data
Top Insights
- Small business marketing can be a lonely job. Nearly half (47 percent) of small business owners handle marketing e orts on their own.
- Digital marketing is far from universal in the small business world. Nearly one in ve small business owners do not plan to use digital marketing at all in 2016.
- Tracking the return on their marketing investment is a major struggle for small business owners. Nearly half of those surveyed said they don’t know whether they’re marketing e ectively—and 14 percent know they aren’t.
- Following up with leads and clients is also a tough task. Twenty-one percent of small business owners don’t store contact information anywhere, while only 24 percent use customer relationship management (CRM) software and 20 percent use an email marketing service provider. Forty- ve percent don’t maintain an email list that prospective customers can opt into.
- Most small businesses are still using a fairly unsophisticated digital marketing stack. Forty-one percent use only one or two software applications in their marketing, and another 26 percent use three or four.
- About half of small businesses plan to invest more in their websites in 2016, and half plan to increase their web advertising budgets. But that doesn’t mean that analog marketing tactics are dead: About a quarter of small business owners plan to spend more on print ads or direct mail, and 14 percent will spend more on telemarketing or in-person marketing.
- Fifty-eight percent 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.
- In 2016, most small businesses using digital marketing will aim to drive sales, build brand awareness, or simply convey information. This heavy focus on the top and bottom of the funnel suggests that many small business owners may be missing opportunities to improve other parts of their client acquisition and retention process.
Digital marketing goals and priorities
Goals
In 2016, small businesses say they’ll look to digital marketing primarily to meet goals at the top and the bottom of the client-acquisition funnel. Fifty-one percent of respondents named “driving sales” as a top goal for their digital marketing, while nearly as many (48 percent) chose “building brand awareness or conveying information.”
All other options lagged significantly behind—including even “collecting leads,” the next most popular option with 34 percent of respondents naming it as a top goal.
Keeping in mind that about one fifth of respondents planned to do any digital marketing in 2016, it’s perhaps not surprising that the least popular goal was “gaining efficiency with marketing automation” (16 percent). Before they can become efficient, small business owners need to simply get started.
Priorities
To understand what small business owners planned to prioritize—instead of just what they hoped to achieve—we asked which marketing channels they were expecting to budget more for in 2016:
Given the number of businesses who named building brand awareness or simply conveying information as a top marketing goal, it makes sense that 51 percent of small business owners planned to spend more money improving their websites in 2016.
An equal number are getting more sophisticated and increasing their budget for web advertising, such as search- based and social media advertising. No other marketing channel was as big a priority as these two, but substantial numbers of small business owners are continuing to increase spend on both digital and analog platforms.
Digital marketing challenges: Not enough leads, not enough time
The greatest digital marketing challenges for small business owners revolve around leads: attracting interest in the first place, then turning web traffic into leads and ultimately clients.
In our survey, these answers nearly tied as respondents’ biggest digital marketing challenges for 2016:
- Turning leads into clients (20 percent)
- Generating web traffic (18 percent)
- Finding the time and resources for digital marketing (18 percent)
- Turning web traffic into leads (17 percent)
The small business owner’s struggle with leads may be related to his commonly used marketing strategies. The majority of respondents said they don’t use channels that could help generate and convert leads—including digital advertising, social media, email marketing, and content marketing (see “Marketing tactics” section). And many aren’t using email tools to follow up with leads, like email marketing software or an email list that prospective clients can opt into.
Overall, digital marketing tactics remain underutilized—and misunderstood—amongst many small business owners. Given the lack of attention to measurable marketing tactics, it’s perhaps not surprising that nearly half of respondents said they don’t know if their marketing efforts are effective.
Marketing tactics: Websites are the focal point
Marketing is an in-house endeavor for the majority of small business owners, according to our survey. Nearly one in two owners also serve as head of marketing, while nearly a quarter of respondents reported that an employee oversees marketing efforts.
For small business owners, the company website is the bread and butter of the marketing strategy. Nearly three- quarters of respondents use their websites as a marketing channel, with about half planning to spend more on the website in 2016.
But less than half of small business owners reported using all other digital channels for marketing—including social media, digital advertising, email marketing, and landing pages. Most aren’t employing non-digital tactics, either: Less than one-third of respondents use print advertising and direct mail or telemarketing and in-person marketing.
Most small business owners also don’t create content that can help their business acquire clients (aside from posting on social media platforms, as 58 percent of respondents do). Less than half use content marketing tactics like emailing content or publishing blog posts or articles.
Our survey also asked small business owners about two cornerstones of the sales and marketing process: contact management and email marketing. To store contact information for leads and follow up with them, more small business owners use an email service like Gmail or Outlook than any other system. Such services can limit a small business owner’s ability to conduct robust email marketing campaigns—which suggests why 45 percent of respondents don’t have an email list that prospective clients can opt into.
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