For small to medium sized businesses, it is expected that these will increase their spending on digital advertising and marketing this year as compared to the previous one according to the Outlook report for 2011 released by Borrell Associates.
In this report, 2,800 owners of SMBs were surveyed and results indicate that 84% of them will be spending on digital advertising while 53% will increase this part of their budgets. Results further indicate that a 30% growth is expected on the amount that these companies will spend on social media marketing, websites and emails. On the other hand, amounts spent on local prints, newspapers and radio will double this year.
Also, many companies are including QR code campaigns within their budget, directing future customers to mobile sites, Social Media sites or special offers. This is proving to be one of the most cost effective ways to build status within the social arena.
According to Borrell, 70% of the amounts spent on online advertising come from the SMB market. Last year, the average amount spent by an SMB is less than $12,000 and about $2,300 of that was spent for online advertisements.
As a way to connect to their customers, SMBs are more interested in social media such as Twitter, Facebook, some location-based services and those that will be able to gather more customers. Instead of company sites, several SMBs are now using social network pages. 14% of SMBs according to Borrell who do not have company websites make use of social network pages.
During the local media conference of Borrell, Emily White of Facebook introduced new offers that can be used by SMBs such as the Facebook Places mobile check-in platform. She also included ad formats from the Sponsored Stories that can be used for social endorsements.
