2016 Small Business Marketing Trends Report

Today’s small businesses have more marketing options than ever before. In the land of digital marketing tools alone, analytics are ever more powerful, automation is ever farther-reaching, and targeting is ever more precise.

With that power has come increasing complexity. According to ChiefMarTec.com, from 2014 to 2015 the number of marketing technology companies almost doubled, from 947 to 1,876.

Together, Keap and LeadPages serve tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses with software that makes their marketing easier and more effective. We wondered: Are small businesses taking advantage of this expanding field of platforms, tools, and opportunities? Or are they sticking to a few tried and true strategies?

Most importantly: What will successful small business marketing look like in 2016?

To find out, we surveyed a panel of more than 1,000 small business owners from across the U.S. The results paint a rich picture of the state of small business marketing in 2016. In this report, we’ll examine:

• Goals and Priorities: What are small business owners hoping to achieve with their marketing in 2016?
• Challenges: What are small business owners struggling with and seeking to improve in 2016?
• Tactics: What tools and techniques are small business owners trying out (and succeedingwith) as they move toward their marketing goals?
• Opportunities: What advantages can small business owners seize in 2016 that will help them reach their goals and get ahead of their competition?
• Trends and Predictions: Finally, we’ll share the trends we predict will come to the forefront of small business marketing in 2016.

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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.

The best digital marketing efforts in 2016 will involve a diverse yet integrated combination of tools, with a growing focus on mobile, data, and content. Here’s a look at how successful small businesses will approach digital marketing.

Successful small businesses will diversify their digital marketing efforts to keep up with changing online habits.

Successful small business owners know that their digital marketing efforts are always a work in progress. One area needing continual improvement is mobile marketing. Small business owners need to ensure a quality experience for clients using mobile devices, now that Americans now spend more time on mobile devices than on computers, according to the research company eMarketer. And consumers are using mobile devices not only to research purchases, but to make them: In the United States, 14 percent of e-commerce transactions take place on a smartphone and 13 percent occur on a tablet, according to the digital advertising firm Criteo. For that reason, it will be more and more crucial for business to use mobile-responsive websites and landing pages.

Small business owners will also shift their social media focus toward paid posts and ads. As social networks change their algorithms, organic posts from companies are being crowded out. On Facebook—which has said it favors posts from users’ friends over those from brands—impressions of organic brand posts dropped 35 percent between the first quarters of 2014 and 2015, according to Adobe. Meanwhile, paid impressions increased 8 percent. To ensure their posts are seen, small business owners will need to invest in paid ads and posts. Doing so pays off: Paid social leads to 25 percent more conversions, compared with organic posts, according to a report by AOL Platforms.

Successful small businesses will begin to view and use their websites—and all content they create—as sales tools first.

Our survey demonstrates that a majority of small businesses know they need to have a website and a social media presence. But in a crowded market, having a website that simply serves as a brochure is no longer competitive. The small businesses that pull ahead of the pack in 2016 will use all the web pages and other content they create as part of a well-developed strategy to reliably meet sales goals.

By creating targeted landing pages and other opt-in points that can collect data from visitors—in exchange for targeted content—small businesses can passively acquire leads. Then, they can use that information to automatically or actively follow up and turn those leads into sales.

With the help of a good landing page platform, businesses can quickly create an ever-expanding array of marketing assets whose performance can be tracked at a glance. And they’re likely to see continual improvements in their client acquisition rate as they create more content and more campaign-specific landing pages.

Successful small businesses will strive for integrated marketing solutions.

As digital marketing becomes increasingly complex, a small business owner can become overwhelmed when using a different tool for each marketing tactic. Too many systems can create organizational chaos for a small business owner and an inconsistent experience for the client.

Successful small business owners will look to integrate marketing channels to ensure a cross-platform experience that is seamless and sales-oriented. They’ll map the sales funnel in its entirety, planning and tracking how prospects move through each stage. Each tool involved in the marketing strategy—from social media to landing pages to email to the CRM and more—will work together to lead prospects toward a sale. In a report by Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud, nearly three-quarters of marketers said that cross-channel interactions have a major impact on conversion.

Successful small businesses will become increasingly sophisticated in their use of data (while gravitating toward tools that make that data easy to understand).

One of the most dramatic findings in our survey was that nearly half of small businesses have no way of knowing whether their marketing efforts are successful. Moving toward digital platforms and away from print ads and telemarketing will give small businesses more of the data they need to decide whether their budgets are being put to good use.

Given that nearly half of small business owners handle their marketing on their own, they’ll need marketing software that clearly presents only the most important data. Among smaller businesses, tools that foreground bedrock metrics such as conversion rates and revenue are likely to win out over more complex systems.

Many opportunities await small business owners striving to improve their digital marketing efforts in 2016. Thanks to ever-expanding access to technology solutions, small businesses can benefit from the same digital marketing strategies used by the most successful corporations. By developing sales-oriented web presences and taking advantage of tools like CRM/ automation software, email marketing and landing pages, small businesses can grow and thrive in an increasinglydigital world.