The average UK SME owner will be putting around 16% of their 2018/19 on marketing, according to a study by performance marketing network affilinet.
The company polled 1,394 SME business owners in the UK who had set up their business in the last five years. Half of them were planning to up their marketing spends as a direct result of seeing their competitors get high levels of return on their own spending.
32% of respondents said that their plan to increase marketing spend was the result of a successful year meaning that they had more resources to throw around. 28% thought that their company would suffer unless they ensure that they have modern marketing practices in place.
Social media (22%) came out on top of the list marketing elements that small business leaders will be looking to prioritise in the coming year. Content marketing (14%), public relations (7%) and performance marketing (7%) followed behind in terms of priority.
Long-term picture
When the participants were asked how important they considered marketing sped to be to the continued growth of their business in 2017/18, 61% said that it was not something that they consider a core focus.
12% reported that marketing was an area that they had neglected in the last 12 months. 9% said that was a key goal to focus on marketing in the last 12 months.
“As an SME budgets can be tight, but the need to implement a strong and clear marketing strategy is especially important as many small business owners can get caught up with the daily marketing activities (sending emails, tweeting, writing a blog etc) without keeping track of the bigger, long term picture,” Rick Leake, Client Services Director at affilinet, said.
“In the modern digital age, your marketing strategy is key for creating awareness amongst customers, generating interest and sales, and continuing engagement.”
