Borrell Finds Small-Medium Businesses Feel 'Optimistic' About Ad Spending

SMB Survey

BORRELL has released its latest Small & Medium Business Survey, and writes, "As 2018 approached, industry gurus were issuing a lot of predictions about marketing. So we decided to go straight to the source and ask local advertisers. The results are a unique glimpse of what those on the front line are seeing. We examined two sets of responses to our panel of more than 1,000 local advertisers: One sent in DECEMBER 2017, when we asked about predictions, and one sent in JANUARY 2018 when we selected several of those predictions and asked their opinions. We also did a little comparison to predictions they had made for us in 2016."

Some key findings:

• Many SMBs saw better-than-expected results from advertising in 2017, especially with social media and traditional media
• SMBs believe the ad-spending outlook for 2018 will be as good or better than 2017
• Newspapers will survive 2018
• SMBs favor a media mix of traditional and digital advertising
• Most participated in fewer social networks in 2017. The most popular is FACEBOOK, but retailers use Instagram, B2B companies use LINKEDIN, and master marketers use YOUTUBE
• SMBs use an average of three social media networks, Less than half see it as a “smart” investment

BORRELL found overall, SMBs feel optimistic regarding advertising spending in 2018. Just over half expect spending to hold steady this year, while 2 in 5 expect spending will increase by more than 5%.

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