While close to one quarter (20.5%) of small businesses plan to increase their ad spend on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, most SMBs have not yet adopted methods like promoted postings, sponsored tweets and social games/contests, according to the latest Small Business Marketing Forecast by Ad-ology Research.
Other findings include:
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More than half of small business advertisers say they market to their customers on a 1-to-1 basis. It stands to reason then that direct response and email marketing will take the bulk of many small-business budgets in 2013.
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Of the small businesses that use email marketing, many are using it heavily—19.1% sent out email messages 11 times or more in the past 12 months, and 9.1% have sent out 26 or more emails over the past year.
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Optimizing their sites for search engines is a priority, with 20.5% planning for this activity in 2013.
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Although most small businesses do not currently take advantage of online/mobile video, 12.2% indicate they plan to spend more money and/or time on the medium in 2013.
Source: Ad-ology Research
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