Less than half of small businesses effectively track marketing spend

67% of small businesses rely on asking clients how they heard of them to track incoming leads. This demonstrates a real opportunity for small businesses to focus their online and offline marketing activity to improve response and conversions.

SME Marketing & Advertising 2018 Survey

To find out where small businesses are succeeding – and where they’re lagging – we surveyed 200 companies with revenues less than £500,000 about their online and offline marketing strategies and budgets. The data reveals trends within sectors and where businesses plan to invest their marketing budgets in 2018.

Marketers are failing to attribute leads accurately

The research reveals that smaller businesses are still relying on instinct to drive marketing campaigns, rather than solid analytics tools that prove return on investment. Other key takeaways include:

• • 67% of companies said their primary method of attributing sales back to marketing was to ask clients how they heard about their business.
  • 64% believe that online marketing (social media, search engine optimisation, Pay-Per-Click and online advertising) offers the best return on investment (ROI).
  • 55% said that they intended to invest more budget in social media.
  • 39% of small businesses use analytics tools to measure marketing investment against sales leads.
  • 37% believe offline advertising (newspaper and magazine advertising and leaflet inserts) delivers the most effective ROI.

With the focus of future spend on social media, you need to track how likes, follows and favourites become inbound leads in the future. Combining online and offline marketing activity with call tracking on inbound sales leads demonstrates whether your marketing investments are paying dividends.