In October of 2010, Zoomerang partnered with GrowBiz Media and launched a survey in an effort to understand how small to midsized businesses used their marketing budget in 2010 and what changes they were planning for 2011. The survey was sent to businesses with less than 1,000 employees across the US )sorry I haven't come across a similar survey with Canadian SMBs).

I admit a sense of astonishment in seeing that only 54% of the 751 respondents indicate that their business currently has a website. Not so surprising was that E-mail and social media marketing continue to grow in popularity. Heading into 2011, most SMBs plan to increase their marketing spend in both online and print mediums, with online activities receiving the largest increases.

Here are the Key Takeaways –
• Businesses are continuing to adopt social media and build these practices into marketing budgets.
• The growth of social media could be linked to more than half of the businesses surveyed having a marketing budget of $1,000 or less.
• Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the top three social networks, respectively, utilized by SMBs.
• Respondents under the age of 30 are the highest adopters of social media.
• The top five budget areas that SMBs plan to increase in their 2011 marketing budgets are: website, e-mail, direct mail, social media and print advertising.

For more information on the survey and its results, click here to download the report in its entirety.

Paul Bies



President,
Mystique Creative

Scents Alive ia a custom manufacturer of natural personal care, skin care, pet care, and natural candles.

Since 1987, they’ve helped customers formulate better quality natural products, or reformulate their existing products to make their lines more natural.

Mystique Creative was commissioned to create a new website that was not only fresh but optimized for the search engines. Traffic is up as a result, as is business!

Paul Bies

President,
Mystique Creative