Constant Contact’s new global report Small Business Now: The State of SMB Marketing reveals that SMEs across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) are the most likely to put off marketing tasks and procrastinate on managing their email marketing campaigns.
ANZ SMEs are aware of this and concurred with the fact that they need to “double” on the marketing front this year, with 27 per cent of ANZ SMEs saying they feel “very concerned” that the current economy will negatively impact them, 56 per cent saying that they were “somewhat concerned” and only 17 per cent saying that they were “not concerned”.
“Nearly 90 per cent of small businesses across Australia and New Zealand are concerned about the current economic climate impacting their businesses negatively this year, which might suggest they’d want to pull back on their marketing spend to reduce costs,” Renee Chaplin, VP Asia Pacific for Constant Contact, said. “But the data tells us they intend to increase their marketing efforts in a bid to survive economic headwinds.”
The survey found that at the moment, 50 per cent of respondents spent less than $15,000 per year on marketing, with 23 per cent saying that they spend less than $1500 per year.
“Often small-business owners lack the knowledge and time to effectively market their business,” Chaplin explained. “When faced with economic concerns, the instinct is to conserve cash, and often marketing is the first place SMEs look to cut back. However, those that double down and invest in marketing during these times are able to increase loyalty to retain customers and attract new ones when they need it the most.”
Marketing is the most likely activity ANZ SMEs will delay undertaking, with 13 per cent saying they “always” procrastinate on marketing tasks and 46 per cent saying they “regularly” procrastinate. Furthermore, 58 per cent of ANZ SMEs spend less than one hour per day on marketing, which Chaplin partly attributes to SME owners seeing marketing as a challenge as it is not an area of their expertise.
The study also found that ANZ SMEs are most likely of any country polled to use email marketing (59 per cent) as their primary marketing channel, followed closely by social media (58 per cent). While 85 per cent of ANZ SMEs understand that using multiple channels such as SMS and events inmarketing campaign typically leads to better results, only 17 per cent said that they always run multichannel campaigns.
“Small-business owners are usually much more passionate about their products and services than they are about marketing, but they still need to attract and retain customers to grow,” Sarah Jordan, chief marketing officer at Constant Contact, said. “While most SMEs recognise the importance of marketing, they often lack the time and expertise to be effective, especially in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.”
Despite these challenges, ANZ SME owners are proactively looking to do more this year on the marketing front. In fact, SMes across ANZ are the most likely to spend more time on marketing this year (51 per cent), increase their marketing budgets (46 per cent), and increase the number of marketing channels they use (47 per cent).Furthermore, 48 per cent of ANZ SMes plan to increase their marketing budgets by at least 10 per cent YoY.
“The key to success will be how SMEs spend an increasing budget and, more importantly, into what channel they focus that budget,” Chaplin said. “If they do this effectively, business owners might see marketing challenges decrease which in turn will help them better attract and retain customers, helping to ward off economic concerns.”
