Research from Constant Contact reveals small businesses ‘struggle to market effectively’

By Lucy Mazzucco

Constant Contact's Small Business Now report features insights from over 1,300 small businesses in Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.

iStock by Tirachard

Digital marketing and automation platform Constant Contact has issued its latest Small Business Now report which revealed that many small businesses feel overwhelmed by marketing and therefore struggle to market themselves effectively.

The report noted that many small businesses have difficulties marketing themselves due to having low confidence in their business strategies, time constraints, or overall insufficient knowledge about marketing.

"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," said Sarah Jordan, chief marketing officer at Constant Contact in a release about the report. "Our research shows that while most SMBs recognize the importance of marketing, they often lack the time and expertise to be effective, especially in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Constant Contact is committed to providing easy, yet powerful, tools that automate marketing to help our customers achieve better results in less time."

According to the report, low confidence may be partially driven by economic concerns. A total of 81 per cent of SMBs surveyed are concerned the current economy could negatively impact their business while 73 per cent of small businesses surveyed show a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of their marketing strategy.

A total of 44 per cent of SMBs globally plan on spending additional time on marketing this year, while 39 per cent expect they’ll also need to increase marketing budgets.

The report noted that another reason why small businesses may be struggling is that they simply don’t have enough time to prioritize marketing. Whether it’s because daily tasks and responsibilities occupy most of their time and effort, or they procrastinate when they do get the chance, the results from the survey pointed to a lack of time being a major factor.

A total of 56 per cent of SMBs surveyed say they only have an hour or less each day to spend on marketing, and 34 per cent feel working more efficiently is crucial to achieve their goals in 2024.

The findings revealed that the most time-consuming marketing tasks are posting on social media, planning, and determining what's working, all of which are the areas small businesses are most likely to procrastinate on. Of any country polled, small businesses in Canada report the least time available for marketing.

While many small businesses understand the importance of acquiring customers, a lot of them aren't sure which marketing channels to prioritize or even which strategy they should use to improve their campaigns and maximize business.

According to the report, 60 per cent of SMBs say finding new customers is their top marketing challenge, followed by understanding what’s working (33 per cent) and lack of resources (32 per cent). A total of 37 per cent of SMBs globally say choosing the right channels is the biggest area of marketing where they need to improve, and 41 per cent would like to increase the number of channels they use this year.

Additionally, a total of 82 per cent of SMBs agree that using multiple marketing channels leads to better results, while only 16 per cent are very confident that they are using the correct channels to reach their customers.

The report also noted that social media is the most popular marketing channel for SMBs (60 per cent), followed by email marketing (53 per cent).

Constant Contact's Small Business Now report analyzes insights from over 1,300 small business decision-makers at the Director level and above at companies with under 250 employees. Polls were conducted in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States and aggregated to determine global trends. All stats are representative of their associated demographics. The survey was conducted by Ascend2 in February 2024.