A new study suggests that a large number of British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are planning on pumping more money into their marketing efforts this year in a bid to boost their profile.
The research, which was carried out by European marketing network Affilinet, found that around two thirds of SME decision makers were planning on dedicating a significant chunk of their annual budget to marketing.
It found that, on average, businesses were planning on investing around 16 per cent of their budget on marketing over the course of 2018/19.
More than half (51 per cent) of the 1,394 SME owners quizzed said that they had decided to do so because they had witnessed competitors reap the benefits of fine-tuned marketing strategies.
A further 28 per cent said that they feared their business would suffer if they did not upscale their marketing activities, while 32 per cent said that they simply had a good year in 2017 and were hoping to pump a good chunk of money into helping their business to grow.
When asked what kind of marketing they were most interested in investing in, 22 per cent said ‘social media marketing’, while 17 per cent favoured ‘content marketing’ and seven per cent were more interested in exploring public relations (PR) opportunities.
Rick Leake, Client Services Director at Affilinet, said that investing in such marketing strategies was crucial for businesses that wished to compete “in the modern digital age.”
“Marketing strategy is key for creating awareness amongst customers, generating interest and sales, and continuing engagement,” he said.