We've previously recommended boosting your marketing during the recession because, due to the reduced competition, it's an ideal time to capture market share. If your competition is slashing its marketing budget, you can take advantage of the opportunity to more aggressively woo clients that your competition ignores. This strategy will be rewarded once the economy bounces back, and your brand equity is suddenly more widely recognized than the competition's.
According to research recently reported on eMarketer.com, smaller businesses apparently understand the logic of this strategy more than larger firms. Only 13% of B2B companies with over 1,000 employees are increasing spending on marketing, while 26% of B2B companies with fewer than 100 workers are doing so.
In the aggregate, large firms plan to cut overall marketing spending by 9.7%, whereas their smaller counterparts are cutting only 0.4%.
Online spending, however, will go up for both groups, with the small B2B companies increasing digital spending the most—by an average of 8.2% and the large B2B companies increasing by only 0.4%.
The online marketing tactics small-business owners found most effective? Email marketing.
See the relevant charts on eMarketer.
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