Facebook is the preferred holiday marketing tool of smaller businesses

Smaller businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of digital marketing and Facebook is their platform of choice for the holiday period.

This is among the findings of a report by marketing platform GetResponse which reveals that 60 percent of SMBs increased their digital marketing budget for this year’s holiday season.

Among the 200 SMB decision-makers surveyed, 33 percent say Facebook advertising is the digital marketing channel they primarily use to promote or increase holiday sales. Their own website is the choice of 17 percent, email 11 percent, YouTube eight percent, and Google Pay-Per-Click advertising seven percent.

"Facebook has proven to be an impactful marketing platform for companies of all sizes," says Simon Grabowski, GetResponse's founder and CEO. "Third-party research has confirmed it delivers the best ROI of any social media network. For that reason, it's no surprise that SMBs are relying primarily on Facebook advertising this holiday season".

Video is becoming a key tool too. In total 76 percent of those polled say that digital video is important to their holiday marketing strategy. Among that group, 47 percent say video is very important and 29 percent somewhat important. Just 11 percent said that video isn't important to their plans. Those not embracing digital video as a bigger part of their holiday campaigns cite resources (61 percent) and timing (38 percent) as the primary roadblocks.

The biggest holiday marketing challenge is seen as identifying target audiences (26 percent), followed by attribution and transparency (19 percent), content creation (16 percent) and data collection (14 percent).

"As audience attention has fragmented online, identifying targets is harder than ever," adds Grabowski. "Fortunately for SMBs, a growing number of self-serve tools and automated marketing technology platforms have emerged that streamline that process while enabling improved results".

You can find out more on the GetResponse website.

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