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The small and medium businesses (SMB) in America are now rapidly diverting their funds to digital marketing. Making their presence felt online has become important all of a sudden and almost 51% of such businesses are keen on improving their online marketing strategy. The total expenditure of $ 202 billion includes web design and development, web hosting, management, and social media marketing.


What The SMBs Spend On


Online consultation and researching the current trend also requires money and is categorized under the marketing expenses. Advertisements produced solely for web distribution take up 12.5% of the expenses with 1% of them being spent on professional fees for agencies offering digital marketing services. Interestingly, the trend for spending more on online advertisements and campaigns have increased with every SMB spending more on it than on the traditional means of promotion i.e. Newspapers and television.


Public relations has also become web based today and the businesses have no qualms spending good money on creating Press releases and distributing them on the Internet, while managing the online opt-in lists.


Search Engine Optimization both global as well as local is important too and warrants at least 11.3% of the digital marketing expenses. It helps to ensure a high page ranking that results in an increase of visitors to the company's website eventually.


However, SMBs seem to be reluctant to engage professional agencies for social media marketing. The larger companies, on the other hand, tend to outsource their digital marketing tasks to experts. The smaller ones depend on their own existing staff who may or may not be well equipped to handle the challenges of such marketing.


Future Spending Trends


The small and medium businesses are increasingly becoming focused on digital marketing though. The future expense trends hint at a 40% increase of their digital marketing budget. It may go even higher with even Mom & Pop shops preferring to market their wares online. Here are a few areas which will see an increase in budget:-


The Number of Digital Channels is expected to be doubled.Start Up companies are likely to allocate one third of their budget for digital marketing.Facebook promotion is likely to become professional with SMBs paying for it. 57% of the SMBs will hire people to comment and monitor the online reviews for their products/services. Customer Loyalty Programs like LevelUp & Closely will attract more investments.Mobile Marketing is going to be huge eventually with most SMBs taking advantage of it. Consequently, the money spent on it will be increased considerably too.


Almost half of America's SMBs are now engaged in digital marketing and view it as a great opportunity for making their presence felt online and getting access to more customers. Hence they are prepared to spend good money and reap the benefit.


http://www.sooperarticles.com/internet-articles/internet-marketing-articles/why-smbs-spend-digital-marketing-services-1280398.html