Core small businesses, those who spend less than $25,000 annually on advertising and promotion, had an average advertising budget of $5,504 in 2016, according to our Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of small businesses (Q3/2016). LCM dives into their spending, looking at how they allocate their limited ad budgets between various advertising media available.

The largest single chunk, 19.6%, went to “other traditional”, which includes newspaper and direct mail (TV, cable and radio are in their own separate “broadcast” category). Right behind was “other online” at 19.3%. Other online includes websites, email, display, SEO… but excludes social media, video, deals/coupons and Internet yellow pages. Speaking of social media, that was the third highest category with 15.0% of Core SMBs’ advertising budgets.

Core SMBs may not spend as much as the higher spending “Plus Spenders” in our LCM survey, but they are a large and important segment of businesses in the U.S. Many of these smaller SMBs are generally too busy with the basic tasks of running their businesses to focus on strategic or longer-term initiatives. This is where media channels and service providers can and should offer easy-to-use and affordable solutions to these over-worked small businesses.

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