Small and medium enterprises (SME) in the UK are ditching conventional marketing channels for online and mobile tools, according to a new research report by pbSmart Essentials.
The report reveals that about 26% of SMEs claim traditional offline marketing only accounts for 10% of overall marketing activity, while 22% believe that they don’t do any at all.
Pitney Bowes Digital Channel Europe vice president Ryan Higginson said many SMEs’ success, and even survival, can depend on targeted, effective and easy to implement marketing that covers a multitude of channels.
"Offline will always play a very important role in any strategy but online has really come to the fore," Higginson said.
The report revealed that micro businesses would be deviated from traditional offline marketing, as about 54% believed that micro business accounts for about 10% of their marketing and that they support mobile and online avenues to achieve business growth.
Only 28% of SMEs are currently planning to invest in print advertising during 2013, while about a fifth of SMEs are planning their investments in direct mail in 2014.
The report forecasts that growing confidence in mobile marketing would attract investments from SMEs towards mobile QR codes, mobile optimised websites and mobile payments.
About 44% of the largest SMEs perform 10% of marketing through traditional channels, while the oldest businesses are most probable to have discarded traditional marketing and a third are executing about 5% of marketing via standard offline tactics.
