The State of Search Marketing for Small Businesses

Survey Data Insights

Introduction

Last year, we conducted a survey to better understand the habits and results of small business’s search marketing efforts. In order to update our data and identify new trends, we recently asked the same questions to 272 marketers working full-time for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the United States.

Specifically, we asked survey respondents about the 3 most common types of search marketing:

• Paid Search Marketing

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Local Business (Map) Listing Optimization

Whether you’re a marketing professional looking to increase traffic for your own small business or an affiliate publisher helping advertisers spread the word, search marketing is a critical tool for generating interest, clicks, and leads. Our survey sought to better understand the types of resources small businesses deployed (both financial and human capital), whether they handled these efforts internally or outsourced them, their biggest challenges as well as their success rate with search marketing. We believe the data it provides can be a useful resource for organizations working within the search marketing space as well as for small business owners.

Trends and Stats At-A-Glance

While our survey revealed a ton of interesting data points and trends, here are some of the highlights:

• 72% of small businesses report doing some amount of search marketing, which is down slightly from last year (75%).
• 84% of small businesses report purchasing 3rd party tools/software to plan/execute at least some part of their overall search marketing strategy. This is a net 24% increase from 2023, indicating SMBs are rapidly adopting 3rd party tools to help them.
• Small businesses tend to do most of their search marketing in-house as opposed to hiring an outside person/agency (they are more likely to hire an outside agency for SEO versus PPC):
  • Paid Search – 65% in-house, 20% agency, 15% combined in-house/agency
  • SEO – 60% in-house, 26% agency, 13% combined in-house/agency
  • Local Business Listing – 71% in-house, 14% agency, 15% combined in-house/agency
• The biggest challenge (receiving 45% of votes) for their paid search marketing efforts is finding time/resources to dedicate to their efforts, with planning and strategy being second at 31%.
  • In 2024, SMBs are finding it easier to prove the ROI of paid search, accurately report on paid search, and stay on top of platform changes than they did in 2023.
• 95% of small businesses deploy dedicated landing pages exclusively for their paid search traffic, a net 9% increase from 2023.
• 75% of businesses firmly agree that paid search marketing is an effective part of their overall marketing strategy, which represents a net 20% increase from 2023.
• Technical SEO implementation is the biggest challenge businesses report facing (51%), with keyword research and/or content discovery and planning being the second largest (25%).
  • In 2024, SMBs are finding it easier to find the time and resources, stay on top of search algorithm changes, and generate links to their website than they did in 2023.
• Search marketing for small businesses works. The following percentages of small business marketers felt these tactics were an effective part of their overall marketing efforts:
  • Paid Search – 96% (net increase of 9% from 2023)
  • SEO – 94% (net increase of 11% from 2023)
  • Local Business Listing – 94% (net increase of 6% from 2023)
• Overwhelmingly, small business marketers plan to devote additional resources to all 3 search marketing tactics:
  • Paid Search – 94% (net increase of 15% from 2023)
  • SEO – 93% (net increase of 9% from 2023)
  • Local Business Listing – 92% (net 12% increase from 2023)

Demographics

How many employees does your business have?

This survey focuses on small businesses with fewer than 500 employees.

What industry is your business in?

This survey was conducted amongst marketing professionals across a wide variety of industries.

Does your business provide products or services mainly to businesses or mainly to consumers?

Amongst those surveyed, 59% identified as mainly B2B businesses while 41% identified as mainly B2C businesses.

Does your business primarily sell products or services?

Amongst those surveyed, 48% identified as mainly selling products while the remaining 52% reported selling mainly services.

What is your business’s annual revenue?

55% of small businesses reported generating less than $1M annually, while 74% reported generating less than $10M annually.

Adoption Rate

Does your business do any search marketing?

Over 1 in 5 small businesses do no search marketing whatsoever. With 66% of consumers actively searching Google for small businesses to patronize, the 23% of companies who aren’t investing in search marketing are likely missing out on a sizeable portion of potential customers.

Work Hours Per Week

How many work hours per week are devoted to your business’ search marketing efforts?

44% of small businesses devote 20 or fewer hours per week to search marketing, while 63% devote 40 or fewer hours to it. 38% report devoting more than 40 hours per week to their search marketing, up from 15% in 2023.

3rd Party Tools

Does your business pay for 3rd party tools/software to execute its search marketing strategy?

Of small businesses that report doing some form of search marketing, 13% do not purchase any 3rd party tools/software to help them plan, execute, or report on their efforts. This is a near 25% increase from the number of small businesses that reported using tools in 2023.

Total Spend

How much does your business spend each month on search marketing?

27% of small businesses spend less than $1,000 each month on all search marketing, while nearly half (49%) spend less than $5,000 monthly. The percentage of businesses devoting less than $1,000 decreased from 33% to 27% between 2023 and 2024.

SD Insight

Small businesses are devoting more of their time, effort, and budget to search marketing than in 2023. This indicates an increasing awareness of the importance of search marketing than ever before. Now more than ever, companies know that search marketing is not just an option, but a necessity. Search marketing includes both PPC and SEO and is essential when it comes to staying ahead of your competitors and meeting your audience where they’re at in real-time.

Paid Search Marketing

Which statement best describes your business’s paid search marketing efforts?

75% of respondents indicated they currently spend money on paid search marketing, while 17% indicated they had tried paid search marketing in the past but no longer do so. Only 5% of small business marketers reported never having tried paid search marketing.

These results show a 15% increase in the number of small businesses investing in paid search from 2023 to 2024, as well as a 13% drop in the number of businesses that tried paid search and gave up. It appears as though paid search marketing adoption is accelerating rapidly.

Which statement best describes your business’s paid search marketing efforts?

A near supermajority of respondents (65%) indicated they handle all of their paid search marketing internally, while 20% reported using an agency and 15% reported using a mix of in-house/agency to execute their paid search marketing campaigns.

What is the biggest challenge your business faces with paid search marketing?

45% of survey respondents indicated that finding time and resources was the biggest challenge they faced when it came to their paid search marketing efforts, followed by planning and strategy (30%) and optimization (11%).

SD Insight

There is a clear shift from 2023 to 2024 in what SMBs find challenging with paid search marketing. Businesses find it easier to prove the ROI of paid search, accurately report on paid search, and stay on top of platform changes than they did last year. Because they’re struggling less with these issues, more businesses report that finding time/resources and planning/strategy are big challenges. 

Access to affordable tools and smarter technology has most likely helped businesses optimize elements of their paid search strategy that they originally found challenging. Particularly with reporting and staying on top of platform changes, access to technology and information is key. 

In the current climate, we are making our own efforts to increase profit and ensure our resources and time are spent wisely. We expect other companies are doing the same, highlighting the importance of running paid search internally while struggling to find the time and resources to do so. Thankfully, there are many tools and resources out there to help companies manage and grow their paid search efforts successfully regardless of your budget and team size.

Do you build dedicated landing pages designed exclusively for your paid search marketing traffic?

95% of small businesses reported building landing pages dedicated exclusively to their paid search traffic, a 9% increase from 2023 that indicates the overwhelming majority understand the importance of this best practice.

How much does your business spend each month on paid search marketing?

1 out of 5 respondents indicated they spend less than $1,000 each month on paid search marketing, while 46% reported spending less than $5,000 each month. The majority of small businesses (54%) are now spending more than $5,000 monthly on PPC, compared to 40% in 2023.

SD Insight

We think there are a number of possible explanations for the increase in paid search spend. We noted earlier that the stats indicate a large number of respondents managing their paid search in-house. Additionally, the increased use of tools opens the door to companies seeing more ROI from their paid efforts. This allows them to unlock more spend directly to their paid marketing campaigns. 

Agree or Disagree: Our business is able to easily track the effectiveness of our paid search marketing efforts?

Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority (94%) either agreed or somewhat agreed that they were able to easily track the effectiveness of their paid search marketing efforts.

In 2023, 91% either agreed or somewhat agreed with this statement with 46% of those small businesses only somewhat agreeing that they could easily track paid search results. In 2024 that number decreased significantly to 21%, with 73% firmly agreeing that they can easily track effectiveness. This indicates an increased confidence in SMBs’ ability to track results.

Agree or Disagree: Paid search marketing is an effective part of our business’s overall marketing strategy?

Paid search marketing seems to work for nearly everyone who uses it, with 96% reporting it is an effective part of their business’ overall marketing strategy. 75% of SMBs wholeheartedly agreed with this statement—a 20% increase from 2023.

SD Insight

We saw a significant increase in the percentage of SMBs that firmly agree that paid search is effective. This could be for a number of reasons, including Google’s improved conversion optimization tools. Small businesses seem to be taking greater advantage of built-in optimization tools. These help remove the guesswork from paid search and ensure Google is optimizing paid search marketing campaigns for the types of conversions the businesses want.

How likely is your company to invest more resources into paid search marketing within the next 12 months?

As further proof of the effectiveness of paid search marketing, 94% of those who do paid search marketing indicated they plan to spend more on those efforts in the next 12 months.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing

SEO Efforts – Adoption Rate

Compared with paid search marketing (75%), a slightly higher number of small businesses (78%) do some form of SEO. That said, 12% of small businesses have tried SEO in the past but no longer do so.

Similar to 2023, a greater percentage of small businesses use SEO than businesses that use paid ads. However, while the adoption rate of paid search increased significantly over the last year (+15%) the adoption rate of SEO only increased by 8%.

SEO Efforts – Primary Focus

Given its multidisciplinary nature, we wanted to understand better the extent small businesses focused on various aspects of SEO. Perhaps not surprisingly, a supermajority (68%) said their primary focus was on various on-page SEO tactics, while 25% focused on off-page tactics such as generating inbound links to their website. Only 7% of small businesses reported focusing on both aspects of SEO.

SEO Efforts – In-House vs Agency

Compared with paid search marketing, it’s clear small businesses don’t feel quite as confident handling their SEO efforts. 26% rely on an outside person/agency to handle their SEO efforts (compared to 20% for paid search marketing), while 60% handle SEO internally, and 13% rely on a mix of both in-house and outside help.

What is the biggest challenge your business faces with SEO?

Just over half of small businesses surveyed (51%) reported that technical on-page implementation of SEO tactics was the biggest challenge they faced, while 25% reported that keyword research/content planning was their biggest challenge.

SD Insight

As with paid search, we’re seeing drastic changes in what businesses report as a big challenge with SEO. There’s been a decrease in the percentage of businesses that report challenges with finding time and resources (-13%), staying on top of algorithm changes (-5%), and generating links (-5%). This trend is likely due to an increase in the tools available to companies alongside a greater understanding of what effective SEO looks like and how to achieve that. However, more businesses are struggling with the technical side of SEO.

In short: while small businesses have gained a greater understanding of the concept of SEO, its implementation is still a challenge. 

We learned that respondents seem more inclined to use an agency for SEO purposes rather than for paid search. The fact that respondents also listed technical SEO as their biggest challenge aligns with the idea that they might work with an agency to combat those complexities. While paid search can be complicated, the execution tends to remain the same. SEO, on the other hand, is ever-changing and requires close monitoring of Google algorithm changes and best practices to see success.

How much does your business spend each month on SEO?

23% of small businesses spend less than $1,000 each month on their SEO efforts, while 46% spend less than $5,000 each month.

By and large, it seems like small businesses are inclined to spend roughly similar amounts for their SEO and paid search marketing efforts.

Agree or Disagree: Our business is able to easily track the effectiveness of our SEO efforts?

94% of small business marketers agreed their SEO efforts were easily trackable. This is a major jump from 2023’s number (80%), which is significant on its own; but it’s especially interesting when compared to the paid search numbers. In 2023, small businesses reported that paid search was easier to track than SEO (91% vs 80%), whereas in 2024, the numbers are nearly equal.

Agree or Disagree: SEO is an effective part of our business’s overall marketing strategy?

94% of small business marketers said SEO was an effective part of their marketing strategy, making SEO only slightly less effective than paid search marketing (96%). This is an 11% jump from last year, which lines up with what we’re seeing across the board with SEO and PPC.

How likely is your company to invest more resources into SEO within the next 12 months?

93% of respondents reported they were likely or very likely to invest additional resources toward their SEO efforts in the next 12 months. This is right in line with what small businesses are reporting for paid search.

Local Business Listing (Map) Optimization

Which statement best describes your business?

Of those respondents who reported being a local business, 75% said their business is actively working to optimize their local business listing to appear in more local searches. 18% of local businesses said they do not devote any resources to optimizing their local business listing.

The percentage of local businesses that do not optimize their local listing has halved from 2023 to 2024 (36% down to 18%).

Local Business Listing – In-House vs Agency

While the vast majority of businesses (71%) still manage their local listing internally, that number has decreased slightly from 2023 (74%). Interestingly, the percentage of businesses that outsource their local listing optimization (14%) also decreased from 18% in 2023.

The only increase we see here is that more small businesses are using a combination of in-house and agencies to optimize their local business listing (15% in 2024 compared to 8% in 2023).

What is the biggest challenge your business faces with local business listing optimization?

When it comes to the challenges small businesses face with managing their local business listing, they report the following:

• Finding time/resources to dedicate to optimizing your local business listing (54%)
• Understanding what factors contribute to better visibility for your local business listing (26%)
• Generating reviews from past customers for your local business listing (10%)
• Proving ROI of your local business listing SEO efforts to other stakeholders (8%)
• Accurately reporting on local business listing SEO effectiveness (2%)

SD Insight

The biggest change from 2023 to 2024 is that the percentage of businesses that reported generating reviews from customers as the biggest challenge decreased by 13%. Businesses likely recognize the importance of generating reviews for their local business listing and have optimized that process. Additionally, the number of businesses whose biggest challenge is finding time and resources increased by 24%, a similar change to what we saw with paid search and SEO.

Agree or Disagree: Our business is able to easily track the effectiveness of our local business listing optimization efforts?

Like other search marketing tactics, the vast majority of small business marketers (92%) feel confident in their ability to track the effectiveness of their local business listing.

Agree or Disagree: Local business listing optimization is an effective part of our business’s overall marketing strategy?

94% of small business marketers (who report devoting resources to optimizing their local business listing) say those efforts are an effective part of their overall marketing strategy.

How likely is your company to invest more resources into local business listing SEO within the next 12 months?

91% of small business marketers who are actively optimizing their local business listing report they are likely or very likely to devote additional resources to those efforts in the next 12 months.

SD Insight

It’s clear that businesses understand the importance of their local listing, but it seems that they may struggle to find time to keep it updated and make it a priority. We encourage businesses to either find the time to manage their listing or work with someone else to manage it, as it is an incredibly valuable component of a successful marketing strategy.

There are several reasons to prioritize optimizing your local business listing. Your local listing can help boost your SEO presence, increase visibility, boost your brand image and credibility, and encourage customer reviews. As your business grows it is important to stand out among competitors.

Conclusions

Overall, it’s clear that search marketing works for those willing to devote resources to it. While there are certainly small businesses that have tried various search marketing strategies in the past but no longer do so (presumably because they were ineffective), the overwhelming majority of respondents report seeing success with their search marketing.

Perhaps one of the most striking conclusions from this year’s survey was the shift in what small businesses report as the biggest challenges. Increased availability of 3rd-party tools and built-in optimization in search engines is revolutionizing the search marketing world for small businesses.

Across the board, we’ve seen an uptick in the percentage of small businesses that report search marketing is effective. Particularly in paid marketing, it appears as though SMBs are finding success with their efforts. Likely because of this, a larger portion of businesses plan to devote additional resources to all 3 areas of search marketing in the next year than we saw in 2023.