Small Businesses Prioritize Social Media Ads and AI, But Struggle with Online Presence and Customer Growth

LocaliQ and Localiq published  a new study "The Small Business Marketing Trends Report 2025" to find out what new marketing trends will emerge in the coming year and what challenges marketers must overcome to stay ahead in the digital world. After reviewing more than 730 small businesses, they came forward with top ten insights that are going to help marketers in the coming years.

1 - Small Businesses are not Investing in Paid Ads

The first insight from LocaliQ is that the majority of the SMBs are not investing in paid ads, rather they are investing in social media marketing (52%). 47% of the SMBs are investing on social media ads while 39% are investing in SEO. There are only 40% of the SMBs that were surveyed which are investing in paid advertising to attract as many customers as possible.

2 - Small Businesses Investing in Social Ads

Many small businesses are investing on social media apps to find potential customers and clients. Platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram are top platforms for social ads. TikTok has also become the fourth top search engine as Gen-Z uses it for search more than Google. If you want your small business to flourish, invest in social media apps to get customers.

3 - SMBs are Satisfied with Paid Search

The report also found that most of the SMBs are satisfied with the paid search tactics they are using, with 76% SMBs using search advertising being satisfied with it. Social media ads (73%) and display advertising (71%) also show satisfactory results.

4 - SMBs are not Investing in Strategies Related to Online Presence

Online presence strategies like reputation management and listing are something small businesses are not interested in that much. Even though these strategies aren’t that costly, small businesses are not taking advantage of that.

5 - Facebook is the Most Popular Social Platform for Marketing

For many small businesses, Facebook is the most popular platform for marketing (76%), followed by Instagram (63%) and LinkedIn (43%). The reason is that Facebook is the top platform for users too so SMBs can get a lot of customers from it.

6 - SMBs Have Small Budgeting

This may not come as a surprise that SMBs have small budgets, with 38% of them having budgets of no more than $2500 and 5% having no budgets at all. SMBs are adopting low cost strategies and getting creative with their market ideas to gain customers.

7 - SMBs Have Less Marketing Support

Many SMBs have less employees and most of them have even less employees that can do marketing. A lot of marketing strategies need commitment, but SMBs do not have employees and many of them aren't even taking advantage of free marketing tools.

8 - SMBs are Using AI

Just like other businesses, small businesses (60%) are also using AI capabilities for their business. 52% said they are using it for content creation, 39% are using it for social media management and 34% are using AI for chatbots. The reason why SMBs are using AI to save time (61%), generate ideas (50%) and simplify complex tasks (39%).

9 - Economy is a Big Challenge for SMBs

SMBs are struggling in terms of finances and economic conditions of the world right now are also not favourable. 18% of the SMBs said that they think 2025 is going to be quite challenging for them in terms of finances.

10 - SMBs are Also Struggling with Getting New Customers

45% of the SMBs said that it will be challenging for them to get new customers in 2025, mostly because they have limited resources and budget. Only right marketing can save small businesses in 2025 and attract customers.

Take a look at the charts below for more insights:

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World