Stretched, Stuck & Seeking Support: Rethinking Small Business Marketing
- Annabel Ausmus
- Oct 14
- 3 min read
The 2025 State of Small Business Marketing Report paints a clear picture: small marketing teams are doing more than ever - but with less time, less confidence and more pressure to perform.
The recent report from Constant Contact surveyed more than 2,500 small business decision-makers across Australia, the UK, USA and Canada, finding only 18% of SMBs feel 'very confident' in their marketing effectiveness, down from 27% last year.
The challenge: How to do more strategic marketing with less time
According to the research findings, 47% of SMBs in Australia (51% in USA, 39% in Canada, 32% in UK) are spending less than one hour a day on marketing and most are still unsure what’s really driving results.
Small marketing teams handle everything from marketing strategy and content creation to campaign design and PR. They may also juggle operations, events, partnerships, customer engagement and internal comms. Add to that the fast-evolving digital landscape, with new search algorithms and AI-driven customer journeys, and it’s no surprise that lean marketing teams are stretched thin, feel overwhelmed and aren’t achieving the results the business needs.
Despite these challenges, optimism remains. 37% of SMBs increased their marketing budgets in 2025, showing a growing commitment to brand building and lead generation activity. However, SMBs and small marketing teams often lack the tools to access reliable, integrated marketing analytics or attribution data across the customer journey, meaning their efforts and budgets can easily be misplaced.
The result: a high volume of marketing activity for low returns, and non-data-driven decision making when it comes to forming marketing strategy, budgets and resourcing requirements.
The answer: Spend your time where it matters most
AI-driven search is changing how customers discover and engage with your brand. With 'zero-click' web searches on a sharp incline (where users don't click on any links beyond the search query) and search traffic to travel-related websites reportedly down 30-40%, it's no longer enough to simply optimise your website for keywords.
Driving brand visibility and credibility now means surfacing your brand and services across search engines, AI Overviews and within AI assistants, which means optimising your marketing efforts for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation).
And that takes new skills and extra effort. Actively creating credible, authentic and structured content that answers your customers' questions is critical, and sharing that content across the right mix of channels - including websites, social media, online review sites, referral sites and discussion forums - will be central to an effective brand awareness strategy. Having access to the data and insights to understand which channels are moving the needle on your customers' buying behaviours forms the foundation of more informed marketing activity, budgets and resources.
The opportunity: Smarter, more strategic marketing that drives results
The good news is small business marketers don’t need to do everything. They just need to do the right things, well.
That’s where strategic partners like Amplifly come in. We help lean marketing teams refine their strategy and plug gaps in capacity and skills so they can deliver more of what matters most to the business: growing visibility, building a sales pipeline and generating revenue.
Whether it’s refining your brand strategy, sharpening brand visibility or producing content that positions your brand as the go-to market expert, Amplifly supports your team with the tools, direction and execution to market smarter and grow faster.
1. Refocus your resources: Review where your team’s time and energy are really going. Are the hours spent driving brand visibility, lead generation and customer retention, or lost in admin? Small shifts in focus can unlock big returns.
2. Apply a ‘Stop, Pause, Continue’ mindset: Map every channel, campaign and task. What’s genuinely moving the needle towards growth? What could be paused or simplified? And what deserves more fuel? This framework helps you prioritise the marketing activities that have the most commercial impact.
3. Audit your tech stack: List every platform, subscription and tool you use. Which ones streamline your workflow, and which ones sit idle or duplicate capabilities? Look for opportunities to automate repetitive work and free your team to focus on strategic delivery.
4. Evaluate your team’s capability and capacity: Do you have the right skills mix for where marketing is headed - especially relating to AI, analytics and content optimisation? Identify the gaps, upskill where possible, and consider external expertise to lift performance and bandwidth.
5. Get confident in your data: How clean, current and connected is your customer data? If you’re making decisions on partial or outdated insight, you’re flying blind. Review how data flows across your systems and how it can better inform your campaigns, customer targeting and decision-making.
The way forward: Don't panic - just partner!
When resources are stretched, budgets are tight and expectations are high, the right support can help you transform effort into impact. If you're ready to optimise your team and marketing activity for better returns, contact Amplifly today.
Sources: Constant Contact 2025 State of Small Business Marketing Report
