Ninety-three percent of small businesses plan to maintain or increase their marketing budgets this year, according to a survey.
Just over half plan to spend more on marketing in 2011.
The 7% of 925 small business managers and decision-makers polled who expect to slash budgets represents an even more positive outlook than 2010, when 11% of small businesses planned to cut their marketing spend.
The Small Business Marketing Practices Survey found that entrepreneurs plan to increase both their online and offline marketing budgets, with a particular emphasis on boosting spending on email, website and social media marketing.
Growing numbers of businesses are harnessing social media, 35% updating a Facebook profile, making it the most popular social media tool, followed by 22% adopting viral or referral marketing programmes. Twitter was not yet as popular as Facebook, with 21% using the microblogging site.
Forty-six percent of businesses surveyed do not have a website and only 13% update a blog.
