Last month we examined the marketing and advertising trends of newly formed SMBs as part of a series of reports drilling down in our Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18 survey of small and medium businesses. Today we are looking at established SMBs; SMBs at the established lifecycle stage identify themselves as “growing/expanding their businesses” or “maintaining their size and share.”

The most popular channels used for advertising by established businesses are a mix of social, digital and traditional: Facebook page, website, email marketing, LinkedIn and direct mail. Even their future plans for advertising shows a mix of digital and traditional. Search, email and print advertising are the top three future channels.

Established SMBs had an average annual spend of $23,331 on advertising and promotion, compared to $17,360 for newly established SMBs. 55.5% of established SMBs plan to maintain their currently level of spending in 2015, while 31% plan to increase their spending.

Established SMBs are heavy users of social with 70% of established business respondents said they track “likes” on social media. 61% monitor customer comments about their business. 71% of them use a free or do-it-yourself service to do so.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full established SMBs spotlight report here. This report is one of a series of drill-down reports on the findings from Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of small-and-medium businesses. Our LCM reports look at where particular SMBs (broken out by size, vertical, etc.) spend the most, as well as the top channels for marketing and advertising. Additionally it provides analysis on the best product and service offers for these highly coveted groups of SMBs. In the coming weeks and months we will be looking at SMBs who prefer the DIY online advertising models, those that prefer DIWM or DIFM models, and SMBs by vertical. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.