Small business owners are still unsure whether their digital marketing strategies are working and claim that finding the resources and time to support creative content campaigns will be one their biggest challenges in 2018.

Content and digital marketing have been cited as crucial strategies for driving a variety of positive business outcomes, including engagement, awareness, reach and sales in 2018. But, a new report by marketing and sales platform Infusionsoft suggest micro-businesses and other small enterprises are still somewhat short of maximising the potential of video, mobile and other key trends.

The research polled the opinions of 1,000 small-business owners in North America in October. While digital marketing success remains out of reach for most respondents, almost three-quarters said they plan on publishing content across social media platforms next year to acquire new customers. Facebook will be the most popular outlet for these small-business owners.

While the report noted a certain caution in major digital marketing spend, more than a third will invest in social media management in 2018, and 30% will spend more on SEO and digital ads due to the growing importance of featuring on the first page of Google SERPs.

USA TODAY senior columnist, Steve Strauss said: “The vast majority of small business owners are indicating that they plan to invest their money in social media in 2018. I strongly recommend they invest in tools that enable them to…monitor traffic and conversion to see what’s working and what isn’t.”

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the report is the fact that most small-business owners are effectively in a blind spot when attempting to determine the success of digital marketing. A staggering 63% said they either “don’t know if their marketing strategies work” or “know their strategies aren’t working,” which indicates SMEs must do more to leverage tools, metrics and analytics to improve content decision making.

An outside influence could also help. A fifth of enterprises said a major challenge for 2018 would be finding the time and money to market their business properly. A third party, such as a digital content agency, could transform a brand’s marketing efforts, providing them with not only expertise but also regular, high-quality, targeted and relevant blogs, news, and videos that can benefit every aspect of a modern business.

Demand Gen Report & Marketing ID News Editor, Brian Anderson, added. “Finding time and resources for marketing, being able to convert leads into customers, being able to have the types of conversations that lead to sales: it’s ultimately not a technology solution as much as it’s a process solution. If you have don’t have a process to understand your marketing efforts and your sales efforts, your technology isn’t going to benefit.”

Digital marketing can drive the visibility, awareness and revenue small businesses need to grow, so marketers simply must do more to implement effective campaigns, as they risk losing out to larger enterprises that usually have more mature strategies and resources.