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Introduction
Digital marketing can be defined as the promotion of goods and services “using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_marketing) or, similarly, “the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels via computer, mobile phones, smart phones, or other digital devices” (Smith, 2012, p. 86). The use of digital channels has transformed the way marketers communicate with today’s consumers. A considerable portion of the world’s consumers own and use computers and/or mobile devices, which contributes to the tremendous growth of digital ad spending. Marketers quickly recognized the benefits of social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn for communications and spent $51.3bn on global social network advertising in 2017, a 55.4 per cent increase from 2016 (Cooper, 2018). The amount spent on digital ads is expected to increase by 17.7 per cent in 2018 and comprise $273bn (44 per cent) of the $629bn spent on advertising globally (McNair, 2018). Mobile ad spending grew 39 per cent in 2017 and is forecast to grow another 27 per cent and constitute 55 per cent of all digital ad spending in 2018 (MAGNA Global). The increasing concentration of advertising dollars is compelling evidence of digital marketing’s effectiveness for reaching target markets and achieving growth objectives that include increased sales, brand awareness, customer engagement, lead generation and reduced customer acquisition and support costs (Labrecque et al., 2013; Lamberton and Stephen, 2016; Tuten and Solomon, 2015).
Despite the known benefits of digital promotions, little is known about digital marketing by small businesses because the majority of the digital marketing literature focuses on large businesses and organizations (Celuch and Murphy, 2010; Järvinen et al., 2012; Michaelidou et al., 2011). Large businesses are expected to have websites that also are mobile enabled, and they can hire outside experts to manage search engine optimization projects and social media marketing firms to implement and run social media campaigns, whereas small business owners “develop, change, and evolve their marketing activity intelligence through social media use” (Atanassova and Clark, 2015, p. 163). Both the practitioner and academic literature assume that businesses outsource some or all of the digital marketing functions (Edelman, 2010; Leeflang et...