What Are the Highest-ROI Marketing Channels for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses?

What two independent data sources reveal about channel performance

What are the highest ROI marketing channels? We hear this question from business owners frequently.

We dug into the data to see what trends we could pull. The channels that enterprises invest in most and find most impactful are not the ones that most small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are using. And the channels that SMBs most frequently use are ones they are not satisfied with.

Here is what two independent data sets reveal:

1. For enterprises, the highest-impact channels are paid social, digital display, and search advertising. The highest-ROI channels are email, SEO, and paid social.

2. For SMBs, the channels with the highest satisfaction and strongest reinvestment intent are video marketing and search advertising. The most widely used channel—organic social—has the lowest reinvestment intent and one of the highest dissatisfaction rates of any channel surveyed.

The rest of this piece shows the data behind these findings. It closes with a link to our framework for applying them to your specific business. After all, knowing which marketing channels perform best on average does not tell you which ones are right for your business.

The highest-impact and highest-ROI marketing channels for enterprises

A chart from Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey showing channel spend and impact.

Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey, a survey of 400+ marketing leaders at major enterprises with average revenue of $5.7 billion, provides insights into the most impactful and most efficient marketing channels. Although these are significantly larger companies, this data is still valuable to SMB leaders: it shows which marketing channels produce the greatest impact and the highest ROI when operating at scale. We’ll draw a distinction in this data between channels with the greatest impact and those with the highest ROI.

Which digital channels do enterprises find the most impactful?

1. Paid Social

2. Digital display advertising

3. Search advertising

4. SEO

5. Email

The top three most impactful channels all offer very clear ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) measurement. It is possible that enterprises are willing to invest more in these channels because they can more clearly evaluate their performance. It is easier to track someone moving through a digital pathway than it is an offline one. 

Looking ahead, we can expect that the investment in SEO will be complemented or overtaken by investment in GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, the act of optimizing content to appear in AI-generated search results from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. According to Duke/Deloitte’s 2026 CMO Survey, 41.5% of marketing leaders are already using GEO, a category that did not exist as a tracked marketing activity previously. For SMBs investing in SEO now, building for both traditional search and AI search is worth doing from the start rather than retrofitting later. For more information about GEO, check out our Business Owner's Guide to AI Search.

Event marketing is rated the highest-impact offline channel. For B2B businesses in particular, this is worth taking seriously. Events concentrate buyers in one place at a moment of high intent. Since their effectiveness can be harder to measure, justifying the investment is more challenging than for digital channels where ROAS is immediately visible. That measurement gap is likely why offline channels are underrepresented in SMBs’ marketing budgets–not because they do not work.

Which channels do enterprises find offer the highest ROI?

The most impactful channels are not always the ones with the highest ROI. Impact measures how much a channel can move the needle. ROI measures how much you get back relative to what you put in.

On the chart, the channels furthest below the white dotted equilibrium line are those with the highest ROI. They are generating the most impact relative to their spend. The channels above the white dotted line are those where investment outpaces impact. Offline channels cluster there not necessarily because they underperform, but because their impact is harder to measure and attribute than digital channels.

Of the highest-impact channels, those that offer enterprises the greatest ROI are:

1. Email

2. Retail media networks

3. SEO

4. Paid social

The top of this high-ROI list of channels is email, which also made the high-impact list. Email is a powerful channel that allows businesses to own their relationship with customers. It produces outsized impact for the amount of investment required. After a certain point, additional investment in an email program offers diminishing returns. 

SEO and paid social are also high-ROI, high-impact channels. Enterprises find them to be among the highest-returning channels in absolute terms and among the best uses of spend relative to what they deliver. 

This data tells you which channels produce the highest impact and the greatest ROI when investment is not a constraint. Now let’s explore which channels SMB leaders are investing in, and whether they are satisfied with them.

SMBs are not satisfied with their most frequently used marketing channels

To understand which marketing channels small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) were using, we turned to LocaliQ's 2026 Small Business Marketing Trends Report, a survey of more than 300 SMB leaders across industries. 
The survey shares data on which channels businesses are currently using, how satisfied and dissatisfied they are with each one, and which channels they plan to invest in next. Leaders’ intent to increase investment in a channel is a good (and potentially better) proxy for their satisfaction with a channel. It means they’re willing to put more money where their mouth is.

Channels sorted by adoption rate. The wider the gap between adoption and satisfaction, the bigger the mismatch.

Which channels are SMBs using the most? 

1. Organic Social

2. Paid Social

3. Email Marketing

4. SEO

5. Search Ads

Which channels are SMBs most satisfied with? 

1. Video Marketing & Advertising

2. Reputation Management

3. Search Ads

4. Content Marketing

5. Display Ads

Which channels have the highest intent for increasing investment next year?

1. Video Marketing & Advertising

2. Search Ads

3. Paid Social

4. Content Marketing

5. SEO

SMBs are not consistently using enterprises’ highest ROI channels

Channels sorted by adoption rate. Impactful enterprise channels circled and labeled by ranking.

These channels are ordered from left to right by the proportion of SMBs using the channels–many SMBs use the channels on the left, while very few use those on the right. We have highlighted the channels deemed by Gartner as being high-ROI for enterprises. 

SMBs are inconsistently using the marketing channels that enterprises find to have the highest ROI. Less than 50% of SMBs are using search ads and display ads. 

But the SMBs that are using these channels are finding them to be helpful.

1. Search ads, display ads, and paid social also have relatively high satisfaction rates compared to the rest of the channels.

2. Search ads, paid social, and SEO have relatively high intent for reinvestment.

SEO (and GEO) require patience to get right

SEO stands out as a channel that is more widely adopted (used by 53% of SMBs surveyed) but that has relatively low satisfaction ratings (ranks 9 out of 12 channels in terms of satisfaction). This is a challenging channel to get right: it requires strong technical chops, a high volume of targeted content creation, and patience–at least 6-12 months to see results. Leaders who cut the investment before that time horizon will conclude that the channel does not work, when the enterprise data says otherwise.

The search advertising gap

Search advertising has a relatively low adoption rate among SMBs, but those who use it are among the most satisfied of any channel surveyed and show strong intent to increase investment next year. 

The likely barrier is cost perception. Unlike organic channels, search advertising requires direct media spend, which makes it a harder commitment for a business owner already uncertain about marketing ROI. But search advertising reaches people actively looking for what you sell, which is what drives its high ROI and strong satisfaction numbers among those who have tested it.

The video marketing opportunity

Video marketing stands out in this data set as a channel that few SMBs are using but that has the highest satisfaction rate and the highest intent for reinvestment rate. While video does not make the top 5 channels by impact or ROI for enterprises, it appears to be a very promising channel for SMBs based on this survey. Video marketing requires upfront investment and technical skill but can be a powerful lead generator on social media, via email, and on websites. 

The organic social media trap

Organic social media is the most-used channel at 66% adoption, but it has one of the lower satisfaction rates in the survey at 63% and the highest dissatisfaction rate at 17%. Tellingly, it also has the lowest investment increase intent of all channels–only 30% of SMBs using organic social want to increase their investment in it next year.

SMBs are likely investing in this channel because it is highly visible and appears low-cost. While it can feel good for a business leader to point to a beautiful account with a large following, building such an account takes a long time. A successful social media channel needs lots of great content, which is time-consuming to create. Even with great content, it can take a long time to build up a following large enough to serve as a lead-generation or conversion channel. It is no surprise then that SMB leaders are disappointed with this channel.

From Data to Decision

We started with the question we hear most: what are the highest ROI marketing channels? The data gives you a real answer. Enterprises get the strongest returns from paid social, search advertising, and digital display. Among SMBs, video marketing and search advertising have the highest satisfaction rates and the strongest reinvestment intent. 

The data also makes the stakes clear. Organic social has the highest usage rate and the highest dissatisfaction rate of any channel in the LocaliQ survey, yet 32% of SMBs not currently using it plan to start next year. Most of those businesses will run it the way current users are running it, measure it against the same expectations, and arrive at the same conclusions.

But knowing which channels perform best on average does not tell you which channels are right for your business. The SMBs most satisfied with their marketing are not necessarily using the highest-ROI channels. Not only are they using the right channels for their goals, their timeline, and their business model, but they are also going in with realistic expectations about what the channel delivers.

That clarity prevents disappointment. Read Four Questions to Ask Before You Invest in a Marketing Channel for four questions to work through before committing budget to any channel. It is a framework for choosing the right channels for your business and setting realistic expectations before you invest.

Related Reading

• Four Questions to Ask Before You Invest in a Marketing Channel

• How to Build a Winning Marketing Plan for 2026

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