Half of small and medium sized businesses intend to increase spend on paid search advertising in the coming year with one in five SMBs moving advertising revenue from other areas into paid search.

The latest results from Microsoft AdCentre's 2009 SMB Customer Research study revealed that SMBs are increasingly recognising the ROI they can achieve from search campaigns.

The study found SMBs in the retail sector were the heaviest users of search, with nearly a quarter investing advertising revenue on paid search. SMBs with the longest relationships with ad networks and search programmes were also the heaviest investors.

Search marketing can allow SMBs to compete with larger competitors by tailoring their content appropriately to they can compete with larger companies amid the top the top search engine results.

Microsoft found that there is still room for improvement. A third of SMBs who do not use paid search say it is because they feel the process is too complicated, while over half (56%) think it is too expensive. A further 44% of SMB marketers who do not engage in paid search say it because it would be too time consuming.

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