The Social Media Marketing Features SMBs Rate Highest

July 10, 2025

Which social media marketing features do SMBs use the most? How effective are they? To find out, Bredin recently surveyed 500 U.S. SMB principals.

SMBs are most likely to use Facebook Ads & Boosted Posts, Facebook Business Pages, and Google Ads, with the order varying by size. For example, very small businesses (VSBs, with 1-19 employees) are most likely to use Facebook Ads & Boosted Posts; small businesses (SBs, with 20-99 employees), Google Ads; and midsized businesses (MBs, with 100-500 employees), Facebook Business Pages. For MBs, Amazon Ads are tied for third most popular.

Top Social Media Marketing Features

Do you use any of these platform-specific features to promote your business? Select all that apply.

 Top Social Media Marketing Features by company headcount
Note: Top 15 features out of 30 surveyed, ranked by VSB usage.

Assessing SMB satisfaction with the social media marketing features they use gets a little wonky because of the number of users. For example, only one of the 198 VSBs that use social media used Snapchat Ads, and they rated it very effective. The same is true for WhatsApp Business API. Of the most popular features, 43% rate Facebook Ads & Boosted Posts very effective; 49%, Facebook Business Pages; and 71%, Google Ads.

All SB users of WhatsApp Catalogs, Pinterest Catalogs and X Spaces rate them very effective, although the user counts are small (3, 4 and 8, respectively). Of the most popular features, 70% rate Google Ads very effective; 65%, Facebook Business Pages; and 67%, Facebook Ads & Boosted Posts.

All MB users of Snapchat Ads and Pinterest Shopping rate them very effective, although the user counts are small (2 and 6, respectively). Of the most popular features, 75% rate Facebook Business Pages very effective; 78%, Google Ads; 71%, Facebook Ads & Boosted Posts, and 71%, Amazon Ads.

How Effective Are Social Media Marketing Features?

How effective would you rate each of the platform-specific features that you use for marketing?

 How Effective Are Social Media Marketing Features by company headcount
Note: Top 15 features out of 30 surveyed, ranked by VSB rating.

Looking for actionable SMB insight? Bredin’s global research gives you high-value insights to improve your go-to-market and product strategies. We also generate uniquely valuable data for high-impact content, PR, social, and sales support programs.