Marketers looking for big job opportunities should start investigating small business positions.

Marketers looking for big job opportunities should start investigating small business positions. The latest report from Webvisible indicates that SMB ad spend is on the rise, up 160 percent from last year.

The State of Small Business Online Advertising Q2 2010 reveals that the average small business advertisers spent $2,231 on search advertising in the second quarter of this year. This demonstrates 1.4 percent growth over the previous quarter and 159 percent growth over the same period last year.

The small business advertising spend trend may continue to rise thanks to consistently increasing conversion rates. The study found that nearly half of all clicks (43 percent) resulted in web conversion, up 22 percent over the first quarter of 2010 and 39 percent over Q2 2009.

The most positive clicks came from paid or organic search results that offered users interesting content. The study cites watching a video or bookmarking a page as website activities that drove conversion gains.

This means quality content is key to getting small businesses in the big leagues, and marketers who want to find work in this growing sector should be ready to offer businesses strategies for using relevant information to become thought leaders in their industries. Notably, legal, contracting and dentistry proved to be the sectors with the largest ad spend.

In order to make a business – large or small, of any sector – a thought leader, it’s important to both research valuable content and update regularly. A recent report from the Bloom Group shows that research-based content was common to businesses that generated more than 30 leads per month.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.