Title: SME digital marketing tools importance and usage: the impact on printing firm performance

Authors: W. Randy Clark; Scott C. Manley; Ralph I. Williams Jr.

Addresses: Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University, Box 40, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA ' J. Whitney Bunting College of Business and Technology, Georgia College and State University, Atkinson Hall 216, CBX 011, Milledgeville, GA, 31061, USA ' Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University, Box 75, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA

Abstract: Digital marketing has become more prevalent over the last 15 years. However, for SMEs, research often only examines the usage of digital versus traditional marketing techniques. We investigate the importance of digital marketing and its adoption in influencing SME firm performance in the USA printing industry. Our results show that many SMEs are not heavy users of digital marketing tools, but the value they place and their use impact firm performance. We found that digital marketing usage completely mediates the relationship between the perceived importance of the tools and firm performance. Additionally, post hoc analysis shows that high-performing printing industry SMEs place greater importance on and are more likely to use LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and online videos than low-performing SMEs. We employed PLS-SEM and post hoc mean comparisons of high-performing versus low-performing firms to examine these relationships.

Keywords: social media marketing; digital marketing; small to medium-sized enterprise; SME; firm performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTMKT.2025.149420

International Journal of Technology Marketing, 2025 Vol.19 No.4, pp.477 - 500

Received: 16 Apr 2024
Accepted: 10 Dec 2024
Published online: 30 Oct 2025 *

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