Nearly Half of Small Businesses Are Apparently Marketing Without Any Plan At All

Somewhere in what's being called the SME Marketing Report 2025, someone claims 46% of small businesses have no formal marketing strategy, with another 6% not sure either way, and if you run a wellbeing practice, you're the small business in question.

Page updated: 13 Aug 2026

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Practices without a marketing strategy are, on this telling, not the exception but roughly half the room, which is either reassuring or alarming depending on the day.

Original Research	A claim that almost half of small UK businesses operate without any formal marketing strategy, with a further 6% unsure whether they have one
Source	https://smemarketingreport.com/
Overview	The site presents the figure as findings from an unnamed survey, with no report, methodology, or sample cited anywhere on the page.
Year	2025 (as stated in the source title, though undated within the page itself)
Publisher	Brand, smemarketingreport.com (no named publisher, author, or survey body disclosed)
Relevance to Wellbeing	The claim speaks directly to the strategy gap many wellbeing practices sit inside, but as an unverified figure it should be treated as a talking point, not evidence.
Our Verdict	Too early to tell a plausible-sounding number with nobody's name on it, so it stays a claim rather than a fact.
Our Summary	The claim matches what most people in wellbeing marketing already suspect about the sector. There is no named survey, no sample size, and no publisher standing behind it. Without a source, there's no way to check who was asked, or how "formal strategy" was defined. Even unverified, it's a useful line for reassuring clients they're not uniquely disorganised.
Our Geo View	Applies broadly to all countries, though the original claim, such as it is, refers to UK small businesses specifically.

Abstract of wellbeing niches and revenue flow

Recognise how this might impact your practice

Why this might matter to you

Coaching: this matters because coaches often build a client base on word of mouth alone, which looks a lot like "no strategy" from the outside.
Therapy: this matters because therapists rarely have time to think about marketing, let alone write a strategy for it.
Training: this matters because trainers who rely on repeat bookings can go years without noticing they never had a plan.
Alternative Healing: this matters because healers are often told marketing is somehow at odds with their work, which tends to mean none happens at all.
Clinical: this matters because clinics assume referrals count as a strategy, which they don't, not on their own.
Retreat/Centre: this matters because centres juggling bookings, staff, and premises rarely get round to writing anything down.

Where this came from

A website called the SME Marketing Report states, without citing anyone, that 46% of small businesses have no formal marketing strategy and 6% aren't sure.

Source: smemarketingreport.com, no publish date given on the page. No survey, publisher, or author is named, so this cannot be traced to a primary study.

Credibility flags: methodology not disclosed, sample size not disclosed, publisher type unattributed.

How we scored this

A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.

13%

Practice fit, 25How new, 10How solid, 0

Marked right down on method confidence, since nobody's put their name to the numbers, and marked down on recency too, given there's no way to confirm when the underlying work, if any, was actually done, though practice fit holds up reasonably well as a general small-business observation.

It's worth considering changes to your marketing practices

What this means for your marketing

Use the 46% figure as a talking point, not a statistic, and say so plainly if a client asks where it came from.
Put "you're not alone in winging it" on your homepage copy or newsletter, framed as reassurance rather than proof.
Brief your team to describe this as an industry estimate, never as a verified finding.
Say before it comes up that the number is unattributed, so nobody's caught out repeating it as fact.
Use it to open a conversation about strategy with prospective clients, then move quickly to your own credentials.

Who this is most useful for

Practice type	Relevance	Recommended action
Coaching	Medium	Use as a soft icebreaker, not a cited fact
Therapy	Medium	Mention informally when discussing practice growth
Training	Medium	Use in conversation, avoid quoting the percentage directly
Alternative Healing	Medium	Reference the gap, skip the specific number
Clinical	Low	Best left out of anything patient-facing or formal
Retreat/Centre	Medium	Fine for internal planning discussions only

Best before

Best before: revisit only if a named, sourced version of this claim surfaces; until then, treat it as expired on arrival. Track future updates via Sunlight Creations.

A Practice That Reads This Carefully.

Deserves a conversation that matches. The discovery call goes both ways - your wishes and ethics, our ecosystem and listening wind, a story garden built for practices like yours. twenty-five minutes. Good coffee.

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