SMB Marketing Weekly: Dec 1-8, 2025

Welcome to this week’s roundup of the marketing news that matters most to small business owners. Here is what happened the first week of December 2025.

1. Holiday Ad Spending Hits Record Highs — Small Businesses Feel the Squeeze

Digital ad costs surged in the first week of December as enterprise brands ramped up holiday campaigns. Meta and Google both reported record auction prices for retail-related keywords. For small businesses with limited budgets, the takeaway is clear: focus your spend on high-intent, long-tail keywords rather than competing head-on with big-box retailers.

If you are running Google Ads this holiday season, consider pausing broad-match campaigns and redirecting budget to exact-match terms with proven conversion history.

2. Google Business Profile Adds New Holiday Attributes

Google rolled out seasonal attributes for Business Profiles, allowing businesses to highlight holiday-specific details like extended hours, gift wrapping services, and curbside pickup availability. If you have not updated your profile for the holiday season, do it now — these attributes appear directly in local search results and can influence click-through rates.

3. Instagram Reels Algorithm Now Favors Original Content

Meta confirmed changes to the Instagram Reels algorithm that give a ranking boost to original content over reposts and aggregated clips. Small businesses that create their own short-form video — even simple behind-the-scenes footage — will see better reach than those sharing trending templates.

4. Email Open Rates Climb in Early December

Industry data from the first week of December shows email open rates tracking 12-15% higher than November averages across small business senders. Consumers are actively looking for deals and year-end offers. If you have been sitting on your holiday email campaign, now is the time to send it. Keeping your contact lists organized in a CRM like SMBcrm makes segmenting and targeting these campaigns much easier.

5. Bing Webmaster Tools Gets a Major Refresh

Microsoft quietly launched a redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard with improved crawl reporting and a new AI-powered content analysis feature. While Bing still accounts for a small slice of search traffic, the updated tools make it easier to identify indexing issues. For small businesses, it is worth checking your Bing presence — you might be leaving traffic on the table.

Bottom line this week: The holiday push is on. Focus your energy on updating your Google Business Profile, sending targeted emails, and creating original social content. Do not chase expensive ad auctions unless you have the budget and conversion data to back it up.