Every marketing platform publishes its "state of marketing" report. Most are dressed-up sales pitches. This one tries harder: aggregated, anonymised data from 2,400 European local businesses, with the boring averages alongside the interesting outliers.
The median local business in 2026
€420
avg. monthly marketing spend
8h
weekly owner time on marketing
3.1x
avg. ROI on tracked marketing
4
avg. number of channels actively used
Top quartile vs. median
| Ooklo | Median | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly spend | €480 (top) | €420 |
| Weekly owner time | 5h | 8h |
| ROI | 7.0x | 3.1x |
| Channels used | 3 (focused) | 4 (scattered) |
| Tools used | 1 | 5 |
Channel mix of the top performers
- Google Business Profile + organic local SEO: non-negotiable, ~3h/week.
- One social channel: chosen for fit, posted 2-3x/week, ~2h/week.
- A retention channel (email or SMS): segmented, monthly cadence, ~1h/week.
- No paid ads at this segment: kicks in above €1,500/month spend.
The five things the bottom quartile gets wrong
- Scattering across 6+ channels with no consistency on any.
- No retention channel: pure acquisition focus.
- Geo-targeting set to "city" or "country", not "neighbourhood".
- Tools sprawl: Mailchimp + Hootsuite + Google Ads + Canva + a CRM that nobody updates.
- No segmentation: one message, one audience, one outcome (mediocre).
"The single biggest predictor of marketing ROI in our dataset isn't budget, isn't channel mix, isn't industry. It's how many tools the business uses. One platform = top quartile. Five tools = bottom quartile."
How was the data collected?+
Anonymised, aggregated metrics from 2,400 European local businesses on the Ooklo platform and 800 customer-survey respondents off-platform, Q1 2026.
Is this representative?+
Skewed slightly toward food, beauty and retail (60% of dataset). Less reliable for B2B services and trades.
Where can I see my own benchmarks?+
Inside Ooklo, every customer sees their performance vs. category median and top quartile.
