A Hammersmith business owner we spoke with this month was weighing up whether now was the right time to put more money into marketing, or whether to sit tight for another quarter. New figures from the IPA’s Q1 2026 Bellwether report suggest a lot of other businesses are asking the same question, and increasingly deciding the answer is yes.
The report found that UK companies revised their marketing budgets upward to the highest level in almost two years, with more than a quarter of firms surveyed reporting an increase in spend against fewer than a fifth reporting a cut. That’s a meaningful swing from the flat picture seen at the end of last year, and it happened despite ongoing global uncertainty.
Events and public relations saw some of the biggest increases, but the underlying message for smaller businesses is broader than any one channel: confidence is returning, and competitors are starting to invest again after a cautious spell. For local firms in west London, that makes it a sensible moment to review whether their own search presence is keeping pace.
SEO in particular tends to reward businesses that invest steadily rather than in short bursts, since it takes time to build the authority and content depth that search engines favour. Getting ahead of a wave of renewed competitor spending now is far easier than trying to catch up once everyone else has already invested.
If you’ve been putting off a proper look at your search strategy, this rise in budgets is a useful nudge. SEO Optimizers London has been helping Hammersmith businesses make sense of exactly this kind of shift, visit seooptimizers.co.uk to find out where your site currently stands.