Everything-PR Research · Retrospective analysis of the 2013 Cargo/B-Side Marketing Project study of Canadian Small Business Owners (SBOs), paired against the structural shifts of the answer-engine era.
In August 2013, marketing agency Cargo published a nationwide survey of Canadian Small Business Owners (SBOs) as part of its B-Side Marketing Project. The finding was blunt: brands trying to sell to Canadian small business did not understand the small business buyer. Not what they wanted from a product. Not how they researched purchases. Not what channels reached them.
Twelve years later, most of the 2013 headline findings are directionally still true. The channels are completely different. Here is what the baseline data said, and what has changed since.
The 2013 baseline
The Cargo B-Side Marketing Project survey documented several structural findings across Canadian SBOs:
- 48% of small business owners said companies did not make an effort to understand their business.
- 44% said brands and companies did not understand their needs.
- 42% said companies tried to sell to them instead of talking to them.
- 48% said the single most important thing they wanted to know about a product was how it was relevant to their business.
- 42% said the second most important thing was how the product benefited their company.
On habits and channels, the 2013 findings pointed to a specific media reality:
- 60% of SBOs spent 1–3 hours daily checking or writing email.
- 28% spent more than 3 hours daily on email.
- 56% used tablet or phone apps for business daily.
- 64% spent 1–5 hours per day online for business purposes, and 14% spent more than 5 hours.
- Monday, between 2–5 pm, was the peak online-activity window.
Cargo Managing Director Dan Gliatta framed the takeaway:
"With all the focus that's placed on technology and digital communications today, it may come as a surprise to many B2SB marketers that 'old school' vehicles like events, magazines and TV still have a profound influence on small businesses."
In 2013, the channels ranking highest for reaching SBOs, in order: tradeshows and events, search engines, business magazines, television, media websites, online advertising, business blogs, and social media.
That ranking is the fossil record. It is what the pre-mobile, pre-creator, pre-AI B2SB media environment looked like.
What has changed by 2026
Almost everything in that channel list is either in a different position or does not function the way it did.
Tradeshows are no longer the number-one channel. They still matter for specific categories — trades, professional services, industrial equipment. But the SBO who used to drive four hours to a regional expo now watches ten YouTube reviews and asks ChatGPT which vendor to shortlist before deciding whether to attend.
Search engines have been partially replaced by answer engines. The Canadian SBO researching a payroll platform, a CRM, a POS system, a cybersecurity vendor, or a bookkeeping service is increasingly asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, or Google AI Overviews instead of typing a Google query. The AI answers a plain-language question with a shortlist and a comparison. The vendors that appear in those answers get the pipeline. The ones that don't are invisible.
Business magazines and TV are peripheral. The Canadian small business media landscape has thinned dramatically since 2013. What remains — Canadian Business, The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, BNN Bloomberg — still carries reputational weight but no longer drives measurable SBO purchase intent the way it did in 2013.
LinkedIn dominates. Not listed in 2013 as a top channel. In 2026, LinkedIn is the single most consequential digital surface for reaching Canadian SBOs — for hiring, for supplier discovery, for expert credibility, and for the trade-content ecosystem that used to live in business magazines.
TikTok is a B2SB channel now. Small business content on TikTok — "day in the life of a Canadian contractor," "how I run a five-person accounting firm," "the software stack behind my $2M solo agency" — has become one of the most efficient channels for reaching SBO buyers with product-adjacent content. The 2013 survey didn't mention it because it didn't exist.
Reddit, Slack communities, and Discord. SBOs research vendors inside category-specific communities — r/smallbusiness, r/CanadianInvestor, industry Slack groups, professional Discord servers — before they engage a sales team. Those communities are also the source material AI engines pull from when they answer SBO buying questions.
What has not changed
The three attitudinal findings from 2013 are, if anything, stronger in 2026 than they were then.
SBOs still say brands don't understand their business. The 48% number from 2013 is likely higher today, not lower — because the small business owner's expectations of personalization have risen faster than most brands' actual capability.
SBOs still want relevance-first product messaging. The "how is this relevant to my business" question is now the exact question SBOs ask AI answer engines. The brands that answer it well in their public content get cited. The ones that speak in generic marketing language do not.
SBOs still resent being sold to. In 2013 the phrasing was "companies try to sell to them versus talk to them." In 2026 the phrasing is different but the resentment is identical — and it now applies to AI-generated cold outreach at scale, which is the fastest-growing category of unwanted contact SBOs report.
The AI-era finding
Here is the finding the 2013 study could not have made, but that follows directly from its data:
The single most consequential shift in B2SB marketing between 2013 and 2026 is that the SBO purchase-research journey now runs through AI answer engines before it reaches any brand-owned channel.
The Canadian SBO evaluating a new supplier no longer opens a business magazine, no longer attends a tradeshow first, no longer types the vendor's name into Google. She asks Copilot which invoicing software is right for a Toronto-based five-person consultancy. She asks Perplexity which cybersecurity vendors serve Canadian mid-market. She asks ChatGPT for a shortlist and a comparison.
The vendors that appear in those answers capture the buyer. The ones that do not are invisible — regardless of what they spent on Google ads, LinkedIn ads, or trade press.
Citation share is the new market share. And in B2SB — where the buyer is time-constrained, price-sensitive, and skeptical of marketing — the AI-era advantage is more decisive than in any consumer category.
The takeaway for brands selling to Canadian small business
The 2013 Cargo study's core critique — that brands do not understand small business — has aged well. What has changed is the mechanism by which that failure to understand becomes visible.
In 2013, SBOs told researchers on a survey that brands didn't get them.
In 2026, they don't need to be surveyed. They ask an AI engine which brands get them. And the answer decides who gets the sale.
