The State of Small Business Marketing in 2016
June 13, 2016
The Local Search Association recently published an infographic that describes the State of Small Business Marketing in 2016. There are some nice nuggets in the infographic that sum up the areas that a small business should be focused on. We will highlight and expand upon their analysis here:
- First, hyperlocal is the holy grail. 91% of all businesses in the US have 4 or fewer employees. We may only hear about large companies in the news, but it’s clear that small and local businesses rule! They make up half of the US workforce and 54% of all sales.
- Surprisingly, 71% of all small businesses manage their digital marketing internally, and they use 7.8 marketing channels to promote themselves. A tool that could help automate and report on the efficiency and effectiveness of the small business owners marketing efforts would be very valuable.
- Ironically, “How did you hear about us?” is the most common way that small business owners measure ROI. This seems at odds with the 7.8 marketing channels we mentioned above – how can you boil down the effectiveness of any one channel if you are relying solely on the memory of your customers to tell you where and how they heard about you? In addition, sometimes a customer heard or read about you in several places, and it was that last thing they saw that pushed them over the top and decided to give you business. You have no idea if it was a direct cause and effect or indirect.
This is critical information to understand and that knowledge can make small businesses more effective with their marketing dollars.There is nothing wrong with anecdotal data, it just shouldn’t be used to validate the success or failure of a campaign. There’s too much “gut feel” on the worthiness of different marketing programs.
- The top channels that small businesses want help with are Facebook / Social Media, SEO, Website Development, Listings Management and Paid Search. This makes perfect sense, except for the caveat that we mention in #4. Many business owners will start on one or more of these initiatives, without considering how to measure the effectiveness of each channel. And even more small businesses will try to do all five of these simultaneously, which means they all get done, but generally not optimally. Our recommendation: start one channel at a time, have a clear goal for what that channel is going to offer and how to best get exposure, and then measure and manage that channel. None of these are a “set and forget” type of channel, they require consistent monitoring and lots of tweaking and testing.
- For their last question – are they implying that only 34% of small businesses market themselves to get new customers? I would expect that number to be a lot closer to 100%! And 31% of small businesses do marketing to drive people to their Facebook page or website? But, I thought that Facebook and their website were part of their marketing efforts?Marketing serves two purposes – to help a business create a brand, and to attract/retain customers. That’s the ultimate goal. Everything else is tactics.
One major component missing from this infographic is analytics. It’s true that small business marketing tools to measure analytics can be sorely lacking, and this is a big issue. However, it makes no sense to ignore the numbers. There is no better way to control your efforts and direction you want to go than to consistently monitor how you channels are doing. Don’t rely on your gut and conventional wisdom, both are wrong more often than they are right.
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