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The State Of Small Business Marketing

This article is more than 6 years old.

Marketing is a moving target these days. Technologies evolve and customer behavior seems to change almost every day.

Small businesses tend to be a little slow with marketing developments. Some are cutting-edge, of course – but most wait until there’s proof a tactic works.

That’s not a bad strategy, either. If you’re short on time and money (as most small businesses are), it just makes sense to stick with what works. You can’t be chasing every shiny object that shows up in marketing magazines.

But small businesses are adopting new marketing technologies. They are changing how they think about their customers, too. As you’ll see in the points below, they might have a little catch-up to do here and there, but generally, they’re keeping pace.

  1. Online reviews can help – or hurt - a business.

Most small business owners already know the power of word of mouth marketing. But many of them are still not taking online reviews (word of mouth marketing 2.0) seriously enough.

websitebuilder.org

But for those that are, the rewards are great: New research from BrightLocal says “going from a 3-star rating to a 5-star rating gets a business 25% more clicks from the Google Local Pack.”

Given how weak most small businesses are on SEO (more on that in a moment), reviews seem to be a relatively easy way to get and keep more customers.

  1. Few small business owners outsource their marketing.

The biggest problem most small business owners have is time. And many of them don’t particularly like doing marketing or have a lot of experience with it.

So why not outsource?

54% of small businesses outsource graphic design and website design according to the 2017 WASP Barcode Technologies “State of Small Business Report." But only 14% outsource their marketing, public relations, and advertising.

This comes up again in other studies. In the InfusionSoft 2017 “Small Business Marketing Trends Report, 70.8% of small businesses reported doing their marketing in-house.

infusionsoft.com

Unfortunately, this isn’t working well. Street Fight’s research on small business owners found that among business owners that either do their marketing themselves, delegate it to an internal team, or outsource it to an agency, the owners who do their marketing themselves are the least satisfied with their results.

The most satisfied? They’re the owners who outsource marketing to an agency.

Street Fight/Prospective

  1. Small businesses tend to neglect their websites.

Small businesses are still a bit behind the curve when it comes to getting online. They’re pretty good with social media (most have adopted it), but they’d benefit more by having their own site, rather than relying on Facebook.

So how bad is it? Well, 29% of small businesses still don’t have a website, according to Clutch’s third annual Small Business Survey.

This is disappointing, but it’s better than it was last year. We’re seeing strong evidence that small businesses are finally becoming digital. It’s a good opportunity for them, too: Websites are regularly named as the most effective marketing channel for small to medium businesses.

Small Business Web Design Survey

Some things do trouble me, though. Small businesses in the Midwest are at a particular disadvantage – only 58% of them have websites. And very small businesses struggle, too. Only 59% of small businesses with a revenue of $1 million or less per year have a website.

There is one bright side to this. For the businesses that do have a website, most of those sites are mobile-friendly – 83%. That’s an improvement from earlier years, and an important one. Most of the traffic on the web is now via mobile devices.

I have to call one last thing out here, though: Small businesses are shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to SEO. In our own WASP Survey, we found only 28% of small businesses do any search engine optimization.

That’s free traffic, guys (and gals). An easy way to get more customers. And it’s not terribly hard to get. But you do have to put a little effort in.

  1. The customer is priority #1.

Retention and customer loyalty has always been the smartest way to grow a business. So it was downright heartening to learn small businesses’ top strategy for growing revenue in 2017.

It’s to improve existing customer experience and retention.

Wasp Barcode Technologies

This focus on the customer shows up in other ways, too. We saw it in the power of online reviews. And in the Forbes Insights “Small Business Agenda” report small business owners said their customers’ expectations and needs will be the top factor influencing their company growth in the coming years.

Forbes

  1. Facebook is still the social platform to be on.

Facebook “reach” might not be what it used to be, but that hasn’t scared small business owners off.

Facebook is by far the most common platform for a small business to be on. It’s also where consumers go to check reviews of the business.

Forbes

Of course, Facebook now involves a lot more than just posting to a company page. With Facebook Messenger, it’s possible to communicate directly with individual customers, and even to somewhat automate the conversation with chat bots.

This is exactly the sort of cutting-edge tactic a digitally-savvy owner might want to start testing out. With the right price point and some skill, they could do extremely well with it.

Conclusion

There is plenty of good news going on in small business marketing. While I’d like to see far more companies with their own websites, the number climbs each year – and we’ve seen a major jump in the percentage of mobile friendly sites.

Small businesses also get the power of customer retention, and of word of mouth. Even if you’re a small company with a tiny budget, if you aim your resources at customer retention, you’ll probably do all right. And word of mouth is almost as efficient. It takes very little money to manage and encourage reviews.

What Do You Think?

What do you think the big trends are in small business marketing? Speak up in the comments section.