National Small Business Week, a signature event of the U.S. Small Business Administration, kicked off on Sunday, April 30 and runs all week. For Small Business Week YP, who is a sponsor for Small Business Week, is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, May 3, on the five marketing habits for small business success.

New* small businesses understand the importance of building their awareness especially online and use free or low cost solutions to do so, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of small businesses (Q3/2016).  The top free or low costs ways new small businesses use the most arae websites and  Facebook pages, with 47.6% of new small businesses each using those channels. When new small businesses invest, their  top paid advertising channel was direct mail, at 44.4%. Email marketing with 43.6% of new small businesses and Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) with 41.4% rounded out the top five most used media channels.

New small businesses need to be found. Three of their top five most used media channels, according to the LCM survey, are related to findability. 47.2% of the new small businesses surveyed reported that they do not currently use SEO, but they play to start spending on SEO in the next 12 months. Along these lines, YP launched enhanced business profile pages and the YP Preferred badge earlier this year, both of which were designed to increase findability and provide consumers with more information about a small business during the search process.

* SMBs that picked “beginning to get established” when asked about their lifecycle stage.

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BIA/Kelsey’s LCM, Wave 20 reports can be purchased a la carte in the new BIA/Kelsey eStore. Our LCM reports look at where particular SMBs (broken out by size, vertical, etc.) spend the most, as well as the top channels for marketing and advertising. Additionally, our reports provide analysis on the best product and service offers for highly coveted groups of SMBs.