New businesses* are heavy users of free or (relatively) low cost advertising, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ (LCM) survey of SMBs. While most of the small- and medium-sized businesses in the survey report using a Facebook page and website for advertising and…
"The challenge now facing media resellers is how to adapt and educate their sales teams, as well as update their value propositions to sell social media-based SMB lead generation products and solutions. This is a change in the reseller script…
Only 45% of SMBs track analytics and the others give the reason that they don't have time, experience or budget to track analytics according to an infographic from SCORE.org. In our Local Commerce Monitor 19 survey of small businesses, SMBs say…
73.5% of retail SMBs* maintain a customer list, the majority for more than a year, according to data from Wave 19 of Local Commerce Monitor (LCM), our survey of small and medium businesses. Over half of these SMBs say they promote…
SMBs in the Entertainment* vertical are more committed to digital media than the average SMB, according to data from Wave 19 of Local Commerce Monitor (LCM), our survey of small and medium businesses. These SMBs allocated 42.1% of spending to…
In our annual survey of SMBS also known as the Local Commerce Monitor (LCM)™, Wave 19, when we take a closer look at our industry segments, SMBs in certain vertical categories are more likely to be franchises. As shown in the…
One very simple way for small businesses to compete with the big players in their markets is with the help of marketing automation such as email and social media monitoring. Marketing automation helps small businesses appear and behave like a brand or…
SMBs are putting a bigger share of their advertising budget towards digital media, according to BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor (LCM)™, Wave 19, survey of small-and-medium businesses. When looking at the data by vertical category (Professional Services, Home/Trade Services, Retail, Entertainment, and Technology) SMBs…
In the second year of examining franchises in BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor™ (LCM) Wave 19 survey of small and medium-sized businesses, franchisees are increasingly using small agencies for their advertising and marketing. See the infographic below for the highlights. The report…
73 percent of small businesses use social media for marketing, and Facebook Pages is the leading tool. This is one of many findings that emerged from the latest wave of BIA/Kelsey Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey of SMBs. Covered here on a weekly…
The internet is flooded with how-to's and "hacks" -- quick, cheap ways to get things done. For new small businesses with limited resources, it's essential to quickly get customers through the purchase funnel to survive. CenturyLink's recent infographic, "How to Launch a…
SMBs who advertise on TV/Cable have a unique profile. In our current Local Commerce Monitor survey of SMBs (Q3/2015), we find that not only are Cable/TV SMBs larger in size (average of 31 full time employees), the average TV/Cable SMB is in…
Ad spending is dropping for Core* SMBs according to BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor™ (LCM) survey. BIA/Kelsey research director, Steve Marshall attributes the drop to two main causes: Increased use of digital media Increased use of social media Though we've tracked steady growth in SMB digital…
After putting the final touches on the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) report from our latest Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of SMBs, I sat down* to write this blog post. This report is a view of SMBs that told us they prefer a…
Last month we examined the marketing and advertising trends of newly formed SMBs as part of a series of reports drilling down in our Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18 survey of small and medium businesses. Today we are looking at…
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll notice that several of our recent research reports are covering SMBs of specific size brackets. We started with a report on SMBs with a single employee, then covered SMBs with 2-9…
Franchises are a distinctive and vibrant SMB segment. By almost every metric, franchises act differently from the overall SMB population. Franchises tend to "live large" -- they do things in a big way, starting with ad spending. At an average…
While the top media used for advertising and promotion by new SMBs are a mix of digital and social channels, social media is also a tool for these new SMBs to connect and communicate with customers. Facebook Page, LinkedIn and…
While the top media used for advertising and promotion by new SMBs are a mix of digital and social channels, social media is also a tool for these new SMBs to connect and communicate with customers. Facebook Page, LinkedIn and…
As a group, SMBs with 2-9 employees have a distinctive profile that in many respects lies between the profiles of VSBs (Very Small Businesses - those with only one employee) and medium-size and larger-size SMBs. In some ways, SMBs in…