Friday, April 15, 2011

Social Media for Small Business


A study was released recently that compares Social Media satisfaction and awareness for marketing and advertising.

This is from Mediapost:

Small Business Owners Liking Facebook

According to the MerchantCircle Merchant Confidence Index (MCI) survey, the total Q1 2011 MCI score is 5.1% higher than a year earlier. The largest contributor to its growth is respondents' expectations for sales revenue growth during the next three months.

Merchant Confidence Index

Expectation

Average Response on 1-5 Scale

% Change vs. Feb 2010

Rate today's economy compared to past 12 months

3.00

+11.5%

Change in sales revenue over next three months

3.52

+ 4.8

Change in marketing/advertising expenditures over next three months

3.07

+2.3

Change in headcount over next three months

3.13

+2.6

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

More than four in 10 small and local business owners expect sales revenues to improve somewhat in the next three months. 13% expect significant improvement, a combined 57% of respondents anticipating some sort of rise in short-term sales revenues.

Expectations for the future (How do you expect your sales revenues to change over the next three months?)

Expectation

% of Respondents

Improve significantly

12.9%

Improve somewhat

44.0

Remain relatively the same

28.9

Decline somewhat

10.3

Decline significantly

3.9

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

The factor with the highest year-over-year growth rate is respondents' rating of today's economy compared to 12 months ago, which improved 11.8% to 15%.

State of the U.S. Economy (How would you rate today's economy compared to the past twelve months?)

Expectation

% of Respondents

Significantly improved

3.0%

Somewhat improved

34.6

About the same

32.3

Somewhat weaker

19.6

Much weaker

10.5

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

About six in 10 small and local businesses anticipate their marketing expenditures to remain relatively the same during the next three months. Only 2% expect them to increase significantly, while less than 5% expect them to decline significantly.

Marketing expenditures (How do you expect your marketing/advertising expenditures to change over the next three months?)

Expectation

% of Respondents

Increase significantly

2.1%

Increase somewhat

23.2

Remain the same

59.1

Decline somewhat

10.9

Decline significantly

4.7

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

When asked about their usage of a variety of online marketing tools and channels, 70% of respondents said they are currently using Facebook. This makes Facebook the most used of any marketing tool covered by the survey, closely followed by Google. LinkedIn comes in third. Generally speaking, the lower the current usage rate of a tool, the higher its planned usage rate, suggesting small and local businesses are open to a wide variety of online marketing channels.

Adoption of specific online marketing services (Are you promoting your business with the following websites/services? % of Respondents)

Site/Service

Promoting

Not Promoting

Not Yet, But Plan To

Not Familiar

Facebook

70.3%

20.1%

8.9%

0.7%

Google

66.2

25.8

7.0

0.9

LinkedIn

58.2

29.2

7.0

5.7

Yahoo!

49.2

41.7

7.8

1.3

Yahoo! Local

45.0

41.3

8.5

5.2

Twitter

39.8

48.8

9.5

2.0

Citysearch

39.7

43.6

7.5

9.2

Yellowbook

39.3

51.4

5.4

3.8

Superpages.com

33.3

51.3

5.8

9.6

Bing

33.2

52.6

10.3

3.8

YouTube

26.8

54.8

16.4

2.1

MySpace

19.2

70.1

7.7

2.9

Groupon

6.6

66.1

13.0

14.3

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

And, with regard to expectations of marketing activity in the next three months, only 15% see a decline.

Marketing expenditures (How do you expect your marketing/advertising expenditures to change over the next three months?)

Expectation

% of Respondents

Increase significantly

2.1%

Increase somewhat

23.2

Remain the same

59.1

Decline somewhat

10.9

Decline significantly

4.7

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

The online survey was to a random sample of 1.6 million local business owners, and There were 8,456 total responses from local business owners across the United States. Overall, about three fourths of the respondents' budgets for marketing are below $5,000.

Annual Ad/Marketing Budget

Budget (x000)

% of Respondents

<$1.0

34.1%

1-2.5

21.7

2.5-5.0

16.4

5.0-7.5

8.0

7.5-10.0

6.8

>10.0 <25.0

7.7

>25.0 <50.0

2.6

>50.0

2.8

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

The Top Three Most Effective Marketing Or Advertising Methods The Responding Business Uses Or Has Used

Most Effective Channel

% of Respondents

Search engine marketing

40.2%

Profile on social network

36.7

Email marketing

35.8

Other online methods

34.4

Coupons or direct mail

23.9

Print newspaper

19.7

Online yellow pages

17.6

Blog

17.0

Banner/display ad

9.7

Local radio

7.6

Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011

For additional information, please visit Merchant Circle here.

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