Survey

"Buy Local" Campaigns Help SMBs Through Holidays

January 19, 2010 by Sarah Leave a Comment

As numbers and analysis of the 2009 holiday retail season are pouring in, there is a glimmer of hope for small and independent, locally-owned businesses. According to a survey of over 1,800 businesses, they saw an increase in holiday shoppers this year. While the United States Department of Commerce says overall retail sales were down 0.3% during December, 2009, the survey found that independent retailers’ sales were up an average of 2.2%.

So what helped these independent retailers? According to the survey, it was in part, cities with active “buy Local/Buy Independent” campaigns. Simply put, the cities with such campaigns enjoyed higher sales than those without. As a matter of fact, independent retailers in these 100 cities and towns with active campaigns actually saw a 3.0% increase.

Almost 80% of the businesses surveyed said they believed public awareness of buying locally had increased over the last year, while 16% said it stayed the same. Many business owners, including a shoe store owner in Michigan, a retailer in Maine, and a bookstore owner in Oregon, attribute everything from their ability to stay in business to through the recession to their growth in sales to the campaigns. One even said they had customers look up an item online or in a chain store and come back to their stores to make the purchase.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance conducted the survey in partnership with a number of business organizations, including the American Booksellers Association, American Independent Business Alliance, American Specialty Toy Retailers Association, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and National Bicycle Dealers Association.. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a non-profit, research organization. Surveys conducted about the 2007 and 2008 holiday shopping seasons found similar results.

“This survey adds to the growing body of evidence that people are increasingly bypassing big business in favor of local entrepreneurs. Amid the worst downturn in more than 60 years, independent businesses are managing to succeed by emphasizing their community roots and local ownership,” said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance told the American Independent Business Alliance.

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SMBs: Drive Sales & Get Noticed This Holiday Season

November 23, 2009 by Sarah Leave a Comment

According to the Constant Contact Annual Holiday Survey, 52% of small businesses, who participated in the Small Business Holiday Outlook Survey, expect their holiday season sales to improve over last year. Last year, only less than a third of business owners were as optimistic. Constant Contact, a leading provider of marketing and survey tools for small organizations, said that many respondents expressed overall optimism about the state of the economy.

If you own a small or medium-sized business, chances are you are anxious about your own holidays sales, regardless of what your outlook on the economy is, here are some tips and recommendations for improving your sales and getting your company noticed, this holiday season:

1. Get Your Customers Involved – Survey your customers to find out what they’d like to see go on sale and use social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook to reach customers and potential customers. If you decide to let a popular vote determine your sale products, chances are customers will pass the word along to friends and family who can also vote, in turn, getting the word out about your company.

2. Brand Yourself – Make sure you have a good company logo and use it everywhere, along with your name, message and tone. Consistency in communication is key and will help reinforce your brand.

3. Link Yourself – Have a company website? Company Blog? Company social networking accounts? If not, consider getting them and putting a little time and effort into them. Customers will use them to find out more about your company.

4. Host a Holiday Event – Show your customers how much you appreciate them by hosting a holiday-themed shopping event with discount incentives. Make sure you market and promote your event via social networks and other outlets.

5. Don’t Forget Last-Minute Shoppers – They’re out there. Don’t stop marketing a few days before Christmas. Many people wait until after the holiday to their shopping, in hopes of getting great deals and customers are usually loaded with Christmas money or gift cards after the big day.

6. Remember Why You Stand Out – Do you customers return because of your excellent customer service or because you offer services that other businesses do not? Remind your customers of that every chance you get, through emails, your website, and any other marketing tools you use. Remember, not every customer is looking for the best deal.

SMBs Using Twitter and Facebook

November 4, 2009 by Sarah Leave a Comment

Recently, Internet2Go analyst Greg Sterling conducted a survey of over 2,400 small business owners about the subject of social media such as Twitter and Facebook. The survey was aimed at members of the business social network MerchantCircle, who publish content frequently. His findings were that 45% of small companies, with less than 100 employees, confirmed that they do use Twitter and Facebook to promote their businesses, but Sterling also found that many businesses were not sure how effective their online promotions were due to their lack of knowledge of how to measure the effectiveness.

In an interview with eWeek.com, Sterling said he was surprised at the high percentage, considering many of the companies surveyed do not have the money or resources to spend on sophisticated marketing plans, “For these guys, costs was a big factor. They either need to hire a dedicated person or need more resources and don’t have it.”

80% of businesses surveyed had four or fewer employees, while 79% had annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000. 44% of the businesses said they actually spend less than $1,000 on advertising. 26% of participants said online marketing simply costs too much and another 16% said they just don’t have the time to partake in it. Facebook and Twitter are both free and setting up an account is simple and not at all time-consuming.

So what does this mean? Sterling seems to think that in the future, more and more small businesses will fore go traditional, more competitive forms of advertising such as search engine marketing to focus on social media. “We are going to see more and more of this behavior from other small businesses because it’s free and you don’t have to have expertise to set up these pages,” he told eWeek.

The downside to using Twitter or Facebook is the lack of ability to measure how many visits your account page is getting, but if the social media phenomenon holds up, it’s almost certain some sort of social media marketing measurement tool will become available.

New Q3 SMB Survey Findings

September 12, 2009 by Sarah 1 Comment

Even though small and medium businesses (SMBs) are trying to save every penny in the current economic climate, a new survey from Spiceworks, Inc. – a developer of network and systems management software and market research company located in Austin, Texas – shows that a majority of businesses intend to purchase hardware and software within the next six months. The Q3 survey was designed to look at technology purchasing and staffing trends among SMBs all over the world. The survey took place over the months of July and August by Spiceworks’ Voice of ITTM market research program. Of the 1,130, the majority were IT professionals that support companies with fewer than 500 employees and with annual technology budgets of about $108,000.

Here are some of the findings from the survey:

SMBs are letting their desktops, laptops, and servers last them ten more months than normal before purchasing new ones
68% of SMBs plan to add new hardware to their networks in the next six months; this includes 56% buying desktops, 55% buying laptops, 45% buying new servers, 31% buying new printers, 27% buying new network devices, and 13% buying notebooks
The average new order consists of 13 desktops, 10 laptops and two servers
At 37%, new hardware makes up the largest part of SMB IT budgets
51% of businesses are planning to buy new software. 32% of that will go to security and anti-spam solutions software. Of those, about one third plan to buy cloud-based security and anti-spam offerings.
44% of SMBs are using virtualization solutions. 21% of SMBs’ total server capacity is currently virtuatlized, but over the next six months, 30% plan to expand virtualization in their networks.
25% plan to purchase backup and recovery items within the next six months. Of those, 75% plan to store date on-site and the remaining 25% plan to utilize cloud-based storage. 42% of date will be stored on network-attached storage or storage area network devices; 38% will be stored in local and direct-attached storage; 7% will be hosted off-site; and 13% on tape or other media.
57% of SMBs currently use a cloud computing service. The three most popular include anti-spam, hosted email, and online back-up.
As expected, budgets shrank in 2009. 39% cut their budgets (averaging cuts of 22%), 31 kept their budgets the same, and 30% grew their budgets (averaging growths of 27%).
60% of SMBs had to cancel at least one planned 2009 project due to the economy
As far as hiring goes, 22% of SMBs plan to hire additional full and part-time staff. Only 3% plan to reduce their staff size.

In a statement, Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of Marketing for Spiceworks, said it’s good to see SMBs showing signs of growth and spending, “Most are clearly ready to buy and it will be interesting to watch how these plans play out among different geographies, industries and company sizes. We will track these and other technology trends of interest in future studies.”