For smaller companies, social media is a marketing equalizer versus larger competition. The question has been are they taking advantage of it and the follow up is if they are, are they doing it effectively?
A pair of recent surveys show small businesses are increasing their use of social media and Internet platforms. One from BIA/Kelsey, a Chantilly, Va.-based consulting firm, found that small and medium size businesses plan to allocate 26% of their budgets to digital and online media over the next 12 months.
"SMBs continue to get more focused and precise about how they use and analyze their advertising and marketing budgets," said Steve Marshall, director of research at BIA/Kelsey. "We continue to see a powerful pattern in usage of digital/online media according to the age of the business. Younger businesses spend much more of their ad budgets on digital/online media than their older counterparts that spend more on traditional media."
Over 52% of the respondents said they plan to use social media to promote their businesses and 22% said they would have a video posted on YouTube in the next year.
These businesses like "the easy-to-use tools, like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and self-serve advertising," said Matt Booth, senior vice president and program director, interactive local media, BIA/Kelsey. "Our analysis is that we are on the verge of a real revolution in marketing platforms that serve SMBs, in particular around digital presence."
The other survey is from Citibank, where 65% of small business owners said they believed increasing their marketing activities was a key step in growing their business.
While the overwhelming majority (70%) used their company website as a marketing channel, 41% said they have used social media channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, in the last year.
But one finding that surprised me is that 62% of SMBs did not use email for marketing purposes.
Going forward, 60% of survey respondents plan to increase activity on their website for marketing purposes.
Meanwhile 40% intend to use social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter for marketing or expanding their business; Citibank said this is up 10 points from 2010.
Finally, 38% plan to leverage email marketing tactics to drive awareness and sales of products and services.
"Although small business owners have been slower to adopt online marketing channels, they are clearly warming up to using these tools to target customers," said Maria Veltre, managing director, small business marketing and customer experience at Citi. "They are seeing that social media platforms can be an efficient and cost effective means to increase awareness of their business, engage with customers and, ultimately, to drive growth."
