New Survey Shows Small Businesses Turning To Social Media Drive Engagement
- Written by Demand Gen Report Team
- Published in DemandGen Reports
Small businesses report an overall increased use of social media tools as a complementary additive to other marketing activities, according to Constant Contact’s “Small Business Attitudinal Survey.”
Specifically, results showed that 63% of companies cited Facebook and 30.7% cited Twitter as important tools for marketing, up from 50.5% and 25.6%, respectively, shown in the company’s March 2010 survey.
The survey also suggests that small businesses now see Facebook equally important as face-to-face interactions, with 62% of surveyed companies citing face-to-face interactions as a key tactic.
Traditional marketing activities such as web sites, email marketing, event marketing, and online surveys all saw modest increases in importance this season, compared to the spring results.
"Today's reality is that everyone is trying to do more with less," said Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact. "Small organizations don't have the luxury of full-time, dedicated social media staff like larger companies do, but that's not stopping them from using social media marketing to broaden their marketing reach."
Challenges evident in small businesses mostly related to generating new business through effective planning, sales, and marketing. When looking for new customers, 91% of the companies surveyed cited the value and importance of word of mouth.
However, online tools still raked high in importance for finding new customers in the digital age, with 68.8% and 58.6% of companies rating web sites and email marketing, respectively, as key aspects for driving customer conversion.
With the influx of Internet resources, nearly 75% of respondents said they expect their businesses to grow in the next year, despite current economic hardships.
"We applaud our small business customers who have found a way to work creatively and use the resources they have to grow their business, despite tough economic times,” Goodman said. “For example, they are pairing tried-and-true tools like email marketing with new tools in social media to exponentially increase their reach -- at no added dollar cost.”
While the year has been tough for many small businesses, only 18.5% reported a negative outlook on the economy for the year.
"While we can't predict the economy, we expect that small businesses will continue to survive and thrive in 2011 by finding new, innovative ways to grow their businesses using limited budget and resources," Goodman said. "We anticipate further adoption of social media marketing tools as a way to give added lift to other proven marketing winners, including email and event marketing."