Not only are SMBs in the Professional Services vertical heavy users of Social Media for advertising and promotion, they are highly engaged on social media, according to LCM. 3/4 reported that they track “likes” in social media, while 57.4% monitor customer comments online.

There is a big opportunity with this group to offer CRM solutions because Professional Services SMBs stay connected with their customers but only 20% say they use a CRM system. 88.0% have maintained a customer list for a year or more, while an additional 6.4% have maintained a customer list for less than a year.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded by clients of BIA/Kelsey here. This report is one of a series of drill-down reports on the findings from Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor? survey. In the coming weeks we will be looking at SMBs by additional vertical categories. Our Home and Trade Services SMB report is already available. To learn more about our LCM survey of small and medium-sized businesses, click here.

Click here to purchase the Professional Services SMBs — LCM Wave 18. To purchase any of our other Local Commerce Monitor drill-down reports, check out our new BIA/Kelsey Shop.

*Professional Services vertical includes consulting, legal, architecture, and computer software. Financial Services SMBs are not included, but will be profiled in their own vertical report.

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Marketers have lots of disparate information about the consumers they are targeting, but if they don’t put it together in a consumer friendly way, it quickly becomes an off-putting “Creepy Valley of Local Marketing” that is counter productive, said Salesforce VP Randy Wootton in a keynote address at BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport.

Citing GoDaddy’s Blake Irving for inventing the “Creepy Valley” moniker, Wootton noted that “where it gets weird is when there are things that target you” and are really not consistent with good Customer Relationship management principles. It becomes especially worrisome in a mobile environment where there are no barriers.

The solution? Provide all services in the cloud, where several layers of services can be easily mediated. “The cloud is the democratization of the marketing world — although local marketers aren’t taking advantage of it yet. When you cross the creepy valley, you have a different relationship with your customers,” says Wootton.

The post Salesforce’s Randy Wootton at ILM 2014: Avoiding Local’s ‘Creepy Valley’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Marketers have lots of disparate information about the consumers they are targeting, but if they don’t put it together in a consumer friendly way, it quickly becomes an off-putting “Creepy Valley of Local Marketing” that is counter productive, said Salesforce VP Randy Wootton in a keynote address at BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport.

Citing GoDaddy’s Blake Irving for inventing the “Creepy Valley” moniker, Wootton noted that “where it gets weird is when there are things that target you” and are really not consistent with good Customer Relationship management principles. It becomes especially worrisome in a mobile environment where there are no barriers.

The solution? Provide all services in the cloud, where several layers of services can be easily mediated. “The cloud is the democratization of the marketing world — although local marketers aren’t taking advantage of it yet. When you cross the creepy valley, you have a different relationship with your customers,” says Wootton.

The post Salesforce's Randy Wootton at ILM 2014: Avoiding Local's 'Creepy Valley' appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.