This report is a view of SMBs that told us they prefer a “Do It Yourself” (or “Do It Myself”) model for their advertising and marketing services. This is in contrast to the higher-service level models of “Do It With Me” or “Do It For Me.” (The preference for service models is one of the questions we asked in Wave 18 of our Local Commerce Monitor survey of small-and-medium businesses).

The advertising and marketing services could include, for example: website creation, marketing automation, leads management, media performance analysis, CRM, listings management, etc.

Many of our clients are asking us for information on SMBs that use DIY products. DIY products are popular for several reasons, low-cost being foremost. Publishers, media companies and other service providers find many challenges to implementing a DIY model, however. These run the gamut, from a lack of follow-through by the SMB customers, to frustrations in trying to upsell SMBs to additional products.

In profiling SMBs that prefer the DIY model, we found several surprises. For example, these SMBs are often well-established businesses, in the “maintenance” lifecycle stage. They tend to be moderate-sized SMBs (not the very smallest), and spend more than $13,000 annually on advertising. They’re very oriented to digital media in general, and social media in particular.

This report also includes commentary by Stacey Sedbrook, our Vice President of Strategic Sales Consulting, on the principles and best practices for implementing a DIY model.

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. Our LCM reports look at where particular SMBs (broken out by size, vertical, etc.) spend the most, as well as the top channels for marketing and advertising. Additionally it provides analysis on the best product and service offers for these highly coveted groups of SMBs. In the coming weeks and months we will be looking at SMBs who prefer “Do It With Me” and “Do It For Me” service models, and SMBs by vertical. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

To purchase any of our Local Commerce Monitor drill-down reports, check out our new BIA/Kelsey Shop.

*Actually, I stood up — at the “standing desk” I recently cobbled together. Not just any standing desk — but one where I’m standing on a Bosu ball while at my computer. Try it!

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The most popular channels used for advertising by established businesses are a mix of social, digital and traditional: Facebook page, website, email marketing, LinkedIn and direct mail. Even their future plans for advertising shows a mix of digital and traditional. Search, email and print advertising are the top three future channels.

Established SMBs had an average annual spend of $23,331 on advertising and promotion, compared to $17,360 for newly established SMBs. 55.5% of established SMBs plan to maintain their currently level of spending in 2015, while 31% plan to increase their spending.

Established SMBs are heavy users of social with 70% of established business respondents said they track “likes” on social media. 61% monitor customer comments about their business. 71% of them use a free or do-it-yourself service to do so.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full established SMBs spotlight report 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 of small-and-medium businesses. Our LCM reports look at where particular SMBs (broken out by size, vertical, etc.) spend the most, as well as the top channels for marketing and advertising. Additionally it provides analysis on the best product and service offers for these highly coveted groups of SMBs. In the coming weeks and months we will be looking at SMBs who prefer the DIY online advertising models, those that prefer DIWM or DIFM models, and SMBs by vertical. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

2015 Spend Intentions for Established SMBs

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We’re reporting the Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) results by these slices at the request of our clients. (We also report out the LCM results by many other slices, including “super verticals,” lifecycle stage, spending level, etc.)

The average total spend for advertising and promotions annually among SMBs with 10-99 employees is $53,440. This spending level places this segment of SMBs closer to Plus Spenders and franchise SMBs than to segments of smaller SMBs like the Core Spenders.

The top advertising/marketing priority for SMBs with 10-99 employees for the next 12 months is SEM/SEO. This is consistent with other size brackets, and not surprising considering the steadily increasing importance, and ever-changing rules, of SEO.

Broadly speaking, SMBs in this size range often find themselves straddling the worlds of digital and traditional media. Their media mix puts more weight on classic media, including direct mail, print and Internet Yellow Pages, newspapers and magazines. They’re also loyal to the sales channels attached to these media, even for the purchase of online ads. For example, Print or Internet Yellow Pages is the second most used channel for purchasing online ads, used by 27.5% of respondents.

Service model preference leans strongly towards the “Do it with me” model, preferred by 52.8% of respondents, which is a sharp distinction to the smaller SMBs, which favor the “Do it myself” model.

Customer loyalty programs are popular with these SMBs, with 43.1 percent already having a customer loyalty program, and another 26.8 percent saying they plan to add one in the next 12 months — for a total of 69.9 percent.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full report here.

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Franchises use more targeted marketing and advertising, are more engaged with their customers, and are also more disciplined across the full range of activities required in reaching and serving customers. They use more marketing tools and platforms, loyalty programs, mobile marketing, social media, cloud platforms, etc.

In particular, franchises are well ahead of other SMBs in their use of personalized, targeted digital media and platforms including Pinterest, mobile coupons and deals, text messages, Twitter ads, etc. Looking at the media usage findings from LCM is like looking into a new media laboratory (look out, MIT!).

Franchises estimate that about one-half of all their sales in the next 12 months will be through discount programs. This arrestingly-high reading is actually consistent with other behaviors of franchises — such as their near-saturation use of loyalty programs (and the personalized, targeted media mentioned above). Franchises are building close and deep relationships with their customers, and they’re accomplishing this by using a host of digital media and platforms.

The bottom line: Franchises might be viewed as a vanguard — showing us where the rest of the SMB world is heading.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full report here.

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To be certain, the 2-9 employee bracket is quite interesting because it often represents a stage of development in which the SMB is deciding what it wants to be when it grows up, so to speak. This is a point at which some SMBs decide they’ll style themselves as a “lifestyle” business, and won’t focus on growth as much as on providing a high-quality lifestyle for the owner. On the other hand, other SMBs will decide to adopt a growth trajectory to become a significant player in their niche.

This “pre-teen” period for many of the SMBs in the 2-9 employee bracket poses unique challenges — and rewards — for service providers. For example:

– These SMBs use a fairly broad mix of media, and are applying increasingly-sophisticated analytics to assess media performance and make budget allocation decisions. Accordingly, they’re probably receptive to tools and platforms to grow their analytic capabilities.

– Over the next 12 months, 43.6 percent rate SEM/SEO as a “very high” or “extremely high” priority, suggesting they may be open to various tools (and learning) to master these activities.

– Email marketing also ranks fairly high both as a medium currently being used, and as a priority, again suggesting this may be a product area with a lot of interest for SMBs in this size bracket.

In sum, for many SMBs in the 2-9 employee bracket, this is the stage at which long-term relationships are formed — with media, products, platforms, channels and vendors. An important segment to pay attention to!

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full 2-9 employee spotlight report 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 of small-and-medium businesses. In the coming weeks we will be looking at even larger SMBs with between 10-99 employees, new SMBs, established and growing SMBs, and more. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

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According to the survey, more than half of these VSBs chose to “do it myself” when purchasing online advertising, while only 24 percent chose any kind of paid assistance with “do it with me” or “do it for me” options. Still VSBs do remain open to managed services. LCM Wave 18 reveals that VSBs who use a third party (12.5 percent) pay an average $661 a year on maintaining and operating their online properties.

Economic necessity is one key reason behind the do-it-yourself nature of VSBs. More than 68 percent of the VSB respondents in our survey reported annual revenue of less than $100,000. While their average annual advertising budget is $4,252, four out of the five most popular channels used for advertising (Facebook pages, LinkedIn, websites and email marketing) are offered free or have low cost options.

Other business services that VSBs report they “DIY” include tracking sources of leads and monitoring customer comments. Opportunities exist with this group for low cost solutions (DIY or managed) for communicating with their customers and managing their leads/customer lists. Email marketing and online satisfaction surveys ranked high among advertising services they were considering using in 2015.

The VSB report released today is just the first peek into our LCM data by number of employees at SMBs. In the coming weeks we will be looking at mid-sized SMBs with under 10 employees, and even larger SMBs with between 10-99 employees.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full Very Small Businesses spotlight report here. To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

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As we prepare for our annual September conference (watch out, New Orleans) we are starting to release the data from our Wave 18 Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey, just “in from the field” a few weeks ago.

The data we released Monday morning (which BTW you may have heard on the Wall Street Journal morning broadcast, or seen in the industry press) focused on our new findings about the use of social media by SMBs.

According to our new findings, three-quarters (74.5%) of SMBs in our survey reported using social media to advertise or promote their business. This represents the largest reach of any media category.

Not only does social media get the #1 rank for reach, but for the first time, social media also gets the #1 rank for share of media spend by SMBs. LCM respondents reported that 21.4% of their total media spending in the past 12 months went to social media, more than to any other media category. (The LCM survey covers 10 different top-level media categories, of which the social media category contains 11 different social media and platforms.)

This is a “double first” for social media, in which social media has achieved the highest reach and greatest spend of all media categories. This is something we haven’t seen before, and represents a key milestone in the history of SMB media spending.

Not surprisingly, Facebook had the strongest showing within the social media category, with 55.1% of respondents reporting they have a Facebook page for business use. At the same time, strong showings by other social platforms demonstrated that the strength in the social space is disbursed across multiple players. The other social platforms that beat our expectations for reach and/or spend include LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter’s promoted tweets product.

Additional data from the LCM survey will be provided at our upcoming LEADING IN LOCAL: SMB Digital Marketing Conference, and to BIA/Kelsey clients throughout the year.

About our LCM survey: We’ve run the LCM survey since 1999. Wave 18, just completed, had a total of 546 respondents, consisting of two sub-groups of small and large SMB spenders. The metrics reported above represent averages for the two sub-groups. The survey sample consists a broad cross-section of US SMBs, diversified by category, geography, size and market type. The survey is conducted online by our research partner Ipsos.

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Yodle, a leader in local online marketing, announced results from its first “Small Business and Online Reviews Survey.” The study polled 300 U.S. small business owners across a large array of industries for their opinions of online reviews.

The survey asks SMB owners if they think online reviews are important, the extent to which they ask for and get reviews, if they monitor for and respond to reviews, and whether they think reviews are fair.

Survey highlights include:

— 50% of respondents think that it’s important or very important for their business to receive positive online reviews.

— 55% of SMB owners don’t receive any online reviews, while one in five (19%) attract between one and five reviews per month. Despite the low number of reviews small businesses are receiving, only 13% of owners ask their customers to post reviews.

— 68% of SMB owners don’t spend any time monitoring online reviews. Most of the remaining SMB owners (29%) spend just one to five hours per month on this activity.

— Only 20% of survey respondents respond to online reviews written about their business. Of those that do respond, more than 3 in 4 generally respond to all reviews.

— Only 14% of survey respondents post customers’ reviews to their websites. The remaining SMB owners that have received reviews and have a website (37%) do not post this content.

— 61% of SMB owners think that review sites favor businesses that pay to advertise with them, while only 10% don’t believe that to be the case. Half of SMB owners believe small businesses are more unfairly impacted by negative reviews than larger business; only 20% disagree.

— More than four in 10 survey respondents (43%) believe that online reviews are unfair because they do not verify that people who leave reviews are actual customers. A similar number, 41%, are “Not sure” if they’re unfair.

BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ shows SMB advertisers are increasing their engagement with consumer reviews. Currently, 65% of SMBs surveyed monitor comments about their business, with another 15% planning to do so in the next year. Among those that do monitor reviews, 56% use a free or Do-It-Yourself service. Of those that do spend money on review monitoring, half spend between $25 and $100 per month.

While there’s no clear cut answer to whether or not online review sites being fair to SMBs, these statistics speak for themselves. Regardless, review sites are here to stay and force businesses to surrender their power to the consumer. They must rethink how they treat their customers.

For more information about Yodle’s Small Business and online review study please read the press release.

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