The Who and Why of DIY
After putting the final touches on the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) report from our latest Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of SMBs, I sat down* to write this blog post. This report is a view of SMBs that told us they prefer a…
Established SMBs Use a Broad Mix of Advertising Channels
Last month we examined the marketing and advertising trends of newly formed SMBs as part of a series of reports drilling down in our Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18 survey of small and medium businesses. Today we are looking at…
Advertising and Marketing by SMBs with 10-99 Employees
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll notice that several of our recent research reports are covering SMBs of specific size brackets. We started with a report on SMBs with a single employee, then covered SMBs with 2-9…
Franchises as a Vanguard of the SMB World
Franchises are a distinctive and vibrant SMB segment. By almost every metric, franchises act differently from the overall SMB population. Franchises tend to "live large" -- they do things in a big way, starting with ad spending. At an average…
New SMBs Choose Social Media to Advertise, Retain & Acquire Customers
While the top media used for advertising and promotion by new SMBs are a mix of digital and social channels, social media is also a tool for these new SMBs to connect and communicate with customers. Facebook Page, LinkedIn and…
New SMBs Choose Social Media to Advertise, Retain & Acquire Customers
While the top media used for advertising and promotion by new SMBs are a mix of digital and social channels, social media is also a tool for these new SMBs to connect and communicate with customers. Facebook Page, LinkedIn and…
When SMBs Start to Blossom
As a group, SMBs with 2-9 employees have a distinctive profile that in many respects lies between the profiles of VSBs (Very Small Businesses - those with only one employee) and medium-size and larger-size SMBs. In some ways, SMBs in…
Single Employee SMBs — the Ultimate Do-It-Yourselfers
If there's one group of merchants that is likely to do its own advertising and promotion, it is those with only one employee, AKA "very small businesses" (VSBs), according to Wave 18 of BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor™ survey of small-and-medium…
Home and Trade Services SMBs Heavily Use Newspapers and Yellow Pages in Their Ad Mix
The most popular advertising channels for SMBs in the Home and Trade Services vertical, according to BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18,survey of small-and-medium businesses, are a mix of paid and free media. Media Ad View Plus (MAV), BIA/Kelsey's forecast…
Smaller SMBs Show Distinctive Behaviors in Latest Local Commerce Monitor Survey
One big trend we are seeing in our Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) findings is that low-spending SMBs are taking advantage of the lower price levels of digital and social media and reducing their overall ad spend. This has big implications…
A Double First for Social Media
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…