Social Media usage grew slightly year over year, while mobile usage showed significant growth. Traditional media, such as broadcast and newspaper, took a hit from the previous year.

Three of Plus Spender SMBs highest advertising and marketing priorities for the next 12 months are analytics, mobile and social.

— 62% of Plus Spender SMBs ranked Analytics as a very high or extremely high priority.

— 55.5% ranked Social Media as very or extremely high priority.

— 55% ranked Mobile as very or extremely high priority.

Core SMBs do not place as much urgency and emphasis on these marketing priorities as Plus Spenders.

Unlike Core SMBs, which tend to rely on their own data, Plus Spender SMBs want empirical information on media performance, analytics, customer comments in social media, etc.

Mobile has huge traction with Plus Spender SMBs. 44.5% report having a mobile website and 53.6% report they accept payments via a credit card reader. Core SMBs, on the other hand, have a long way to go with mobile as only 15% have a mobile website and 28% reporting accepting payments via a credit card reader.

Plus Spender SMBs are also more committed and sophisticated in their use of social media than Core SMBs, with 72% reporting they’re “extremely or very” engaged with their customers, compared to 61% of Core SMBs. 73% of Plus Spender SMBs monitor online comments about them, compared to 57% of Core SMBs.

Plus Spender SMBs already have an established digital presence on social, search and mobile — the opportunity lies in managing their engagement with customers through their digital properties.

We’ll be hosting a webinar and diving into the details about Plus Spender SMBs in the next few weeks.

For more information on BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor, check here.

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Of the different media used for advertising and promotion that BIA/Kelsey tracks in the LCM survey, only two of the traditional media crack SMB’s top 10 most used media for advertising and promotion: newspapers and direct mail. The rest of the top 10 are filled with digital media.

In the chart below, I looked at eight of the traditional media from LCM. Newspapers and direct mail, the only two of the traditional media to crack the Top 10 most used media list, fall first and second among traditional media. Radio comes in third, with TV and outdoor bringing up the rear for usage.

But how do SMBs perceive the return on their investment for time spent in advertising or promoting themselves on traditional media? The traditional media with the highest usage, newspapers, had the lowest perceived ROI, while the ones with lower usage: TV, cable and outdoor, had the highest ROI among the traditional media.

TV had the highest perceived ROI among the traditional media, with 50% of SMBs rating it as either excellent (10-19 times return on that investment) or extraordinary (over 20 times the return), while only 13.7% of SMBs surveyed reporting using TV to advertise or promote their business.

Newspapers, which had the highest usage among the traditional media, had the lowest perceived ROI, with 26% of SMBs reporting returns as excellent or extraordinary.

Radio had the third highest usage among SMBs for advertising/promotion. But advertisers who used radio as part of their advertising mix reported being pleased with the results, as 36% rated the perceived ROI of radio advertising as either excellent or extraordinary.

For the first time in several survey waves, SMBs indicated that they are actually decreasing the number of media used to advertise or promote their business. The implication: media must deliver concrete ROI or risk losing business traction. Digital media penetration with SMBs has increased, as many of these solutions generate concrete leads and offer trackable ROI metrics.

Traditional media are far from obsolete, however, as the data suggests, and many are still well-regarded. However, for newspapers in particular, and all traditional media, as SMBs enjoy more digital options and demand clear value from their advertising spend, the need to produce clear ROI is stronger than ever.

More information about LCM and custom renderings of the data can be found here.

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