BIA/Kelsey Senior Director of Industry Strategy and Insight Abid Chaudhry has written our latest Leading in Local Insight Paper, Content Marketing: the New SMB Paradigm. In the paper, Chaudhry argues that the growth of content marketing derives from changing consumer purchase behavior. He also describes the new ecosystems that has emerged to create and distribute original SMB content.

BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor survey showed SMB advertisers are more engaged with content related media channels which leads to more involvement with online content marketing. As a result, SMBs are engaging more with their consumer audiences in two-way conversations.

The executive summary for the report is below along with video clip from a recent BIA/Kelsey analyst roundtable we did on the topic. The report is available to BIA/Kelsey clients as well as for individual purchase.

Executive Summary

Content Marketing has always been around in some form. It’s the collection of techniques and practices marketers employ to get relevant content in front of the right audiences. During the pre-internet dark ages content marketing came in the form of direct mailers, brochures, product catalogs all designed to capture audience attention and drive it to some form of call to action (usually to fill out a form or pick up the phone).

The purpose of content marketing hasn’t changed much since then. The way it is created, distributed, and tracked has drastically evolved. The modern content marketing campaign is now multi-channel — combining offline and online media to drive highly targeted messaging to consumers, on whatever screen or device they happen to be on at the moment. SMBs have taken to the new content paradigm with gusto, with 74 percent reporting that they used some method of content marketing to promote themselves online in 2013.

While SMBs have been quick to embrace the content switch over from offline to online, content marketings relative importance within the broader digital marketing mix has taken time to evolve over the years.

Trevor Sumner, co-founder and CTO of LocalVox, noted that there have been multiple factors explaining why SMB content marketing has recently regained important. One is the movement toward original content and media. Suddenly SMBs have direct lines to their customers. What are they going to say?

Other factors, notably the rise of social media and rapidly increasing mobile device usage, have also played key roles in re-establishing the importance of content marketing with both driving massive growth in both content creation as well as consumption.

This BIA/Kelsey Insight Paper dives into SMB content marketing. It examines the market and technological factors that have led to content marketing’s resurging popularity with SMB merchants and the companies, technologies, and products that support them.

The post Content Marketing: The New SMB Paradigm — A New BIA/Kelsey Insight Paper appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Square began offering credit-card readers in 2009, which allow merchants to accept payments on mobile devices. Square originally targeted small businesses, but it now also sells a point-of-sale terminal for use in retail stores and has tools to help merchants sell online. The company charges a fee of 2.75 percent per transaction, along with free software.

Square competes with companies like EBay Inc.’s PayPal, Inuit, iTransact, and Shopkeep POS in the payments software space. In BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ (LCM) survey on advertising and marketing of small and medium businesses (SMBs), we asked SMBs about their usage of a mobile credit card swipe. 40% of respondents currently use one and an additional 16% said they are likely to adopt one for use within the next 12 months.

According to our Consumer Commerce Monitor (CCM) survey, consumers report using mobile phones and tablets to shop locally. We asked consumers how they find, engage and transact with local-serving businesses, including where they use their mobile devices. Consumers using smartphones report being far more likely to use their devices for local shopping while out of their homes, while consumers using tablets are far more likely to use their devices at home.

(Local Shopping means 25 mi radius from respondent’s primary residence)

When it comes to mobile payments via credit swipe, 42% of consumers say they have done so. The heaviest users are the 35-44 age group (45.4%) and Hispanics (48.9%).

35-44 yr olds local shopping characteristics:

• 64% perform their local shopping in store
• 28% perform their local shopping online
• 68% hold an associate’s degree or higher
• 50% household income ranges from $50,000 to $124,999

Hispanic local shopping characteristics:

• 57% perform their local shopping in store
• 31% perform their local shopping online
• 58% have an associate’s degree or higher
• 41% household income ranges from $50,000 to $ 124,999.

SMBs realize that more of their customers are going mobile and they are optimizing their presence to be more mobile as well. According to our LCM survey, almost 40% of SMBs reported that mobile marketing is a high priority in the next 12 months.

Check out BIA/Kelsey’s LCM page for more information.

The post Square’s Mobile Transactions Gives Company $5B Valuation appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In 2012, television dominated both the Automotive advertising and Government/Political/Religion (“GPR”) verticals, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad View Plus. More on the GPR vertical later.

Television’s $4.6 billion share of automotive advertising represented 28.4% of total automotive advertising in 2012. This $4.6 billion represents 22% of television’s total advertising revenue in 2012, making it the highest spending vertical for television.

2012 Automotive Ad Spending by Media

Media Ad View Plus’s automotive vertical includes five subcategories: automobile dealers and automotive manufacturers, other motor vehicle dealers, automotive parts and accessories stores, tire dealers, and gasoline stations and automotive repair. Of these, automotive dealers and automotive manufacturers were the predominant advertiser category, accounting for more than $3.8 billion of the total automotive advertising $4.6 billion spent on television.

“If it’s got a screen, automakers want to advertise on it,” said Ad Age in a recent article, Automakers Like Video, But Still Pour Gas On TV For Big Product Launches. While the automakers on Ad Age’s 100 Leading National Advertisers list have been increasing their digital advertising, “they’re also showing enduring faith in the American couch potato, with spending on television increasing from 2011 to 2012. Ad Age attributes the continued popularity of television to the automotive vertical to major product launches. The top five spending automakers, according to Ad Age, are General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Fiat (Chrysler Group) and Honda.

In 2017, television’s share of automotive advertising is expected to increase to 32%, while the shares going to other traditional media such as newspaper and direct mail are expected to decline significantly. Newer media, such as online and mobile, are also expected to increase their share of the automotive pie. Part of this increase can be attributed to the significantly lower GPR revenues expected to be spent on television in 2017. Without GPR dominating television commercials in 2017, as happened in 2012, there will be more inventory available for the other verticals, such as automotive.

More information on Media Ad View Plus is available here.

The post Media Ad View Plus Shows that Television Dominates the Automotive Advertising Vertical appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

According to BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad View Plus more than 43 percent, or $10.7 billion, of retail advertising dollars went to direct mail in 2012. That $10.7 billion represents 30 percent of direct mail’s total ad spending. Furthermore, BIA/Kelsey doesn’t expect that to change much by 2017, where retail is still projected to spend 43 percent, or $12.3 million, on direct mail.

2012 Retail Ad Spending by Media

So what types of retailers are spending money on direct mail? The largest spending retail specialty is warehouse clubs and supercenters, with $2.35 billion in spending on direct mail in 2012. This is more than double its closest competitor, discount department stores, which spent $1.1 billion.

What attracts retailers to direct mail over other media? According to direct mail companies, unlike ads on radio, television and newspapers, which go out to everyone in the market, direct mail can be targeted to a particular location or demographic, providing a better ROI. This could be valuable to brick-and-mortar retailers with fixed locations. Not everyone subscribes to a newspaper, watches TV, listens to the radio, or owns a computer or smartphone, but everyone gets mail.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says that direct mail is an old-school marketing method that still works for small businesses. “Direct mail can be an effective part of any marketing campaign. Yes, email, Facebook and even Twitter work for some small businesses, but that doesn’t mean tried and true methods like direct mail should go by the wayside.”

According to BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad View Plus, overall direct mail accounted for nearly $35.8 billion out of a total $132.2 billion in U.S. advertising dollars. That’s a whopping 27.1 percent of total advertising dollars, making it by far the largest media category. Newspapers, the next largest medium, accounted for 17.1 percent of total advertising dollars in 2012, followed by television in third place with 15.7 percent.

BIA/Kelsey expects this to change somewhat by 2017, with direct mail still on top with 25.1 percent of total advertising dollars, followed by television with 15.1 percent, with newspapers falling to third with 11.9 percent.

More information on Media Ad View Plus is available here.

The post Media Ad View Plus Shows that Retailers Still See Value in Direct Mail appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

MerchantCircle has registered its millionth SMB, Nassau Avenue Nails of Islip, NY. Owner Danielle Biegler found out about MerchantCircle after searching for other local businesses nearby, and will receive a lifetime MerchantCircle tools, cool MerchantCircle gear and a new sign.

The million number represents roughly 6.7 percent of U.S. SMBs. It may not mean much in the context of Merchant Circle’s success, given that some SMBs unintentionally signed up for the service and may not be regular users.

Yet the service has also built an undeniably impressive track record. Its merchants have written nearly 400,000 blog posts using its publishing platform, uploaded 1 million+ photos, and created more than 350,000 local coupons.

On the consumer side, the service, largely relying on search optimization, currently attracts 20 million unique visitors per month, making it akin to a large Internet Yellow Pages. Users have contributed more than 650,000 local business reviews.

The post MerchantCircle Celebrates Registration of Millionth SMB appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.