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 for traditional media sellers as well as pure plays trying to find the right go to market strategy to reach smaller spenders at scale.

LCM tracks low-spending and high-spending SMBs separately. We call the low-spending SMBs “Core SMBs”, and define them as those spending less than $25,000 annually on advertising and promotion. In Wave 18, we saw a continuation of the downward pull on ad spending by Core SMBs due to the lower price points of digital media in general and social media in particular. We detail these findings in a new report, “LCM 18: Advertising Trends of Core SMBs,” available to BIA/Kelsey clients.

At around $2,500, average media spend by Core SMBs is down around 17 percent from the $3,000 average spend in 2011. We’re clearly seeing a de-emphasis on paid media, in favor of social media and other ways to engage customers, a trend that became apparent a year ago, in the LCM Wave 17 findings.

With Core SMBs, digital media, particularly social media, showed strength across the board. Core SMBs indicated bold intentions to increase spending on digital media. Social media achieved new heights in reach (69 percent) and spend (25 percent of total spend).

When asked about service models, 48.3 percent of Core SMBs said they preferred the “Do-it-myself” model, as opposed to the “Do-it-with-me” or “Do-it-for-me” models. This strong reading is a key message for companies serving the lower range of the SMB market.

In the section of the LCM survey about channels, we explored several behaviors and attitudes. For instance, we saw a big increase in Core SMBs concentrating their online ad purchases through a single channel. A record 82 percent of Core SMBs report using only one channel for purchasing online ad products. (Note: This metric considers “Do-it-myself” a channel).

At the same time, we also saw numerous differences between Core SMBs and high-spending SMBs. For example, there’s a huge gap in the usage level of online services. Only 12 percent of Core SMBs use some type of CRM system, compared to a full 50 percent of high-spending SMBs. Evaluated along with other data from the LCM survey, findings like this are crucial for companies serving the lower range of the SMB market.

Clients of the BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services can find the full report here. Interested in an excerpt? Download one here.

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As GoDaddy reportedly prepares for a $4.5 Billion IPO, the company has increasingly focused on leveraging and upselling its 12 million worldwide members with a set of comprehensive solutions. At BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport, SVP Raj Mukherjee noted that the company is delivering on a new vision statement: “Empowering people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures.”

Mukherjee said GoDaddy is servicing its customers in three core ties: “basic identity,” “advantage identity,” and “marketing and back office.”

“Advantage identity” includes hosting and security, do it yourself websites, online stores and listings. “Marketing and back office” includes Domain specific email; Office 365; email marketing; invoicing and bookkeeping.

The post At ILM 2014: GoDaddy’s Raj Mukherjee on Leveraging 12 Million Users appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

As GoDaddy reportedly prepares for a $4.5 Billion IPO, the company has increasingly focused on leveraging and upselling its 12 million worldwide members with a set of comprehensive solutions. At BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media event at San Francisco Airport, SVP Raj Mukherjee noted that the company is delivering on a new vision statement: “Empowering people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures.”

Mukherjee said GoDaddy is servicing its customers in three core ties: “basic identity,” “advantage identity,” and “marketing and back office.”

“Advantage identity” includes hosting and security, do it yourself websites, online stores and listings. “Marketing and back office” includes Domain specific email; Office 365; email marketing; invoicing and bookkeeping.

The post At ILM 2014: GoDaddy's Raj Mukherjee on Leveraging 12 Million Users appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey continues to engage market leaders in its coverage areas in order to collaborate on research reports. There’s one currently in the works, about optimizing SMB Marketing Efficacy, sponsored by Vendasta and written by our new associate Mitch Ratcliffe.

To preview the paper’s subject matter, we’ve included a teaser below. Stay tuned for the full release sometime next month. Meanwhile, an extended version of the below summary is available in physical form, if you’re at our Leading in Local conference. Stop by the Vendasta booth for a copy.

Measuring SMB Marketing Efficacy: Logistics and Storytelling Will Reshape Local Business Metrics

SMBs are the new frontier for digital services. They will require a new reseller/marketing services layer in local media to spread digital marketing practices to millions of individual stores and business people. For many digital marketers, small business is suspended in time between the Main Street barbershop familiar from The Andy Griffith Show, where folks stopped in and talked even if they didn’t get a haircut, and the high-speed increasingly personalized digital services based on advanced logistics that characterize major global brands. If he were on TV today, Floyd the barber would be studying his web engagement metrics in addition to providing a friendly haircut.

Digital services for local business are about to catch up with global brand marketing and, as with every business that has crossed the digital divide before, measurement of tool performance and tactics will be critical to success. Measuring web promotions; Providing transactional and support services for complex products and services; Facilitating loyalty and customer engagement programs, all these daily digital chores are poised to become business as usual. The losers in the local goods and services race will wander off-course without solid metrics, spending too much to get poor results as others focus their limited marketing budgets with greater precision. The big story in the enterprise over the past decade, the rise of metrics-driven experimentation and marketing, is about to repeat itself at the grassroots on Main Street.

Technical and economic drivers are already reshaping the local media economy. BIA/Kelsey Local Commerce Monitor reports that SMB plus spenders, business that spends at least $25,000 annually on advertising and promotion, 35.2 percent of ad spending will be allocated to digital in 2015, up from 24.5 percent in 2011. 57.7% of these plus spenders pay an average of $7,238 a year to maintain an online presence. More SMBs are also paying for marketing help to tie together their online messaging across Twitter, Facebook, mobile sites, Google and their own websites, as 40.9% of surveyed small businesses reported hiring agencies and staffing to manage their presence, the “Do It With Me” approach.

Our analysis suggests the “Do It With Me” (DIWM) model, collaboration between an SMB and one or more vendors to build complementary messages, which benefit the individual client business and create network effects, such as qualified participants in shared loyalty programs, cross-promotional campaigns and integrated transactional systems that flag cross-selling opportunities for SMBs, is the most viable approach. This phenomenon is visible in the specialization of digital sales teams in iYP markets, the agreement by YP.com to represent Yelp promotions to its customers, and the emergence of vendors that “sell digital arms,” marketing tools and services, in a consultative relationship with the customer, among others. We expect to see Google and Facebook partnering more extensively in this area in coming months.

“A lot of channel partners sell digital only five percent to 10 percent of the time, which is a sin” said Jeff Tomlin, Senior Vice President of Vendasta, a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based marketing tools vendor that has adopted the DIWM model. Instead of investing in direct sales, Vendasta seeks value-added resellers who can provide on-site services to complement its own reputation monitoring, presence management, social and mobile marketing optimization services, which are presented in a dashboard for the SMB customer. Agencies that bundle Vendasta services share access to their customers’ dashboards and can take on creative and production tasks on behalf of the SMB.

Recall Floyd’s barbershop. There was no “marketing strategy.” There were two chairs, a phone (where an operator waited to connect the call), some magazines and, perhaps, a television for the customers to watch the World Series in some later years of its fictional life. Floyd did not have to compete with other barbers through media. Compared with the communications wave rolling through the economy today, Floyd’s approach to customer engagement grows more fictional and quaint every passing year.

 

The post Upcoming BIA/Kelsey White Paper: Reshaping Local Business Marketing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey, “Small Business Plus Spenders” with annual marketing budgets of $75k or more – such as car dealers. medical centers and other larger local advertisers — are all over big data. Plus Spenders are found to be data hounds, showing a strong desire and use for information on media performance, analytics, and customer comments in social media.

SMB Plus Spenders rated analytics as their second highest (at 61 percent) future priority for marketing and advertising. Plus Spenders are keen on incorporating analytics into their marketing mix.

Our LCM data finds that 48 percent of SMB Plus Spenders use their own organic data to analyze the effectiveness of their ad campaigns versus 29 percent who use vendor or third party data. Furthermore, 82 percent of Plus Spenders track the sources of their business leads either frequently or occasionally. This high reading is consistent with the overall priority assigned to Analytics by Plus Spenders.

Our LCM 17 data indicates, plus spender SMBs are keen on monitoring their advertising performance through analytics. Many small companies want to improve their marketing by pinpointing the best sales prospects through social media and other media channels. SMBs can harness data to analyze what customers are saying online to engage in more impactful dialogues with prospective or existing customers because that big data allows them to understand their campaign’s effectiveness.

The post SMBs with Big Budgets take on Big Data Solutions appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

SMBs are increasingly aware of two themes – often related – that are core to their future business growth: 1) consumers expect to discover and interact with them on mobile platforms; 2) existing customers directly impact profitability; retaining and delighting them must be given higher priority.

Huzzah, the digital arm of User-Friendly Media, is building a platform to solve both problems concurrently, and at a manageable price point. The company’s focus on mobile and loyalty is underscored by its recent study revealing that fewer than 20 percent of SMBs have a mobile app, and even fewer – 17 percent – deploy a loyalty program.

Its SMB suite starts with supplying a mobile app, surrounded by impression-based media campaigns that drive app installs and post-click activities, or secondary actions (click-to-call and click-to-schedule-appointment, for example).

Why a mobile app rather than an optimized or responsive mobile website/landing page? Huzzah VP of Product Development Lance Brown says it’s not a case of either/or; SMBs should optimize their mobile presence in all environments. But building apps for SMBs allows them to “do many of the things that big brands do.”

A digital loyalty platform is a distinct, but related, part of the Huzzah solution. It’s a “networked” loyalty model , with a consumer-facing app that aggregates participating merchants (though rewards are not transferable across distinct merchants).

Each SMB is outfitted with an “out of the box solution,” according to Brown, that includes an iPad storefront, loyalty cards, digital coaching and unlimited rewards (Huzzah uses “coins” as its rewards currency). Currently check-ins are the predominant activity that SMBs can reward, though VP of Marketing Greg Garrick notes that much more flexibility is on the horizon. “We’re building a system to offer as many types of rewards as you can think of.”

Huzzah is currently offering a promotion – a $1 trial for six months – to build a critical mass on merchants on its loyalty platform, which strengthens the consumer-facing product while enabling the company to upsell/cross-sell SMBs into its additional marketing products.

The post Huzzah's SMB Success Formula: Mobile + Loyalty appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

SMBs are increasingly aware of two themes – often related – that are core to their future business growth: 1) consumers expect to discover and interact with them on mobile platforms; 2) existing customers directly impact profitability; retaining and delighting them must be given higher priority.

Huzzah, the digital arm of User-Friendly Media, is building a platform to solve both problems concurrently, and at a manageable price point. The company’s focus on mobile and loyalty is underscored by its recent study revealing that fewer than 20 percent of SMBs have a mobile app, and even fewer – 17 percent – deploy a loyalty program.

Its SMB suite starts with supplying a mobile app, surrounded by impression-based media campaigns that drive app installs and post-click activities, or secondary actions (click-to-call and click-to-schedule-appointment, for example).

Why a mobile app rather than an optimized or responsive mobile website/landing page? Huzzah VP of Product Development Lance Brown says it’s not a case of either/or; SMBs should optimize their mobile presence in all environments. But building apps for SMBs allows them to “do many of the things that big brands do.”

A digital loyalty platform is a distinct, but related, part of the Huzzah solution. It’s a “networked” loyalty model , with a consumer-facing app that aggregates participating merchants (though rewards are not transferable across distinct merchants).

Each SMB is outfitted with an “out of the box solution,” according to Brown, that includes an iPad storefront, loyalty cards, digital coaching and unlimited rewards (Huzzah uses “coins” as its rewards currency). Currently check-ins are the predominant activity that SMBs can reward, though VP of Marketing Greg Garrick notes that much more flexibility is on the horizon. “We’re building a system to offer as many types of rewards as you can think of.”

Huzzah is currently offering a promotion – a $1 trial for six months – to build a critical mass on merchants on its loyalty platform, which strengthens the consumer-facing product while enabling the company to upsell/cross-sell SMBs into its additional marketing products.

The post Huzzah’s SMB Success Formula: Mobile + Loyalty appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Millennials, those between the ages of 18-34, are making social e-commerce more prevalent than ever. According to our Consumer Commerce Monitor™ survey, 56 % of millennial local consumers said that they have interacted with social media in the past 6 months at some point in the purchase funnel and that 32% of all local purchases made in the last year were made online.

While social media may not have the critical significance of mobile, it is becoming increasingly crucial for ecommerce success. If SMBs are ever going to fully commit to goals of social ecommerce, they must integrate the strategy at all points of the consumer purchase funnel. According to our CCM survey data, 49% of millennial consumers reported using social media more often now than they did in the past year for local shopping.

Social networks are strongest as sources of retail influence and product discovery. Roughly a quarter of U.S. social network users have made a purchase on a retail web site after clicking from a social network in the past year, according to a report from Javelin Strategy & Research. According to our CCM survey, 66% of all millennial consumers go to Facebook when they used a social network for local shopping, followed by YouTube (20%), Google+ (16%) and Twitter (14%). Also, 59% of millennial consumers also ranked Facebook as the number one choice for local shopping. Social media was rated the most influential in these top five verticals among millennial local shopping habits:

Source: BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™ (CCM), 2013.

The future of social e-commerce looks promising for small businesses if they can get it right. Let’s take a look at some quick facts about what SMBs are currently doing to capture millennial shoppers. According to our Local Commerce Monitor survey:

— 52% of all SMBs have a Facebook Business Page utilized for advertising or promotion. Followed by 25% of SMBs using Google+ and 24% using Twitter.

— 38% of SMBs use their Facebook pages to acquire new business and customers. Another 27% use it as an awareness and promotion tool.

— 85% of SMBs listed social media as a future marketing priority.

Many SMBs are still trying to understand how best to deliver content to millennial consumers via their social media and ecommerce channels while also reaching new prospects. Advertising on social channels like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest can be the communication channels needed to garner attention. While there is some debate about the overall value of social advertising, it is hard to argue that it offers some of the best targeting available to business owners; especially when their target audience is spending an increasing amount of time on social media.

The post SMBs to Marry Social Media and E-commerce Strategies to Win Millennials appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

“A core value for Twitter as a company is to reach every person on the planet. In 2014 we want to build a Twitter that is accessible to everyone,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter in yesterday’s Q4 earnings call. Twitter reports having has 241 million monthly active users worldwide, up 30% from last year, with 54 million of those users in the United States.

With only 24.9% of U.S. consumers actively using Twitter, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor?, it looks like such an expansive reach is going to be a challenge for social media’s newest public company.

To tackle this feat Twitter mentioned several changes it has or will make to stimulate user growth. As Twitter users may have noticed, in-line social actions and media powered timelines were introduced in October which increased user interaction such as favorites and retweets by 34% in Q4. Search is also a quickly growing feature with 120% increase in total search year over year while simpler user onboarding experiences with native mobile signup are aimed to reengage inactive users. Another new feature that was introduced, and is a new concept for Twitter, was direct messaging. Messaging is up 25% since it was implemented.

The main device that users are accessing their Twitter accounts on is mobile. More than 75% of total ad revenue is being generated through mobile devices.

With all of this focus on growing their user reach, we have to ask; what is twitter doing for advertisers? According to Mike Gupta, CFO at Twitter, ad engagement is up more than 600% from the prior year. The increase in ad engagement is a combination of the improved prediction and targeting capabilities by twitter and the realized importance of the native ad by advertisers. Not only that but “for large branded folks, Twitter in TV is much a part of the conversation,” says Gupta “TV ad recall was up roughly 14% or so for folks who are using Twitter.”

For SMBs, there’s an apparent gap between SMB’s sentiments about Twitter and the company’s traction with small business advertisers. Twitter made little mention of SMB advertisers. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor?, 44.4% of local SMBs consider social media to be a very high or extremely high future marketing priority. Not only that, but SMBs are already very heavily engaged on Twitter as users. Nearly 50% of SMB’s have a Twitter account or plan to get one in the next year. Of those who have one, over 78% of SMBs update their Twitter account daily or weekly.

Additional Key Highlights

–Full year revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.15 to $1.2 billion

–Employee headcount is now over 2,700

–International revenue represents 27% of total revenue

The post Twitter's Q4 2013 Earnings Call: Big Plans for User Engagement, No Plans for SMB Advertisers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

“A core value for Twitter as a company is to reach every person on the planet. In 2014 we want to build a Twitter that is accessible to everyone,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter in yesterday’s Q4 earnings call. Twitter reports having has 241 million monthly active users worldwide, up 30% from last year, with 54 million of those users in the United States.

With only 24.9% of U.S. consumers actively using Twitter, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, it looks like such an expansive reach is going to be a challenge for social media’s newest public company.

To tackle this feat Twitter mentioned several changes it has or will make to stimulate user growth. As Twitter users may have noticed, in-line social actions and media powered timelines were introduced in October which increased user interaction such as favorites and retweets by 34% in Q4. Search is also a quickly growing feature with 120% increase in total search year over year while simpler user onboarding experiences with native mobile signup are aimed to reengage inactive users. Another new feature that was introduced, and is a new concept for Twitter, was direct messaging. Messaging is up 25% since it was implemented.

The main device that users are accessing their Twitter accounts on is mobile. More than 75% of total ad revenue is being generated through mobile devices.

With all of this focus on growing their user reach, we have to ask; what is twitter doing for advertisers? According to Mike Gupta, CFO at Twitter, ad engagement is up more than 600% from the prior year. The increase in ad engagement is a combination of the improved prediction and targeting capabilities by twitter and the realized importance of the native ad by advertisers. Not only that but “for large branded folks, Twitter in TV is much a part of the conversation,” says Gupta “TV ad recall was up roughly 14% or so for folks who are using Twitter.”

For SMBs, there’s an apparent gap between SMB’s sentiments about Twitter and the company’s traction with small business advertisers. Twitter made little mention of SMB advertisers. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™, 44.4% of local SMBs consider social media to be a very high or extremely high future marketing priority. Not only that, but SMBs are already very heavily engaged on Twitter as users. Nearly 50% of SMB’s have a Twitter account or plan to get one in the next year. Of those who have one, over 78% of SMBs update their Twitter account daily or weekly.

Additional Key Highlights

–Full year revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.15 to $1.2 billion

–Employee headcount is now over 2,700

–International revenue represents 27% of total revenue

The post Twitter’s Q4 2013 Earnings Call: Big Plans for User Engagement, No Plans for SMB Advertisers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.