Not only are SMBs in the Professional Services vertical heavy users of Social Media for advertising and promotion, they are highly engaged on social media, according to LCM. 3/4 reported that they track “likes” in social media, while 57.4% monitor customer comments online.

There is a big opportunity with this group to offer CRM solutions because Professional Services SMBs stay connected with their customers but only 20% say they use a CRM system. 88.0% have maintained a customer list for a year or more, while an additional 6.4% have maintained a customer list for less than a year.

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. In the coming weeks we will be looking at SMBs by additional vertical categories. Our Home and Trade Services SMB report is already available. To learn more about our LCM survey of small and medium-sized businesses, click here.

Click here to purchase the Professional Services SMBs — LCM Wave 18. To purchase any of our other Local Commerce Monitor drill-down reports, check out our new BIA/Kelsey Shop.

*Professional Services vertical includes consulting, legal, architecture, and computer software. Financial Services SMBs are not included, but will be profiled in their own vertical report.

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According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor, Wave 18?, 72.2% of the SMBs (small- to medium-sized businesses) surveyed* use Social Media to promote their business. Of the different social media used for advertising and promotion that BIA/Kelsey tracks in the LCM survey, Facebook Page ranked the highest, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter. Facebook ads were close behind in fourth place. Instagram and Pinterest, which didn’t make the chart below, are achieving traction — each has close to a 10% reach.

Social media can provide SMBs with an immediate and interactive connection with their customers. So how do SMBs perceive the return on their investment for time spent in advertising or promoting themselves on social media? In our survey we asked several questions on the satisfaction of the various advertising and marketing choices made. It should be noted that only SMBs who reported using a particular media were asked for their ROI assessment of that media.

While only 15.2% of SMBs surveyed reported using Facebook ads to advertise and promote their business, they gave it the highest combined ROI of Excellent (10-19x spend) and Extraordinary (more than 20x spend) of the social media in the survey, at 37.3%. Instagram and Other Social, which 8.1% and 5.4% of SMBs surveyed, respectively, reported using for advertising and promotion, tied for the next highest combined ROI at 30.6%, followed closely by Twitter ads at 30.5%. Instagram and Twitter ads both had more respondents rating them Extraordinary than Other Social. LinkedIn, which was second among SMB users, was ranked lowest of the social media, with combined perceived ROI (Excellent and Extraordinary) of 18.6%.

SMBs in our survey on average spent 21.4%, or $7,638, of their annual advertising and promotion budget on Social Media players, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Local Commerce Monitor? (LCM) is BIA/Kelsey’s ongoing survey of the advertising behaviors of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

*From the Full Sample.

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If that headline is foreign language to you, don’t feel bad. Two apps — Meerkat and Periscope — have taken over tech-world chatter on insider networks such as Product Hunt. Twitter just validated them further by buying Periscope for $100 million.

So you will hear about them soon. And I’m predicting they’ll be an app category that represents a next wave in mobile. In short, they allow users to live broadcast the world around them, tied to social graphs. Think Vine, but live.

Why now? Multimedia social sharing (Instagram, Vine, et al) is already a fast growing and opportune area. It’s trajectory leads right to live multimedia sharing: Everything from citizen journalism to childbirth, to a BIA/Kelsey conference.

The timing is also right because of the point we now exist in mobile’s evolution:

— Mobile connectivity has reached levels where quality livestreaming is tenable.
— Smartphone camera quality has reached levels that rival DSLRs, enabling high-quality capture.
— The smartphone-toting public has been acclimated to social sharing — everything from place check-ins to tweets.
— Piggybacking on existing social graphs enables quick growth via built-in network effect (when they let you).

So what’s the local angle? This is similar to the things we predicted over the past few years for Instagram and Vine’s use at the local level, but with more dimension. Think: capturing a night out on the town, a home renovation project, or a wedding.

These are all natural fits for native local advertising with the services or places involved. And like Vine, there will be ability to facilitate creators and influencers that do cool native integrations around certain brands in the live streaming format.

Like most emerging technology, it will start at that brand level then move down market to SMBs. Whether it’s brand or SMB, location relevance will be tied closely to the live streaming and sharing experience, so there are lots of directions it could go.

This is just an introduction to the concept. We’ll be watching it closely and examining its possible directions and implications for local media. I know I’ll be discussing it on and off stage during BIA/Kelsey’s NATIONAL, coming up in just two weeks.

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Looking at Facebook pages specifically, acquiring customers is the main objective for SMBs. Unfortunately, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, only 21.8 percent of consumers use a company’s Facebook page regularly for local shopping. Not only that, but according to an infographic by Lab42, 46 percent of consumers who like a brand on Facebook have no intention of buying from them.

While a plurality of SMBs still view Facebook as a lead generator, they seem to be inching in the direction of using social more as an engagement platform. In last year’s LCM, 42.7 percent of SMBs said the primary purpose of their Facebook page was to acquire customers as opposed to this year’s 38.1 percent.

Despite not necessarily intending to buy, consumers clearly do want to engage with SMBs on social media. According to the Consumer Commerce Monitor, the average consumer has become a “fan” of, “liked”, “followed”, etc. a local business four times in the last six months.

Given that consumers are looking to engage, SMBs should shift their focus from acquiring customers to building community and awareness. Several companies are experts in assisting SMBs to achieve this, including Main Street Hub, Yodle, and Hootsuite.

The post A Shift in Focus is Necessary for SMB’s Social Media Sites appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Looking at Facebook pages specifically, acquiring customers is the main objective for SMBs. Unfortunately, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor?, only 21.8 percent of consumers use a company’s Facebook page regularly for local shopping. Not only that, but according to an infographic by Lab42, 46 percent of consumers who like a brand on Facebook have no intention of buying from them.

While a plurality of SMBs still view Facebook as a lead generator, they seem to be inching in the direction of using social more as an engagement platform. In last year’s LCM, 42.7 percent of SMBs said the primary purpose of their Facebook page was to acquire customers as opposed to this year’s 38.1 percent.

Despite not necessarily intending to buy, consumers clearly do want to engage with SMBs on social media. According to the Consumer Commerce Monitor, the average consumer has become a “fan” of, “liked”, “followed”, etc. a local business four times in the last six months.

Given that consumers are looking to engage, SMBs should shift their focus from acquiring customers to building community and awareness. Several companies are experts in assisting SMBs to achieve this, including Main Street Hub, Yodle, and Hootsuite.

The post A Shift in Focus is Necessary for SMB's Social Media Sites appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Have you made up your mind to join hundreds of your colleagues at Leading in Local: The National Impact in Atlanta May 7-9? We’re deeply excited about the event and its unique focus on leveraging the franchises, multi location outlets and brands that are investing heavily in local.

Just added: A great Buy Side/Sell Side session with U-Haul‘s Elnora Cunningham and Yelp‘s Pete Hancock. That’s kicking off Day 3 in grand style.

We’ve also announced the full lineup for our Local Retail session. Joining keynoter Mark Marinacci from Gannett/G/O Digital are Twitter‘s Nick Guerriero, General Mills‘ Brian Kittelson, Novus‘ Dave Murphy, AOL‘s John Gregory and Booz‘s Naseem Sayani.

We’ve also recently announced the lineup for our National Vertical session with Angie’s List‘s Kevin Vanes; ESPN Local‘s JonPaul Rexing, New Point Media Group‘s Scott Dixon and Dominion Digital Media‘s Bruce Budkofsky.

Also just announced: the eight finalists for the GoLocal Awards, who will be joined on stage by our judging team, including a great group of real industry experts.

All these additions make up part of our 60 speaker lineup — the biggest group we may have ever had on stage. Register.

The post Hot Adds for Atlanta: Yelp, Twitter, ESPN, Angie’s List appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Have you made up your mind to join hundreds of your colleagues at Leading in Local: The National Impact in Atlanta May 7-9? We’re deeply excited about the event and its unique focus on leveraging the franchises, multi location outlets and brands that are investing heavily in local.

Just added: A great Buy Side/Sell Side session with U-Haul‘s Elnora Cunningham and Yelp‘s Pete Hancock. That’s kicking off Day 3 in grand style.

We’ve also announced the full lineup for our Local Retail session. Joining keynoter Mark Marinacci from Gannett/G/O Digital are Twitter‘s Nick Guerriero, General Mills‘ Brian Kittelson, Novus‘ Dave Murphy, AOL‘s John Gregory and Booz‘s Naseem Sayani.

We’ve also recently announced the lineup for our National Vertical session with Angie’s List‘s Kevin Vanes; ESPN Local‘s JonPaul Rexing, New Point Media Group‘s Scott Dixon and Dominion Digital Media‘s Bruce Budkofsky.

Also just announced: the eight finalists for the GoLocal Awards, who will be joined on stage by our judging team, including a great group of real industry experts.

All these additions make up part of our 60 speaker lineup — the biggest group we may have ever had on stage. Register.

The post Hot Adds for Atlanta: Yelp, Twitter, ESPN, Angie's List appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

It’s been a busy few days for Twitter since announcing 15 New Types of Ads to users’ feeds. Word has traveled quickly during this period of uncertainty around Twitter’s sustainability as an advertising player. Now Twitter has continued the flow of news by announcing this morning it will acquire Cover, an Android-based lock-screen app. This extends the social media giant’s mobile ambitions.

Cover is a lock screen replacement that provides users with quick access to apps based on a contextual information and user history. For example, Cover will fill the lock screen with email, Instagram, Twitter and news apps because those are the applications that are checked first in the morning. The app utilizes data it learns for prior usage and behavior to predict which applications will be used in a given moment.

Cover has yet to specify what the acquisition means for the company but Twitter’s current crop of promoted advertising products haven’t resonated with mobile game and e-commerce companies. These entities’ advertising decisions are driven by app downloads and purchases Cover may be an answer to that problem. Twitter also has been testing a mobile-app install ad product as well. It is similar to the popular Facebook product which has been successful in pulling mobile advertising revenues.

In fact, this move parallels to what Facebook has done with Home, in carving out user engagement on the home and lock screen. That effort has been somewhat anemic so far for Facebook , but Twitter clearly sees some opportunity in a parallel effort.

Cover’s post-acquisition future could involve revenue through application discovery and promotion. Twitter could leverage the app by suggesting third party apps for the right occasion that users haven’t downloaded or purchased yet. Coupled with Twitter’s geo-targeting capabilities it could suggest apps based on nearby events or or other geographically relevant tie-ins.

Twitter has always possessed some aspects of “mobile-first” (140 characters is born from carrier-dictated SMS character limit). Through last week’s new ad products and today’s acquisition, it further cements itself as mobile player. Through this, we’ll see Twitter to ratchet up the share of ad it dollars — currently 75 percent — coming from mobile

The post Twitter’s Cover Acquisition: The Continued March Towards Mobile-First appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

It’s been a busy few days for Twitter since announcing 15 New Types of Ads to users’ feeds. Word has traveled quickly during this period of uncertainty around Twitter’s sustainability as an advertising player. Now Twitter has continued the flow of news by announcing this morning it will acquire Cover, an Android-based lock-screen app. This extends the social media giant’s mobile ambitions.

Cover is a lock screen replacement that provides users with quick access to apps based on a contextual information and user history. For example, Cover will fill the lock screen with email, Instagram, Twitter and news apps because those are the applications that are checked first in the morning. The app utilizes data it learns for prior usage and behavior to predict which applications will be used in a given moment.

Cover has yet to specify what the acquisition means for the company but Twitter’s current crop of promoted advertising products haven’t resonated with mobile game and e-commerce companies. These entities’ advertising decisions are driven by app downloads and purchases Cover may be an answer to that problem. Twitter also has been testing a mobile-app install ad product as well. It is similar to the popular Facebook product which has been successful in pulling mobile advertising revenues.

In fact, this move parallels to what Facebook has done with Home, in carving out user engagement on the home and lock screen. That effort has been somewhat anemic so far for Facebook , but Twitter clearly sees some opportunity in a parallel effort.

Cover’s post-acquisition future could involve revenue through application discovery and promotion. Twitter could leverage the app by suggesting third party apps for the right occasion that users haven’t downloaded or purchased yet. Coupled with Twitter’s geo-targeting capabilities it could suggest apps based on nearby events or or other geographically relevant tie-ins.

Twitter has always possessed some aspects of “mobile-first” (140 characters is born from carrier-dictated SMS character limit). Through last week’s new ad products and today’s acquisition, it further cements itself as mobile player. Through this, we’ll see Twitter to ratchet up the share of ad it dollars — currently 75 percent — coming from mobile

The post Twitter's Cover Acquisition: The Continued March Towards Mobile-First appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The “click to call” button would allow mobile users to call advertisers directly from a Twitter ad with just a click of a button. Right now Twitter is beta testing the “click to call” button with select brands and no timeline has been given when it will be widely available. Twitter likely hopes the “click to call” will appeal to local SMB advertisers. Local SMB advertisers, such as restaurants, could tweet an ad to followers and include a “click to call” button so consumers can quickly and easily follow up with the SMB.

But how do SMB that use Twitter and other social media for advertising and promotion feel about calls as a leads source? BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ survey, Wave 17 asked SMBs to provide a quality assessment of various lead sources, including calls. As you can see in the chart below, calls are a popular source of leads. The 66.4% full sample of SMBs ranked calls as a good or excellent source of leads. This 66.4% is actually the lead source that SMBs value most, ranked number one ahead of online forms (58.2%) and in-person (54.1%).

According to Local Commerce Monitor, Wave 17, 24.3% of SMBs surveyed use Twitter for advertising and promotion. When you dig deeper into the data and look at just those SMBs who reported using Twitter for advertising or promotion, the percentage rating calls as good or excellent drops slightly to 65.9%. For Twitter using SMBs, calls weren’t actually the number one source of leads. Calls came in second behind in-person, which was rated good or excellent by 76.1% of Twitter using SMBs surveyed.

Those SMBs who use a Facebook Page or Facebook ads for advertising or promotion, on the other hand, ranked calls slightly higher than the full sample, with 68.6% and 68.2% respectively rating calls as good or excellent. For SMBs who use a Facebook Page for advertising or promotion, calls were the number one ranked source of leads. But for those using Facebook ads, calls fell to third, behind online form (72.7%), in-person (69.4%), tying with email (68.2%).

My colleague Mike Boland is hosting a free webcast with call monetization provider Ifbyphone entitled “Surviving the Tsunami of Mobile Call Monetization” today at 2:30 PM.

Click here if you’re interested in more information about BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor survey.

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