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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Video is proving to be a strong a media channel for businesses to advertise their message. Before Super Bowl XLVIII even started, Budweiser’s #BestBuds had been viewed on YouTube an unheard of 33 million times.

BIA/Kelsey examines these differences this week in a new “Spotlight” report using data from the recently completed Wave 17 of the Local Commerce Monitor (LCM). The report is the latest in the ongoing “Spotlight” series that drills down into the LCM data to examine how SMB advertisers acquire and retain customers.

BIA/Kelsey projects U.S. local video advertising will grow from $29.7 billion in 2012 to $38.6 billion in 2017.

The LCM Wave 17 data shows that SMBs that identify as “video SMBs” differ from those that do not use video advertising in several important ways:

— Annual media spend for SMBs that use video advertising $53,815 compared to $24,049 of that non-video advertisers.

— Among video SMBs, 55% percent plan to increase their advertising spending for the next year, compared to only 39% of non-video SMBs which plan to increase their advertising spend.

— Video SMBs are more likely to offer a customer loyalty program, compared to those that don’t use video to advertise 60% vs. 31%.

— Video SMBs are adopting other digital-based channels quickly. 5 out of the top 8 future marketing priorities are non-traditional and digital media types which include some the following: social media advertising, advanced analytics and performance monitoring, SEO, and video advertising.

Interested in learning more about LCM Wave 17 or getting a custom cut for your business? Contact Celine Matthiessen at cmatthiessen@biakelsey.com.

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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 BIA/Kelsey’s annual Local Commerce Monitor™ (LCM) survey on advertising and marketing of small and medium businesses (SMBs), 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 15.5% 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 45.4%. Blogs, which 19.0% of SMBs surveyed reported using for advertising and promotion, had the second highest combined ROI at 37.0%. Video on YouTube and Facebook Pages were a close third and fourth, with 34.6% and 34.1%, respectively. LinkedIn and Twitter, which were second and fourth among SMB users, were ranked lowest two of the social media, with combined perceived ROI of 31.1% and 23.9%, respectively.

But where do these social media rank in usage by SMB of the 44 of the media channels in the survey? Facebook ads ranked No. 5 in media used for advertising and promotion overall. Blogs came in at No. 16. Video on Youtube and Facebook Pages were ranked Nos. 21 and 22, respectively. Twitter was 31st, with LinkedIn coming in next to last in 43rd place.

LinkedIn and Twitter are still relatively new channels for many SMBs, so there still may be some learning curve there. Especially for Twitter, which has a unique language and set of conventions and hasn’t also been seen as especially business-friendly. One reason Facebook ads perceived ROI is higher is SMBs ability to track their campaign spending and toggle performance, as opposed to “owned media” channels such as Facebook Page, Twitter and LinkedIn, where tracking and measurement can be more nebulous.

In comparison to a year ago, seven of the eight social media showed improvement in perceived ROI from Wave 16 of the LCM survey, 3rd Quarter 2012. Twitter was the fastest growing social media channel year-over-year, at 24.4% for Excellent/Extraordinary perceived ROI. Facebook ads were a close second, with 23.7% year-over-year growth. Facebook pages showed 16.0% year-over-year growth in perceived ROI.

ROI is improving year-over-year for social media, but there’s still ample room to optimize effectiveness. Again, many of these channels are still relatively new (especially when compared to very familiar traditional media), and measurement standards and best practices are still being fashioned.

For more about SMB’s use of Twitter in advertising and promotion, check out this blog post.

Interested in learning more about Local Commerce Monitor Wave 17™ or getting a custom cut for your business? Check out BIA/Kelsey’s LCM page.

We’ll be covering this and other themes in greater depth at our upcoming conference, Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, December 10-12 in San Francisco. Be there and join the conversation.

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October U.S. online video rankings from comScore reaffirm an established trend: Watching video online is a social exercise. Fueled by YouTube’s stranglehold on unique viewers, viewing sessions and minutes per viewer, Google posted dominant numbers, besting its closest competitor — Yahoo sites — by almost 93 million UVs and 1.7 billion viewing sessions. In total, YouTube accounted for 37 percent of all viewing sessions, with viewers averaging a staggering 271.6 minutes, or 4.5 hours, for the month.

Facebook, while seeing slight declines from September, still ranked fifth in total UVs with more than 47 million. That number gave it a larger viewer base than AOL, Microsoft and Fox Interactive Media.

Hulu, while tenth in UVs, placed third in minutes per viewing. The online video joint venture also served up the most video ads (4.6 billion) and enjoyed a robust 34 ads-per-viewer ratio. Google finished tenth in total video ads, even as it practically monopolized the viewing public.

All told, 84 percent of the U.S. Internet audience watched online video in October, and 45 percent of the total population was exposed to video ads.

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