Small Business owners face many challenges. Some are due to external circumstances, but others are easily managed internally. Marketing can be complex, especially in the online marketing, social media marketing and mobile marketing environments. Business owners may not fully understand the current marketing landscape and missing opportunities to reach potential customers.
Making small adjustments to your marketing plan can greatly impact sales. Any small business owner need to be aware of these 10 surprising small business statistics to stay competitive or to take advantage of new areas of opportunity to build brand awareness, drive sales and improve customer service.
[sixcol_one][dropcap]1[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]69% of consumers are more likely to use a local business if it has information available on a social media site.(comScore Networks and TMP Directional Marketing, 2011)[/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]2[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]60% of local business websites don’t include a phone number on their site. (BIA Kelsey, 2012)[/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]3[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]49% of websites have poor usability, and 50% of online sales are lost because visitors can’t locate content and important information (
Forrester 2012)
[/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]4[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]93.3 percent of Small Business websites are not mobile compatible. (
BIA Kelsey, 2012)
[/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]5[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]16% of customers are acquired through “organic” search, making it the most it the most powerful acquisition channel
(Custora Email Acquisition Poll 2013)[/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]6[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]67% of businesses are using their website to effectively market to customers. (
AT&T Small Business Technology Poll 2013)
[/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]7[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]88% of consumers seeking
local business information have taken action to visit or call the business within 24hours. (Google Mobile Movement Study, 2011) [/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]8[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]Email makes up 7% of customer acquisitions, quadrupling over the last four years.
(Custora Email Acquisition Poll 2013 [/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]9[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]Many small business owners are still not adopting modern technology and marketing approaches. 14% utilize technology for acquisition marketing. More than half of SMB owners do not have a website or even measure the results of their marketing programs.
(yodle.com 2013) [/sixcol_five_last]
[sixcol_one][dropcap]10[/dropcap][/sixcol_one] [sixcol_five_last]41 % of companies use social tools for communicating with customers. As many companies have learned the hard way, unanswered complaints on social networks can go viral, causing real damage to a company’s reputation. (Aberdeen Group report 2013) [/sixcol_five_last]