2010 Small Business Marketing Forecast

This afternoon, I had a chance to check out a 2010 report published by Ad-ology titled “Small Business Marketing Forecast” that finds 58% of the 1,100 small businesses (under 100 employees) surveyed in November 2009 agree that “social media is a good way to both increase business and to know what people are saying about a business.”  Even at 1,100 respondents, this is the largest survey of its kind about small business and marketing trends.

Social networks described as “Very or Somewhat Beneficial” were Facebook (33%), LinkedIn (21%), Twitter (19%), MySpace (17%) and YouTube (15%).

Top business benefits?

• generating leads (50%)
• keeping up with the industry (45%)
• monitoring online conversation about their business or industry (44%).
• competitive intelligence (43%)
• improving customer experience (41%)
• finding vendors/suppliers (38%)
• resolving problems (33%)
• new employee recruiting (27%)
• background checks of employees and suppliers (27%).

This is great news for us, of course, because we have built our business on the notion that small businesses will be using social, digital, and measurable marketing tools more and more as a part of their standard marketing toolbox.  But it’s interesting in a much larger way.  You see, social media is fundamentally local and small.  The things that matter across social media networks are the things that matter to the people within each person’s community.  The really great stories of big companies using social media involve them acting a lot like a small business – personal response, addressing by name, not bringing up policies all the time, letting customers put photos up, acting quickly and acting apart from bureaucracy.  A small business doesn’t have to go through a training to know how to treat people genuinely.  The small business becomes the model when it comes to tending and maintaining a social media environment.

Finally, customers are wanting to do business with people, not companies, and they are gathering in places where the barriers to enter are extremely low.  This report is just one more piece of data that indicates it’s the perfect time for a small business to jump into social media for all its marketing, service, and relationship potential. Seemingly.

However, I am still left wondering if small businesses within a community outside the suburbs or city environment really think these things, and if social media is as effective as it might be with big city types. Is it just a matter of more prolific technology access and more small town folks joining in the social media movement?  Or is it a chicken and egg scenario, where businesses offering added benefits on social media networks work as the impetus to build the participation of local people? What do you think?