'Net Features : smb

Social Media Insights for SMBs

Allison Howen — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:30:00 GMT

In the past few years, social networks have evolved from sites where people keep in touch with close friends to valuable marketing platforms where businesses can communicate with their customers.

These websites are now arguably some of the most important marketing destinations for many businesses on the Web – especially small businesses (SMBs). In fact, a recent study from cloud marketing provider Vocus and Duct Tape Marketing reveals that 87 percent of SMBs say social media has been somewhat helpful or helped a great deal in their marketing efforts.

The “Path to Influence: An Industry Study of SMBs and Social Media” report also found that 36 percent of SMBs spend a median of $845 a month on software tools for social media management. And while many SMBs have added social media to the list of existing duties for marketing employees, 22 percent of the study’s respondents use consultants to aid with their social marketing efforts. Additionally, the report shows that social media accounts for more than 25 percent of overall marketing efforts for the majority (77%) of SMBs.

“[The] overall sentiment in this study is right on target and it’s a very positive message,” said John Jantsch, creator of Duct Tape Marketing. “What I've been noticing more and more is there's finally this acceptance that social media not only isn't going away, [but is also] an essential element of the marketing mix. And the real challenge now is to figure out how to integrate it into the total online and offline marketing presence.”

Not suprisingly, 84 percent of the study’s respondents claim they plan to invest more time and effort into social media in the near future. However, the social sites they are most interested in are a bit surprising. The study reveals that even though Facebook is currently the king of social networks, it seems as though many SMBs are more interested in emerging social networks. In fact, 14 percent of respondents claim that they plan to invest more effort into Google+ and Instagram, while only 7 percent plan to invest more into Facebook.

Other note-worthy findings show that most companies use social media to share information, while only 46 percent use these sites to handle customer service issues. Additionally, 40 percent of SMBs prefer a smaller, but highly engaged audience, while 27 percent would rather have a huge following with little engagement.

IT Budgets Rise 15 Percent for SMBs

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 10 May 2012 01:15:00 GMT

Spiceworks, a social network for the IT community and a provider of a provider of IT management software, has released its bi-annual State of SMB IT survey of technology purchasing and adoption trends.

The survey revealed that SMBs are expanding their IT budgets, growing 6 percent in the first half of 2012 from the second half of 2011, and 15 percent year-over year. The research found that SMBs are adopting tablets, cloud services and virtualization and have some strong opinions on the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend.

"Data from this recent survey confirms that the consumerization of IT is flourishing among SMBs, although opinions vary on how to manage its impact on organizations," says Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Spiceworks. "The results also show that SMBs are spending more on technology across the board, from hardware and devices to cloud services and virtualization. This bodes well for technology vendors serving the SMB market in 2012."

A few more highlights from the survey include the following:

- Fifty-six percent of SMBs are retaining their IT headcount and 30 percent intend to hire additional staff over the next six months. These metrics remain consistent with the results from the second half of 2011.

- Sixty-two percent of SMBs have deployed or plan to deploy tablet devices, such as iPads, within the next six months. That figure is up from the 50 percent reported for the second half of 2011.

- The largest portion of IT budgets (40 percent) will be allocated to hardware purchases, followed by software (34 percent) and IT services (26 percent). The two biggest planned IT services purchases are web hosting (54 percent) and ISP (44 percent).

- Cloud services are now used by 48 percent of SMBs, up from 46 percent in the second half of 2011 and 28 percent for the first half of 2011.

- The top five cloud services by usage are Web hosting (49 percent), e-mail hosting (32 percent), data backup (25 percent), content filtering (24 percent) and application hosting (23 percent).

- The top cloud services that respondents plan to purchase in the next six months are data backup (17 percent), application hosting (12 percent), data storage (12 percent) and e-mail hosting (11 percent).

- Currently, 64 percent of respondents use virtualization, up from 61 percent during the second half of 2011 and the 54 percent reported for the first half of 2011. In addition, SMBs using virtualization are now virtualizing an average of 3.1 applications compared with an average of 2.1 applications a year ago.

VMware Zimbra Comes to Verio

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:00:00 GMT

Verio, best known for its online business solutions such as Web and application hosting for SMB marketing, announced the availability of VMware Zimbra for OEM and via Verio partners.

VMware Zimbra, an open source messaging and collaboration platform, expands Verio’s portfolio of hosted email solutions for its OEM partners. The Verio and VMware partnership will also provide branding options for partners to private-label their solutions through the use of Zimbra Zimlets, which are tools for integrating the VMware Zimbra Collaboration Suite with third-party Web applications.

“The availability of VMware Zimbra for Verio offers IT organizations a flexible collaboration platform that can enable greater workforce productivity,” says John Robb, senior director of product management at VMware. “With its rich email feature set, extensive ecosystem, and broad range of partner programs, VMware Zimbra offers new business opportunities for partners to meet the growing demands of small and medium-sized businesses.”

General Availability Comes to Workface

Michael Garrity — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:00:00 GMT

One of the fast growing tactics in Web customer service is the use of live customer interaction straight from a business or brand's website. Workface, a company who helped to usher in online customer interaction technology, announced yesterday that their enterprise-ready Customer Engagement Platform is now available to the general public.

Since customer service may be the most important aspect of running a small or medium sized business, and since it is much harder to be effective when operating on the Internet, it is important for business owners to keep abreast of all of the new changes and technologies coming forth to help them work with customers from all over. Positive customer services experiences are a great way to keep customers long-term and build a solid reputation, but, more importantly, negative experiences will almost immediately drive consumers away from your brand.

Workface's platforms use a unique portable profile-based live chat, voice, email, interactive video and content-sharing to mobilize field sales and service teams throughout the World Wide Web as a way to engage with customers and online prospects. It is largely designed for marketing, sales and customer service executives with field sales and service organizations/agents that use personal interaction to sell and support products or services, but it can be useful software for anyone looking to bolster their online customer (and prospect) interaction, as typically these consumers are discouraged by standard, impersonal online communication experiences.

The goal of Workface is to move beyond typical online chat solutions that can be found on the websites of many major companies and to put a "face" (hence the name) on the brand and empower consumers to find the right customer service representative on their terms. Workface claims to most closely replicate "on the Web teh experience customers have when they walk into a business," by allowing consumers to see a real face and read real job titles. This allows them to choose who they interact with, learn more about them and even start talking with them, making the business relationship more personal than ever before on the Internet.

Among the key capabilities of the Workforce platform are:

- Identity control
- Relationship management
- Self-imagery
- Live engagement

Workface also provides companies with a sales force identity management toolbox, content management solutions, a portable Web container, an open network framework, individual and corporate level control, live text, video & audio chat, and it all comes wrapped in simple desktop software.

Some of Workface's more well-known customers include Chevrolet, Northstar Disability and HealthSource Solutions.

Small Businesses Calling for Web Help

Administrator — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:30:00 GMT

Small business owners understand the importance of Internet marketing, but also realize that help may be needed to reap all of its benefits.

Eighty percent of small businesses have websites and 16 percent plan on starting one, according to a recent survey conducted by Hennerberg Group, Inc.

But although 50 percent of small businesses say they receive good results from their websites, 30 percent are not getting the results they’d like.

While 41 percent of small business owners believe their websites bring exposure, 28 percent aren’t sure about the effects they’re getting and realize they need additional help.

More than 40 percent want help with SEO for better local search rankings, while nearly 37 percent say they need help using social media. Another 35 percent want outside help with email marketing promotions, and 33 percent say they need help building inbound links to their website.

“This survey suggests that small business owners know what online marketing initiatives should be done to grow their businesses,” says Gary Hennerberg, president of Hennerberg Group, Inc. “But when they get into the actual implementation of website optimization or social media, they realize they don’t know how to do it on their own.”

The 2011 marketing and advertising budgets reported by small business owners show why so many are trying to tackle website development and social media on their own: About 23 percent plan to spend between $1,000 and $4,999 on these initiatives, with more than 14 planning to spend less than $1,000.

Only about 16 percent have budgets exceeding $5,000.

Google's Latest Small Business Resource

Mike Phillips — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:30:00 GMT

Google has launched a new forum aimed squarely at small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) called Small Business Center. Here, businesses and individuals can discuss their AdWords strategies and best practices, and share tips and advice. Essentially, the forum is just an extension of the AdWords Help Forum but considering the sheer number of AdWords publishers and advertisers, it is sure to be an active discussion.

According to the official blog post, Google hopes topics will include but not be limited to:

Choosing the right tools to measure results
How to write great ads
Finding the right frequency to sign in to AdWords

Visit the Small Business Center

IT Jobs at Risk; Blame the Cloud

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:00:00 GMT

Cloud computing (including services such as SaaS and managed IT services) is certainly making it easier for small business to compete - thanks in part to lower cost. The downside of the savings however is that nearly 200,000 IT jobs may be lost in the next ten years according to AMI Partners' recent Cloud Computing Research studies. Not great news if you're in IT.

“The great recession of the last year and a half has significantly increased SMBs’ interest in adopting various cloud-based services as they look for ways to meet their IT needs while keeping costs under control,” says Anil Miglani, SVP of IT Infrastructure Research at AMI-Partners. In response to this interest, local channel partners have started to rapidly expand their cloud-based solutions for SMBs. “However, cloud computing cuts two ways for small SMB channel partners. It allows them to offer new kinds of services and solutions to their SMB customers without having to incur high initial capital expenditures. But automated service delivery via the cloud will also reduce the need for internal IT staff.”

AMI expects a net reduction of 200,000 - 250,000 jobs over the next decade, out of the over 1.3 million people currently employed by U.S. SMB channel partners.

Tracking Ad-Generated Phone Calls

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Ifbyphone just announced that internet marketing agency ClickFuel is using its call-tracking services to provide clients with tools for tracking online ads that generate phone calls.

SMBs typically a majority portion of their sales leads by phone, but traditionally Internet marketing firms (those that often serve those SMB's) have had difficultly measuring phone calls that result from the advertising they manage.

“The huge void for SMBs has been in phone sales lead tracking, with most firms focusing on website checkouts, submitted requests and downloads,” said ClickFuel founder Colby West. “With Ifbyphone’s service, we assign specific phone numbers to each customer’s advertisements to determine – based on the number of leads for the ad money spent – which efforts are working and which ones need to be re-examined.”

Ifbyphone’s call-tracking service enables ClickFuel to identify the source of sales leads its SMB customers receive. Additionally, Ifbyphone’s Google Analytics Integration makes it possible to track phone calls directly alongside website data in Google Analytics. Using trackable phone numbers, ClickFuel can better optimize customer campaigns and accurately assess their return on investment (ROI).

“ClickFuel is a crystal-clear example of how marketing and advertising firms are improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their customers’ sales efforts using our phone automation services,” said Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro. “The marketing industry is hard at work evaluating and implementing economical tools to help their SMB customers – which don’t have the internal expertise – make the most of their advertising and sales efforts.”

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Online or Offline Marketing: Having It Your Way

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:15:00 GMT

According to a study released recently by Bredin Business Information (BBI), major marketers targeting small and medium businesses are relying less on traditional marketing tactics, but that's one of the top ways SMBs like to receive product and service information.

BBI conducted two surveys, asking 50 leading marketers about their outreach and research efforts for 2009 and 741 SMBs about their online and offline media preferences, top business concerns and brand ratings.

“Marketers are clearly reacting to the difficult economy by using offline tactics much more selectively. They are also moving online aggressively, to reach SMBs efficiently and learn how to get the most from new media opportunities,” said BBI CEO Stu Richards. “However, our survey of SMBs indicates that business owners are not nearly as enthusiastic about many online formats for business purposes – such as social networking – as marketers are.”

Results from the survey of 50 leading SMB marketers include:

- Overall, marketers are more focused on winning new customers than keeping current ones: 48% said they are balancing their acquisition and retention efforts this year, while 32% are concentrating more on acquisition and only 20% are focusing more on retention.

- Marketers said their biggest challenges in 2009 are funding new projects (24%), growing business with limited resources (15%) and increasing awareness (15%).

- Marketers continue to shift their efforts to the Internet. Offline tactics received an average rating of 2.6 on a scale of 1 (significantly decrease versus 2008) to 5 (significantly increase) while online marketing will increase, with an average rating of 3.5. The online tactics that will grow the most are social networking (3.7), resource centers (3.7) and search marketing (3.6).

- Marketers will spend less on market research in 2009 than 2008, with an overall average score of 2.5. Online surveys (3.5) and online focus groups (3.3) are the only research formats marketers plan to use more in 2009 than in 2008.

Results from the survey of 741 SMBs include:

- As offline sources of information about products and services, SMBs rely most on newspaper and magazine articles (43.6%) and direct mail, including letters, postcards and catalogs (43.5%). Phone calls (27.4%) and radio/TV ads (32%) are least popular.

- Online, referrals from friends and peers are the most popular source of information on products and services (71.9%), followed by search engine marketing (57.0%), educational websites (44.5%) and email newsletters (38.2%). The least popular online formats are ads on cell phones/PDAs (8.1%), videos/podcasts (19.2%) and forums/chat rooms (20.2%). SMBs rated social networking at 27.8%.

- Among the social networks, SMBs rate Facebook highest (19.7%), followed by LinkedIn (15.6%), MeetUp (11.3%) and Twitter (11.2%).

- SMBs' top business challenges include finding new customers (76.5%), managing costs (71.2%) and retaining current customers (51.7%). Ranked lowest are avoiding layoffs (2.9%) and keeping employees productive (3.3%).

- The most important purchase criteria in this economy are high value (61.3%), low price (52.4%) and reliability (35.3%). Least important are buying from a leading brand (1.9%) and having a personal relationship with a vendor (6.0%).

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