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The State of Small Business
Are you optimistic about the future? As small business owners or managers, what are our biggest concerns? Let's look at results from a
2015 survey of 1,100 small businesses by
Wasp Barcode.
What Keeps Us Up At Night
The Top 5 Business Challenges for companies with 11 - 500 employees are (in different order by company size):
- Growing Revenue
- Increasing Profit
- Cash flow
- Hiring & retaining employees
- Raising Capital / Government Regulations
What strategies will companies leaders use to increase revenue this year? The top 2 strategies are:
1) improve existing customer experience and retention (56%) and
2) invest in new customer acquisition activities and methods.
What About Marketing?
When asked what they spend on marketing, 56% of small businesses spend less than 3% of revenue; 34% spend more than 4% of revenue on marketing efforts. Here's how it shakes out:
| Social Media |
61%
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| Email Marketing |
46% |
| Paid Advertising |
37% |
| Press Releases |
36% |
| Direct mail |
32% |
| Trade Shows/SEO |
30% |
| TV/Radio |
20% |
| Blogging |
19% |
| Other |
18% |
| Paid Internet Ads |
12% |
What percentage of these companies update their social media at least once a month as part of their marketing strategy?
Facebook = 61% LinkedIn = 34% Twitter = 29%
Only 10% of businesses felt that their websites were "extremely important" to their business, with another 49% at "very important" and "important". Thirty-seven percent say that 1-5% of their business is generated online.
71% of small businesses do not use Customer Relationship Management software, although CRM is listed as an IT priority for the future. Of the 29% that do, 24% use Salesforce.com.
Where does your company fall within these statistics? What are your plans for growth next year?
Contact us to discuss ways to outsource your social media or content marketing strategies!
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