Local Biz Marketing Moving In New Directions

In a recent survey of 8,500 small and local businesses by MerchantCircle.com shows that traditional offline marketing strategies continue to decline while social marketing is on the rise. Here’s a summary:

Traditional Offline Marketing

  • Print advertising dropped from 40% to 27%
  • Direct mail dropped from 39% to 28%
  • Yellow Pages dropped from 45% to 37%

although almost a quarter of small businesses still named one of the three as their most effective method of marketing.

Social Media

  • Facebook – 70%
  • Google [meaning Google+?] – 66%
  • Twitter – 40%

Not Ready For Prime Time

  • Mobile marketing – 15%
  • Online group specials (like Groupon) – 11%

Most of the businesses surveyed were pretty evenly split on the effectiveness of social, search and email marketing. Also, about half were using Google Places and a third Facebook Places as well as other traditional online directories like Yellowbook and SuperPages.com

While mobile marketing may still be on the horizon we’re recommending to our clients that they at least set up a mobile-friendly version of their web sites.

The technology is moving and small and local businesses have to move with it.

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