MarketingSherpa Blog

In part one of this blog post, Rick Jensen, Senior Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Constant Contact, provided his thoughts on where SMB marketers should focus their efforts in 2013.

Both of these MarketingSherpa Blog posts were prompted by research from AWeber, which found 68% of small businesses plan on increasing the marketing budget in 2013. That prompted me to reach out to experts in the SMB sector for tips and tactics specific for SMB marketers.

Today’s post offers more details from the AWeber research, along with more insight from industry experts.

The AWeber research was conducted during November and December of 2012, via an interstitial greeting AWeber customers received when logging into the company’s system. Visitors were invited to participate in the research, and 3,159 completed the survey. The methodology included randomized multiple choice options presented to respondents.

Here is an infographic summarizing the results of the survey:

Data and infographic by AWeber

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I recently came across research from AWeber that found 68% of small businesses plan on increasing their marketing budget in 2013, and a full 97% plan on at least maintaining their current level of marketing spending.

That’s a very solid majority of small businesses that are putting more money into their marketing efforts.

“We believe that’s linked to a more positive economic outlook,” says Hunter Boyle, Senior Business Development Manager, AWeber. “There was plenty of uncertainty in 2012, but SMBs are resilient, and 58% said they were optimistic about revenue growth for the 2012 holiday season.”

He adds, “Plus, 47% said they felt the economy had changed positively last year. Looking ahead, when marketers are more upbeat, and seeing the value and returns from channels like email, they’re more confident and, in turn, more willing to invest in effective channels.” (Hunter Boyle will be speaking in an industry perspective session – “Breathing Life (and ROI) Back Into Your Email Marketing” – at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013 in Las Vegas).

The AWeber research got me thinking. At MarketingSherpa, our usual goal is to provide examples and ideas marketers of any size company might be able to find “transferable principles” that can help ease their marketing pain points, or shed light on potential marketing opportunities.

Since small businesses are reporting an increase in the marketing budget, this MarketingSherpa blog post (and part two, which will be published on the MarketingSherpa blog tomorrow) focuses squarely on small- and mid-sized company marketers and feature tips and tactics geared for the SMB marketer.

To gain some insight into where SMB marketers should focus in 2013, I reached out to industry experts in the SMB sector.

For today’s post, here is Rick Jensen, Senior Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Constant Contact, on SMB marketing in 2013.

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How can small and medium businesses take advantage of mobile marketing? Aman Devgan, VP of Marketing, Web.com, joined us in the studio for the latest episode of Marketing Research in Action to talk about how you can apply discoveries from recent research by Web.com and MarketingSherpa …

If you’d like to jump ahead in the video, here is what Aman and I discussed:

0:32 – 84% of SMBs saw an increase in new business activity due to their mobile marketing efforts

1:12 – Surprisingly, providing better service to existing customers is a bigger motivator to invest in a mobile presence than attracting more local customers

1:54 – Top 2 hurdles in leveraging mobile marketing

  Read more…