subject: Responding Now To How Consumers Find Local Business Can Make You Rich! [print this page] As a small business owner, it's imperative that you understand consumer's tendencies to find local business. This information will provide you with vital statistics for determining how you spend your advertising budget dollars.
It's important to realize that if your business doesn't currently have a professional website, you're missing out on exposure and sales. Furthermore, even with a great website, if you don't know how to promote it you'll still miss out on business.
According to research from Webvisible and Nielsen, 63% of consumers and small business owners find local business information first via the internet (this statistic varies from survey to survey and the percentage seems to be higher if small business owners aren't included). In addition, 82% use search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. to obtain the needed information.
Those are huge numbers of people looking for local business information. But the kicker is this- only 44% of small businesses have a website. That's near-business-suicide in this day of internet business. And even worse, half of those who do have a website don't even spend 10% of their marketing budget to promote their site.
"The great divide" is a term coined by Webvisible." This is in reference to the difference between how small business owners act as consumers vs. how they market their businesses via the internet. It seems that many tend to expect one thing as consumers but don't do the same thing as business owners.
Small local business owners need to reverse their thinking as owners and think more like consumers. Perhaps knowing these statistics will help.
These are the most popular sources for finding local information:
-Search engines, 82% find information this way.
-Yellow Pages directory, 57% (and falling).
-Local newspapers, 53%.
-Internet Yellow Pages, 49%.
-TV, 49%
-Direct Mail, 38%.
-White Pages directories, 32%.
And keep in mind that this survey involved small business owners who still tend to use the traditional sources much more than the average consumer.
Obviously, there is no doubt what small businesses need to do: Put in place a good website and invest a much higher percentage of their advertising budget to promote it.
If you're a small business owner looking for an edge, you would be very wise to hit the ground running very fast, right now, with this strategy. Why? Take a look at these statistics:
- Only 7% of small business owners say that a top priority of theirs is to get visitors to their website.
- 61% spend less 3 hours per week devoting time to promoting their website.
- 91% are less than satisfied with their efforts to market their site online.
- 78% spend less than 10% of their advertising dollars to promote their business online.
- 30% do not advertise online at all.
Here's the bottom line: You know how many people search online to find local business. You now know that many of your competitors don't take online advertising seriously. The time is right for you to take advantage of their miscues and jump to the front of the pack.
