Barely 1 in 5 NA SMBs advertise online or use e-commerce
NEW YORK – SMBs in North America spent upwards of $7.5 billion on online advertising during 2008, driving a third of the total NA online advertising market. While growth in 2009 is expected to be fairly flat, SMBs will likely continue to fuel online advertising spending growth for years to come, according to AMI’s new study, “North America SMBs Transition to Online Marketing”, which provides a perspective on SMBs’ usage of various advertising media, web hosting, e-commerce and related tools and technologies.
“Only 1 in 5 NA SMBs currently advertises online—most advertise in local yellow pages and newspapers and magazines,” says Deepinder Sahni, SVP with AMI-Partners. “However, SMBs are starting to adopt online advertising, with some verticals such as manufacturing and professional services more involved than others.”
“Local print media is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon as the majority of SMBs generate revenues locally, thus making local branding, awareness and sales enablement a key requirement. But the current economic environment is forcing business owners to take a hard look at the effectiveness of their media budgets and seriously consider including more targetable media options.”
The report also shows web site deployment has been very strong; 7 in 10 SMBs already have a web site. But few have gone ahead and leveraged their online presence into meaningful business. Less than 25% have deployed any form of e-commerce, and even fewer have deployed credit-card processing mechanisms.
Yet, SMBs expect business generated via online channels to increase by 10% year-over-year. “Clearly, helping SMBs reach their desired financial goals by optimizing their online presence remains a vast untapped growth opportunity,” says Mr. Sahni. “Service providers need to reach out in a very targeted manner and communicate crisp, believable financial outcomes for SMBs that will invest in a well defined e-commerce roadmap.”
Related Study
Challenging economic times typically produce a flight to quality. This truism also applies to the North American SMB market. As the economic crisis wears on, SMBs are becoming increasingly concerned with retaining current customers and finding new customers in more targeted and cost-effective manner. This report—“North America SMBs Transition to Online Marketing”—addresses how SMBs are using the Internet in the current environment to aide in these activities.
This report addresses the Internet from the view of service providers, online advertising/search providers, and e-commerce/webhosting providers. It begins with higher-level market opportunity, then moves to changes and impacts to the market, and then provides data and analysis pertaining to Internet access, website usage, and usage of online marketing media.
This report provides critical information to decision-makers in the following areas:
* The types of marketing and media SMBs are using to engage their customers and prospects
o How are SMBs advertising as the economic downturn wears on? Where does online marketing and media play in the larger SMB advertising portfolio?
* How SMBs are using their websites
o What are the goals of SMBs when they deploy websites? How do they view e-commerce?
* How SMBs access the Internet
o How is the cable vs. telco war playing out in the SMB market? Who is winning, who is losing?
For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com or visit www.ami-partners.com.
About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and “go-to-market” solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.
AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.
