(more than 14 million of the 15 million businesses in the U.S. are classified as SMBs)
According to the Borrell survey of 2,872 SMB owners:
- Smaller businesses control 83 percent of all local advertising
- The average small business spent just $11,740 on advertising in 2010, about $2,300 of it online
- SMBs now get an average of 22 sales calls per month
- Only 1 in 5 of those calls per month gets returned.
- Currently, 86 percent of SMBs have their own website, that to increase to 91 percent in 2011
- The No. 1 choice for increasing spending was their company website.
- They plan to increase their online advertising budgets 29 percent this year, they foresee increasing their offline media buys by 4.5%.
- Small businesses are already spending on social media. And one in three of them plan to increase that spending this year.
- About two-thirds of SMBs who have a website also maintain a social network site or page.
- Among the 14 percent of SMBs that do not have their own website, more than a third have a social network site.
- Two-thirds of the SMBs interviewed said they use social media to communicate directly with customers.
