Email Marketing and Social Media Tools Tops for Business Budgeting

VerticalResponse, Inc., a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys and direct mail solutions for small businesses, today releases the results of a survey of 831 small businesses of under 500 employees, which showed that 74.1% of respondents plan to increase their use email marketing and 68.3% will increase their use of social media in 2010.

Social media and email marketing spend continues to rise in 2010 as small businesses see the value of these low-cost options.

• Well over two-thirds of respondents report that they plan to increase their use of email marketing and social media in 2010.
• Email marketing continues to prove its worth to small businesses, as 96.2% plan to use email marketing in 2010.
• Plans reported for 2010 indicate the email marketing industry will continue to thrive next year, with 38.9% businesses of 1-10 employees and 34.1% of businesses with 11-100 employees planning to increase their email marketing by a lot in 2010.
• Small businesses are getting more comfortable with social media, when reporting marketing plans for 2010, 35.1% of all respondents say they plan to increase their use of social media by a little and 33.3 % plan to increase it by a lot.

Search engine marketing (SEM) and online banner advertising spend: Plans to spend for the next year showed a marked difference between the two mediums.

• Over half—or 54.2 percent—of all respondents stated they won’t do online banner advertising in 2010, versus just 23.8% of respondents won’t do SEM such as Google, Yahoo and Bing next year.
• Almost a quarter of small businesses of 1-10 and 11-100 employees won’t do search engine marketing in 2010. Of the businesses who are using this medium, only 4% of businesses with 1-10 staff and 3.3% of businesses with 11-100 will cut this channel or together or cut it down slightly in 2010.
• A large portion of businesses do not plan on online banner advertising in 2010—represented by 56.6% of businesses under 11 staff and the 48.2% of businesses with 11-100 employees not planning on banner advertising.
• Online banner advertising spend did not increase much over 2009—with only 4.5% of smaller business increasing this by a little in 2009, and 11.4% of businesses with 11-100 reporting the same. Just 6.1% of businesses with 11-100 employees reporting they increased their online banner advertising spend by a lot over the past year, and just 2.7% of businesses with less than 11 staff.

The most important tool for small businesses to succeed in 2010: Search engine marketing, email marketing, public relations and social media cited as crucial for success.

• 23.8% of all small businesses reported that search engine marketing was the tool most needed for their business to succeed in 2010.

The survey responses truly represent the heart of the small business community, with over three-quarters of respondents indicating that their company has between 1 and 10 employees—this group was 76.5% or 632 of the total 831 respondents. This category includes a number of sole proprietor businesses indicating that entrepreneurs continue to flourish despite the economic climate. The remainder of the respondents included 19 percent who have between 11-100 employees and just 4.4 percent of respondents with 101-500 employees. VerticalResponse used its own survey tool, launched in April 2008, to deliver multiple choice and free-form answers to a subset of its users, and the small business community.