New Survey Reveals Where Local Merchants Need Help with Digital Marketing

A recent survey of over 500 small business owners in the United States was recently conducted by Street Fight Insights and Thrive Analytics (called the Local Merchant 2015 report), aimed at achieving a better understanding of small business usage and attitudes toward digital marketing and ecommerce. While local merchants are embracing an ever-widening range of digital marketing tools and strategies, and consider them more effective than traditional channels, most small businesses aren’t measuring the effectiveness of their marketing efforts well.

The bottom line seems to be that most local merchants are busy running their businesses and simply don’t devote as much time or resources to marketing as is needed for their digital marketing efforts to be effective and successful. Here are some details that come from this survey:

Around 42 percent of survey respondents reported that lack of time was their biggest obstacle to overcome when it came to digital marketing. Both budget and expertise were each cited by 33 percent of respondents as the biggest challenge they faced.
Over half of small business owners (51 percent) felt that managing social media forums was too time consuming. In addition, around 38 percent said they hadn’t seen any return on their investment in the area of social media marketing (although nearly 66 percent report using this digital marketing tool).

According to the survey, small business owners and local merchants need more help in some areas than others. Here are the main findings:

Search engine optimization: 25 percent of local merchants need help with this
Company Website/eCommerce: 24 percent of local merchants need help with this
Facebook/Social Media forums: 24 percent of local merchants need help with this
Getting Out Listings Information: 18 percent of local merchants need help with this
Traditional Media: 17 percent of local merchants need help with this
Paid Search Advertising: 16 percent of local merchants need help with this
Blogging/Online Content Creation: 15 percent of local merchants need help with this
Mobile Marketing: 13 percent of local merchants need help with this
Online Display/Banner Advertising: 11 percent of local merchants need help with this
Deals/Promotions/Coupons: 10 percent of local merchants need help with this
Reputation Monitoring and Review: 10 percent of local merchants need help with this
Loyalty Marketing: 9 percent of local merchants need help with this