Small Business Marketing consuming over 20 hours per week
Many small businesses are dedicating 20 hours per week on marketing their business according to a recent survey by Constant Contact. While the effort pays dividends across several metrics, the challenges the time investment poses should not be understated.
There are numerous avenues and channels where small and medium businesses can reach their customers, both traditional offline and online, but it’s the online marketing that is consuming most of time and overwhelming those attempting to market this way.
“With the greater opportunities presented by multi-channel marketing come some challenges. Most small business owners are not marketing professionals and many tell us that the flood of new marketing tools, along with the need to be everywhere their customers are, from search engines, to mobile devices, to friends’ newsfeeds, can really be overwhelming.” – Constant Contact
82% of those surveyed said they market across multiple platforms – email, web, social media – and if the business is not undertaking the process alone they are typically using 3 or 4 different vendors to assist them in the realisation of their marketing goals.
The good news is that those businesses that are devoting the 20 hours per week are reaping rewards:
- 57% achieved new customers
- 54% achieved more web traffic
- 40% achieved increased revenue
But here are the highlighted challenges to going it alone:
- Not knowing how to use the various tools available
- Investing too much time that could be better spent on the core operations of the business
- Not being confident that their customers are using the same avenues and channels as they are
- Not knowing how to measure ROI and success across the different platforms used
Utilising the services of the Website Design Centre can alleviate many of these pressures while providing the same, if not better, results. You don’t need to be an expert in all areas of online marketing because our team is. You don’t need to employ the services on 3 or 4 different vendors to handle the marketing because our team can handle all facets and work together to achieve cohesion and results. You don’t need to redeploy in-house resources to online marketing because you team become part of your team without the ongoing costs of full-time employees and without distracting from your day-to-day business practices.
