Churn continues to be a tremendous challenge in the local (SMB) marketing space. One of the panelists from a session at LSA16 on SMB sales said that SMB advertisers churn because they had unrealistic expectations and/or they don’t understand or see the value of the marketing product/solution they purchased.

Moderated by Neal Polachek of BuzzBoard, panelists included Richard Maraschi of YP, Jeff Tomlin of Vendasta, Andrea Parker of G/O Digital and Elise Neel of MapQuest. Here is what the panel felt was driving SMB sales forward:

• There is a shift from outbound to inbound which is resulting in more qualified leads. Specifically content marketing has led to a large improvement at these organizations.
• An educated SMB buyer removes a lot of the friction from the sales process.
• For those who are relying on DIY, there is no one-on-one, so automated marketing and content marketing are critical to the success.
• One of the panelists was using a sales platform but found little value. After all of the investment, they found that they were sending generic content to all of their customers.
• To combat content overload, those who sell to SMBs need to know their consumer when developing buyer personas.
• One of the panelists is finding success in creating a core message, but serving it up in a variety of different ways (ebook, blog post, graphic, data visualization, etc.).
• Understanding the impact of content efforts on conversions or leads is necessary, otherwise “you might as well give up.”
• Marketing campaigns that are founded in being “helpful” are the ones that will be successful.
• One panelist took a more product-centric view saying that there is something more important than marketing and that is the product, adding that we should start by getting consumers engaged with the product (freemium model).
• Marketing automation is critical to bringing more efficiency to the sales model.
• Segmenting your audience and sending relevant information drives “phenomenal” engagement rates.