As part of the ritual of examining local commerce and SMB Saas strategies, Localogy goes right to the source: SMBs themselves. How do they feel about marketing and operational software? What features do they want? And how has their hunger changed in a pandemic? This is all a moving target.
Localogy’s latest Mobile Commerce Monitor report dives into websites in particular. Entitled Key Trends in Website Services, it examines original SMB sentiments and behavior for online marketing services – particularly those tied to thier websites. This report was done in collaboration with Duda.
After examining the quantity of services SMBs purchase from website providers last week, we switch gears this week to look at the types of marketing services they’re purchasing. In other words, one of the areas of adoption we examined last week was “marketing services.” We now break that down.
As a reminder, marketing services are purchased by 40 percent of SMBs that get services from their website provider. Within that segment, SEO and email marketing lead the way (40 percent each). That’s followed by social (35 percent), display (30 percent), and reputation management (25 percent).
Localogy members can access full charts and SMB survey reports. Non-members can purchase reports.
What Does it All Mean?
Going a bit deeper, a few things jump out at us:
– SEO and email marketing logically lead the way. These continue to be core/critical funcitons at the center of a given website marketing strategy.
– SEO has gained popularity among SMBs in the last decade, due to the importance of search.
– Email marketing has meanwhile always been an SMB favorite because it’s easy to understand and often has immediate gratification (response rates to a given email blast).
– These two areas of SMB marketing also have synergies and adjacency with website services, as websites are often the centerpiece (and link destination) of SEO and email marketing campaigns.
– The popularity of these items is validated in market-sizing estimates that likewise peg SEO and email as top-spending categories for SMBs.
– Social media marketing is a close second (or third if you consider the tied ranking above). This likewise isn’t suprising given the popularity of social media among SMBs.
– This was a key theme in Localogy’s recent report, Pro Perspectives: Social is Here to Stay.
– Like SEO and email marketing above, social media marketing is also SMB-friendly and aligns with common demand signals including simplicity, immediate gratification and some degree of vanity.
– Banners & promotional services (30 percent) reputation management (25 percent) and other marketing services (15 percent), round out the list with less adoption but still a relatively strong showing.
– All of the above gets to the broader question of what synergies and adjacent products make sense in a website bundle? And how should providers position accordingly? These results can provide direction on that front.
Time to Shine
Stepping back, SMB online marketing – website-based or otherwise – continues to grow rapidly. SMB SaaS startups and online services providers are correspondingly thriving as it continues to grow as a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe. There’s a long-tail opportunity at play.
Meanwhile, new SMB SaaS users could represent permanent adopters – a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to boost their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of marketing and operational functions.
We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper into SMB marketing and website adoption. That will include their goals and success factors. Let us know what additional insights jump out at you from the above data, and stay tuned for more breakdowns in our Benchmark Bytes series.
