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 Modern Commerce Monitor (MCM) Wave 6.1 answers these and other questions across the SMB SaaS product set, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. After examining SMBs’ satisfaction with online services last week, we switch gears to look at their adoption likelihood.
Specifically, among SMBs that don’t use SaaS-based online services, 45 percent say they plan to start using them in the next year. And among SMBs that already use SaaS, 65 percent say they plan to increase spending. These results were gathered in Fall 2021 so they reflect sentiments at the time.
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Data Dive
Going deeper, a few other insights jump out from these figures.
– Among SMBs who already use Saas and those who don’t, the outlook is very positive in terms of future adoption likelihood.
– It stands to reason that increased spending is higher among SaaS users (65 percent) versus non-users (45 percent) as they are already sold on its benefits.
– But even among non-users, the aspirational adoption rate is high at 45 percent.
– Putting this into perspective, if all SMBs who say they plan to adopt SaaS actually do, that will represent notable (almost 50 percent) aggregate spending growth.
– Of course, future-looking survey sentiments are inherently aspirational, so all SMBs may not end up adopting. Still, this is a telling indicator of their buying temperature.
– Timing should also be considered, given that these answers were given in the waning stages of a pandemic when software appetite was still high (it still is high today to be fair).
– Furthermore, a looming recession could impact actual adoption, and that will be a moving target in the coming months.
– We’ll circle back next week to dive deeper into the types of SaaS offerings (functional areas), that SMBs are most interested in.
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 Localogy original survey research. That will include SMB 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.
