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) answers these and other questions across the SMB SaaS product set, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. After examining reasons SMBs buy software last week, we switch gears to look at the reasons they don’t.

In other words, for SMBs uninterested in purchasing software that can help them streamline operations, what are their reasons? What are their objections and sticking points? Answering these questions can help software providers develop targeted sales messaging

Localogy members can access full charts and SMB survey reports. Non-members can purchase reports. 

Data Dive

Going deeper, a few other insights jump out at us from these figures.

– The biggest factor preventing SMB Saas adoption is the feeling that what they currently use isn’t broken (69 percent).

– That’s followed by overall comfort levels with their current solutions (43 percent), trust in the established nature of current providers (39 percent), and the high price of SMB Saas (19 percent).

– The “if it ain’t broke…” attitude is dominant in these survey results, scoring 16 points higher than the next-highest sentiment.

– This leading sentiment also up considerably from Wave 6 (46 percent) and Wave V (31 percent).

– Related to the “if it ain’t broke…” attitude is comfort with existing solutions, which likewise scored high.

– This is mostly consistent with previous survey waves

– SMBs are often comfort-bound as a sometimes-lacking degree of tech-savvy causes them to not seek out new technologies often, instead relying on what’s tried and true.

– This is a double-edged sword for SMB SaaS vendors as it indicates strong retention potential (good)… but also greater headwinds when trying to convert SMBs to a given new solution (bad).

– SMBs are similarly keen on established relationships with trusted providers. That trust is positioned as a big deterrent in switching to software providers that are less of a known quantity.

– Pricing is likewise a common sticking point for SMBs, and that is demonstrated in these results.

– Any perceived security and data integrity risks scored closely behind pricing as an adoption deterrent.

– This will continue to be an issue among SMBs as cybersecurity is increasingly brought to the public’s attention.

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.

And don’t forget that MCM, Wave 8 will be available soon…