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. And we recently entered a new chapter of this series, with highlights from the latest wave (8.0) of Modern Commerce Monitor.
After examining the ways SMBs benefit from SaaS products last week, we switch gears this week to examine the degrees to which they utilize SaaS capabilities. Are they taking advantage of the full suite of features that are offered by the software products they use? Or are they missing opportunities to do so?
Data Dive
– Diving in, the majority (51 percent) of SMBs that use SaaS products to help operate and market their businesses do not utilize the full slate of capabilities.
– 43 percent of SMBs that use SaaS products conversely report that they do utilize all the capabilities offered by the software.
– 6 percent of respondents aren’t sure.
– These responses are surprising on some levels and unsurprising on others.
– The fact that a majority of SMB SaaS users aren’t utilizing the software to its full capacity is surprising given that they should be motivated towards the greatest ROI on the technology they’re paying for.
– Then again, SMBs are famously tech-challenged and time-starved, which often results in suboptimal usage and deployment of the technologies they have.
– These results could also be a function of time. Given SMBs’ bandwidth challenges, their full utilization of software tools understandably takes longer to happen.
– Therefore, SMBs at any moment may be in various stages of that tech utilization lifecycle, with greater participation still to come.
– As for the six percent that isn’t sure if they’re using all of the capabilities available to them, it’s likely that this cohort isn’t doing so…
– If they’re unaware, they’re likely not at a level of tech-savvy to be utilizing all of the features that they can.
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Long-Tail Opportunity
Stepping back, SMB online marketing – as well as operational and fintech tools – 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 accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs were forced into digital transformation. This sent them into the arms of SaaS providers (where many have stayed) 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.
