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 post-pandemic world? 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 degree to which SMBs encounter in-person sales reps, we switch gears this week to examine how satisfied they are with those IRL sales interactions. Though SMBs continue to gain digital savvy and phase in younger generations of proprietors, do they still prefer a personal touch?
Data Dive
– Diving right in, it’s clear that SMBs are mostly satisfied with in-person sales experiences they’ve had.
– In fact the largest group of respondents (28 percent) reported the highest level of satisfaction (“extremely satisfied”)
– This was up from 27 percent in Wave 7 of the survey and 23 percent in Wave 6.
– The second most popular sentiment among SMBs for their in-person software sales experiences was “neutral.”
–This was up considerably from 20 percent in Wave 7 and 22 percent in Wave 6.
– Next on the list at 21 percent of responses was “slightly satisfied.”
– This was down slightly, excuse the wordplay, from 22 percent in Wave 7, but still up from 16 percent in Wave 6.
– “Very Satisfied” was the next highest survey response at 14 percent of responses.
– The bad news is that this is down significantly from 21 percent in Wave 7 and 26 percent in Wave 6.
–The lowest response was “not at all satisfied,” which was felt by 9 percent of respondents, down from 10 percent in Wave 7 and 13 percent in Wave 6.
– All in all, the results are positive, with the exception of the plummeting scores over the past two waves for “very satisfied” SMBs… though this is offset to some degree by the growth in “extremely satisfied” businesses.
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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 service 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.
