Commentary

For SMBs, The Mobile Spirit Is Willing, But...

ComicShop-BMore than two-thirds of small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners know that mobile marketing will be essential to their future, but very few understand how to do it. According to a study commissioned by Web.com Group, 69% of SMBs they polled understood that a mobile marketing plan would be critical to their growth in the next five years. But little more than a quarter (26%) have a mobile-friendly Web site, and only 14% have a site designed specifically for mobile access.

Most SMBs don’t even have a way for their businesses to be found on mobile search, and 61% claim no mobile search strategy. The biggest choke point is time and resources. With 64% of SMBs operating as a one-person show, the owner has to be the mobile marketer.

At the same time, the SMBs that do embrace mobile are claiming exceptional results, with 84% of the 14% with mobile-optimized sites attributing new business activity to their mobile presence. But despite their small size and lack of mobile experience, these one-person shops have a sophisticated sense of what mobile might be able to do for them. For instance, when asked what would most motivate them to engage more in mobile, the most-cited reason (38%) was to provide better service to existing customers. It is interesting and revealing how much these SMBs seem to get how mobile is at least as powerful as a CRM tool as it is for customer acquisition, which 36% of respondents cited as most important. Another 34% said that mobile was a way to gain competitive advantage.

The survey of 500 owners of businesses with under 100 employees was conducted in early April.

The metrics suggest something that we underscored at a panel at the Mobile Insider Summit in January: SMBs really do know their own business. A Texas dentist and a Florida comic convention owner were incredibly frank and informed about what they needed mobile marketing efforts to be for them. Any provider looking to swoop in with dazzling solutions they think any SMB should leap to deploy would do well to review the panel video.

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