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Aug
19
Chambers of Commerce Less Popular with Small Businesses
by Anita Campbell | August 19, 2008 | 21 Comments
Last week’s Warrillow Weekly has the following stunning chart, showing how membership in local Chambers of Commerce is dropping.
Their numbers are based on a survey of over 2,000 small businesses. According to the Warrillow Weekly, which is an email newsletter report:
“There’s no doubt that the US Chamber of Commerce, an affiliation of thousands of local chamber groups, wields a powerful influence over legislative agendas, but they are losing sway as an influencer of small business owners. Among major association types, local chambers are at the bottom in terms of membership rates according to a recent Warrillow study, with only half the engagement of industry associations. They even lag social networking sites, although it is still unclear what role these online communities currently play in business activities.”
The newsletter goes on to include a quote by someone who says Chambers are dying because they are “useless and old.” I would not be quite so harsh in my assessment.
I think something else is at work: the Internet and the “small world effect” has changed the playing field.
I happen to be a member of COSE (Council of Smaller Enterprises), a 17,000-member regional Chamber in Ohio. I’ve been a long-time Board member for NEOSA, their technology arm. I think COSE has done a lot to stay relevant and provide value for business owners. Their educational programs are quite good and they offer an endless variety. They started an online community site and a mastermind group. They offer a variety of valuable benefits, such as health coverage, a workers compensation pool, and so on. And they’ve even lowered their dues. So I hardly consider them useless or out of touch with the times.
The issue is that business owners just don’t rely on Chambers the way they used to. We business owners have so many more choices, because we can get more of what we need through the Internet. It’s all right there at our fingertips.
Consider why you join a Chamber. It’s usually to:
- network with other business owners
- develop professionally through education programs
- get access to health insurance and other benefits
- get member discounts on products and services
- stay up to date on developments in your local municipality and advocacy
Aside from the last bullet (staying up to date on your local municipality), business owners just have so many more choices today.
Plus, the nature of our small businesses has changed. Speaking as a small business owner, we’re no longer likely to be focused on selling in just one municipality. Many more small businesses are regional, national or even global. So networking within your local town may not do you nearly as much good as it did 20 years ago when your business was more heavily local-centric.
Local discounts may not do you much good, because you’ll be shopping at national chains, online or across broad areas. And so many organizations and companies provide loyalty programs and discounts today. You can even search online to find discounts and coupons.
Part of the challenge for Chambers is that if they solely draw from and support a small city and town, they won’t have the resources to compete with what the Internet has to offer and to compete with other sources of information and resources. Perhaps a way for Chambers to stay relevant, is to merge or band together into regional affiliations or create super-regional Chambers. So much more is possible for a 17,000-member organization, than for a 1,000-member Chamber. For instance, when I consider what COSE has to offer compared with the Chamber in my local town, it’s worlds different. And banding together would better mirror how we run our businesses, covering a wider geographical area in many cases.
Meanwhile, if you are trying to reach large numbers of small businesses, consider the above chart carefully. It’s a good chart.
Aug
8
Getting On Board the Online Community and Social Media Express
by Anita Campbell | August 8, 2008 | 7 Comments
If social media and online communities are not part of your current strategy, you might want to get with the program.
Jeremiah Owyang has a list of enterprise companies with employees dedicated to social media and online communities. The typical roles would be: the Social Computing Strategist or the Community Manager, although people’s actual titles are all across the board.
Jeremiah has a long list of them by name, along with their LinkedIn profiles.
Not all of them are targeting the small business market (some are, though). Still it is a sign of things.
Aug
4
LinkedIn Places Higher Value on 50-Employee-and-Up Small Businesses
by Anita Campbell | August 4, 2008 | 4 Comments
Recently when I’ve visited my LinkedIn profile to approve connection requests and handle other business, I’ve noticed a medium rectangle ad displayed on my profile. The two ads showing up most often are an ad for AT&T and one for Bank of America. (Previously I believe Google AdSense ads were displayed. )
Being the curious sort I am, I decided to check out the ad rates that LinkedIn is requesting for those spots. I found an informative advertising section on the LinkedIn website.
As an advertiser, you have the ability to target certain audiences for your ad. That’s when I found the LinkedIn Rate Card. According to the Rate Card, advertisers pay a higher rate to reach IT Professionals and Small Business Managers, versus other groups.
Small Business Managers are defined as “LinkedIn Professionals who have identified themselves as Directors & Above at a Company with fewer than 200 Employees.” The ad rate for a 300×250 ad for this group is $67.50.
On the other hand, there is a category called “Entrepreneurs,” defined as “LinkedIn Professionals who have identified themselves as Owner at a Company with less than 50 employees.” The ad rate for this group is $63.00.
In other words, if you are a well-placed exec at a small business with between 50 and 200 employees, you are a higher-value target.
The above rates compare with $45.00 for run-of-site (non-targeted) ads. On the other hand, if you want a custom target group, it will cost you even more, $76.50.
Jul
24
Should You Start a Social Community?
by Anita Campbell | July 24, 2008 | 5 Comments
With social media sites all the rage, a lot of companies have considered whether to start an online social-networking type of community.
The Online Marketer blog offers 21 questions to consider before starting a social network.
Among the questions are these two:
1. Can you invest the necessary resources to run a social network properly? Can you afford the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to properly create and staff this resource?
2. What is the role of marketing, sales, IT, customer service, advertising, HR, etc.? Social networks often delve into all of these departments and more. Make sure all of your teams are engaged, enthused, and prepared.
They’re all good questions.
There is one question that is missing from the list (although perhaps it is implied). I think it should be called out specifically. Here is the question:
“Are you prepared for the time and effort it will take to nurture the network, seed it in the beginning, encourage people to participate and otherwise do what’s needed to get a critical mass of people participating so that it becomes a vibrant community instead of a virtual ghost town?”
Here’s a simple example: the discussion board. I’ve seen enough discussion boards with a grand total of 7 questions in them, the last from 3 months earlier, to know how many communities never get out of the gate. They’re the living dead. The cobwebs are the only things multiplying in them. I’m sure you’ve run into those, too.
It takes a lot of priming of the pump in the beginning for a social network or an online community to take off and build enough momentum to keep going. Don’t underestimate how much effort will be involved. It is like raising a child. You have to nurture that child, feed and change him, and give him a lot more attention in the early years until your child begins to walk, feed him/herself, get potty trained, and so on.
With a social network, you’re going to have to work tirelessly to get the word out, entice people to try it, engage with them and positively reinforce their initial efforts. You have to keep at it until your “baby” starts to grow up and become more and more self-sufficient.
That’s doubly true with communities aimed at small business owners and their staff. They’re not going to have the same natural affinity toward a social network or community site as, say, tech early adopters would. So they will need to be coaxed to try it out initially. And they are going to need to see value quickly for their participation to continue.
Read: 21 Considerations Before Your Business Starts A Social Network
Jul
10
Rundown of Small Business Communities of Banks
by Anita Campbell | July 10, 2008 | 3 Comments
NetBanker has an interesting overview of the small business community sites of banks and financial services companies. Jim Bruene, the author, gives a summary of these communities:
Advanta’s Ideablob
American Express’s OpenForum
Bank of America’s Small Business Online Community,
Capital One’s Slingshot,
HSBC’s (UK) Business Network
Intuit’s Quickbooks Group:
VISA’s Business Network on Facebook is just mentioned. Left off the list is Intuit’s JumpUp Community for small businesses and startups.
I’ve had involvement with several of these, including the Intuit QuickBooks Community. I’ve also been a member of Intuit’s JumpUp.com.
And of course I’m especially partial to American Express’s OpenForum site, as I write there weekly. 
Advanta’s Ideablob is perhaps the most unique concept of them all, being designed around a monthly contest.
Jim includes Compete.com traffic graphs, which while they are imprecise, at least show relative traffic and popularity. They demonstrate one thing above all else: that hard work, persistence and longevity matter. That is aptly demonstrated by the QuickBooks Community, which is the big Kahuna in terms of traffic, content and community size. It’s no conincidence that it’s also has been around the longest.
The lesson? Don’t wait to start a small business community, and when you do, don’t ignore it. A community will not grow on its own — you must work at it.
May
29
4 Tactics for Highest Quality and Quantity of B2B Traffic
by Anita Campbell | May 29, 2008 | 4 Comments
MarketingSherpa is out with a special report on subscription-based B2B sites.
Subscription sites are in vogue these days, especially for B2B. I know of at least a dozen subscription-sites that cater primarily to small businesses, and I belong to a few myself.
The MarketingSherpa report covers a wide variety of issues relating to marketing B2B subscription sites. Today I’d like to focus on just one of the charts.
The following chart outlines the best sources of traffic to B2B subscription sites:
The way this chart is organized, the best sources of traffic appear in the top right quadrant. The farther to the top and right a particular traffic tactic appears, the higher the quantity and quality of traffic from it.
As you can see, the best return comes from search engine optimization (SEO). Next is paid search marketing (pay-per-click ads). After that is online banner advertising and sponsorships.
The surprise to me is that viral marketing is almost neck and neck with online advertising, and appears among the top four tactics to grow traffic. I would not have expected viral marketing to play such an important role for B2B sites (B2C yes, but not B2B).
Public relations was kind of middle of the road. The sources of traffic that were lower quality and quantity included affiliate marketing, offline advertising, co-registration, and rented email lists.
While this data relates to subscription websites, I suspect you could draw some correlations for any kind of B2B site.
The report is open access until June 5, 2008. See also the accompanying charts including a larger version of the above chart.
May
20
Another (Limited) Way to Segment SMBs
by Anita Campbell | May 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
If you wanted to sell small businesses on advertising solutions for their business, here’s a new way to break them down:
1. “Branded branches,” (e.g., Bank of America), which reportedly comprises 60% to 65% of the advertiser spend. This might be thought of in the conventional approach as the “national-local” segment.
2. Co-op sellers (e.g., insurance or real estate brokers/agents), which represents the second largest part of the local ad spend at 305 to 35%. In the conventional way of thinking, this group comprises the franchisees (in many cases) and the national-local segment as well in some cases.
3. Independents, comprise 1% to 2% of the overall local ad spend. This is a numerous group but with little to spend relatively speaking. These are the lawyers, plumbers and so on.
The above breakdown comes courtesy of Greg Sterling, who highlights some research by Wayne Reuvers, CEO of Live Holdings.
Of course, lots of caveats in how to interpret this breakdown. Consider that:
Category #1 above is really big corporations. In the context it is discussed, they are talking about local advertising spend by branch offices of huge companies. In that limited context the category is probably meaningful. But if you’re not a publisher or ad network trying to sell advertising, just remember these are really big companies, not small businesses.
Category #2 is focused on the fact that co-op ad money is coming from a larger entity — again you have that focus on the bigger entity, who happens to be footing part of the bill in this case.
Finally, all the rest of the small businesses are lumped together with a hint of disdain in category #3, and not broken down into any meaningful subcategories. So it doesn’t help you figure out how to sell to this group.
The only thing I would add about this categorization is: it’s really only applicable if you are selling advertising on a large scale. I can’t think of any other context in which it applies, can you?
May
16
To Reach SMBs, Don’t Pin All Your Hopes on Social Media Sites
by Anita Campbell | May 16, 2008 | 2 Comments
Reaching small-business owners, managers and decision-makers is notoriously hard to do. You know that, right?
There are lots of reasons for this — here are just a few:
- The small business market is fragmented. For example, a time honored approach to reach SMBs is through industry organizations, chambers of commerce and similar affiliations they belong to. However, this can be a laborious, time consuming and expensive approach. It may involve attending many events and participating in many different groups and associations, just to reach a handful of people at each.
- Often the price points of products or services aimed at small businesses do not justify individual sales calls — the economics lend themselves to more of a mass market approach. Frequently there’s not enough margin in a sale to justify an “enterprise” approach to selling products, with individualized sales made one-on-one.
- Many of the REALLY small businesses (microbusinesses) are organized virtually these days, without a headquarters place of business, or are operated from a home office, so it can be hard to physically even locate the business address.
And the list goes on.
So with all the scratching around just trying to find prospects, it can be tempting to pin your hopes on social media sites just because you can reach large numbers of people at once.
That would be a major mistake.
Don’t get me wrong: social media sites do have their value. You can reach large numbers of entrepreneurs and business decision makers. I personally have expanded my network through social media. In fact, there are ways to use social media in your marketing to the small business market. Just don’t pin your hopes too much on social media.
Social media should be one component, but not the sole thrust of your marketing.
With social media you’re going to reach the very earliest adopters, the bleeding edge types, those who spend inordinate amounts of time online. The ranks of people on social media sites tend to be filled with marketing, PR and SEO professionals.
The size profile of those you reach will be skewed … dominated by freelancers and the self-employed and those without employees in their businesses. Reaching out to mainstream small businesses and businesses with more than 5 or 10 employees through social media sites is much more difficult.
Why? Mainstream small businesspeople simply are not into such sites yet. Even the ones who spend time online and have a blog, probably won’t spend a lot of time on places like Facebook or Twitter. Even the ones who may have tried LinkedIn, which tends to have a higher percentage of mainstream business types, quickly tire of getting invites to the latest greatest social media sites. And they only have so much time to spend online.
For a glimpse into how the majority think about social media sites, read: Ten Reasons I Won’t Use Social Media Sites.
And if you want ideas about how to fit social media into your marketing mix, read:
Why Social Media Should Be a Key Ingredient in Your Marketing Mix
May
13
Places to Promote Your Contest Online
by Anita Campbell | May 13, 2008 | 5 Comments
Contests are a popular strategy today to reach small business owners.
A good contest can:
- engage the hearts and minds of business owners
- create goodwill toward your company
- sometimes get a viral effect going
- build brand recognition
- be a source of PR and media attention
But if you are running a contest with an online component (as most contests these days seem to have), you will need to promote your contest online.
With the help of my team, I have compiled a list of blogs and sites below where you can list your contest to gain more visibility, exposure and contestants.
The following 3 sites earn top marks for being able to list contests quickly or respond promptly:
An Island Life (Kailani responded promptly and listed our contest quickly)
Laura Williams’ Musings (Laura responded promptly and listed our contest quickly)
Contest Blogger (a forum site — once you register you an list your contest immediately)
The following contest sites and blogs also list contests. Response times varied — some sites are updated more frequently than others:
Timing: You’d be wise to submit your contest 2 weeks before the start date. Some site owners are employed full-time — the contest site may be a part-time endeavor. Many sites are labors of love or hobbies. So it sometimes takes a little time to list your contest.
Fees: A few of the above sites accept (sometimes require) a small fee for a listing, a featured listing or email distribution. Fees typically ranged from $5 to $35. Check individual sites for details.
Traffic: The traffic you get depends, obviously, on the amount of traffic the listing site gets, and the attractiveness of your contest. While in our experience none of the contest sites individually provided droves of traffic, taken together the contest listing sites helped spread the word. Use the contest listing sites as one component but not your entire strategy for promoting your contest.
Reciprocal Links: In addition to the above contest listing sites, there are others that will list for free if you provide a reciprocal link back to their site. If you are willing to provide reciprocal links from your own website, check out the contest sites contained on this “List Your Contest for Free” page. There you will find over 2 dozen additional contest listing sites, including Canadian contest sites.
Appreciation: Finally, don’t forget to thank the blog or site owners and show appreciation. Many are taking their own time to list your contest — remember, they don’t HAVE to do this for you. Please don’t be demanding or think you have a right to a listing.
May
9
Half of Women Influenced by Blogs In Purchase Decisions
by Anita Campbell | May 9, 2008 | 2 Comments
Half of women surveyed said that blogs influence their decisions to purchase. That comes from a recent survey of roughly 6,000 women by BlogHer (the network of women bloggers) and Compass Partners.
The study has a number of findings, but the one about purchase decisions stood out to me. Here’s the chart that shows the numbers:
Notice also that the percentage influenced tends to be higher among those who also publish their own blog(s) versus those who just read blogs. In other words, if you write a blog, you have a tendency to be more influenced in your purchase decisions by blogs. I suspect that means:
(a) you spend more time reading blogs versus other sources of information, and/or
(b) that you are predisposed to look for other blogs as sources of research for purchases, and/or
(c) you tend to trust other bloggers as a source of unbiased information.
Notice also, the negative impact of blogs on purchase decisions is almost as high as the positive impact. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of blog publishers say they decided to buy based on blogs, while 32% say they decided NOT to buy based on blogs. In other words, blogs are almost are as likely to convince women NOT to buy, as they are to convince us to make a purchase. That’s one reason for vendors to be monitoring blogs for negative statements, and to have a strategy in place to deal with negative sentiment from blogs.
Now keep in mind that not all of these women are entrepreneurs or business owners. But inasmuch as bloggers tend to be entrepreneurial, I thought the results could be instructive.
The summary results are available online — download the BlogHer blog study here.
