In a Q4 2014 study of small and medium-sized businesses done by Bright Local, a company that provides tools for SEO Agencies and consultants, there was an overwhelming number of SMB’s that consider internet marketing effective. In this study, companies were asked several questions that relate to the effectiveness of online marketing in attracting new customers to their business, the amount of budget being allocated currently and over the rest of 2015, and the things they considered important when running a successful internet marketing campaign.
Over 75% of the businesses surveyed consider the internet marketing campaigns that they have done to be working. In addition, the number of companies that plan to increase budgets for online marketing was up from the previous year. In fact, 40% of the companies intend to increase their budgets in 2015, and additional 50% said they are seriously considering it.
The top 3 metrics that these SMB’s were most concerned with were: getting more calls to their business, getting more traffic to the website, and ranking in the search engines. Overall, phone calls were the most important metric of these three to gauge the success of their campaign. Walk-in customers were actually one of the lowest regarded metrics, as the majority of the population now calls a business before visiting it. These findings highlight the importance of a mobile friendly website with a phone number that is easy to find, in addition to the other forms of lead capture.
Every company can benefit from a strong internet marketing strategy. With more marketing money flowing, 2015 will be a year where the businesses who do it best can really pull ahead of their competition. If you haven’t starting marketing online yet, or you aren’t confident that you have the best strategy, then the time is now to get your business setup properly and growing.