Half of Small Biz Owner...

According to Constant Contact’s “ Small Businesses: Then and Now Survey ”, 59% of small businesses believe it’s harder to run a business today than five years ago. That’s a sad, sad fact. Running your own business used to be the American dream. It was your ticket to an independent lifestyle. A way out of the 9-5 madness. Or maybe that’s what we all hoped it would be. The truth is, running your own business is tough, especially when you’ve grown large enough to have a couple of employees on the payroll. I’m a company of one. If I have a bad week, it’s not fun but at least I don’t have to consider laying off an employee. When asked why things have taken a downturn: 55% said the economy has hit their business hard. 49%  said it’s harder to keep pace with technology. 40% said there’s more direct competition. Economic times are tough, no doubt. And competition! I don’t know how online niche stores compete with Amazon or how a local cafe competes with the fast food chain on the corner. But the answer that really intrigues me is the middle one. Nearly half of all respondents said it’s harder to keep pace with technology. Wow. Let me take a moment to remind myself that I’m more technically savvy than most people my age. Okay. Done. For the family business that started out using a cigar box as a cash register switching to a touchscreen POS system and accepting digital payments can be a huge, terrifying change. Online biz owners may have a leg up on technology but now you have to think about mobile and cookies and shopping cart security. And then there’s social media! 87% of small businesses use social media marketing now versus only 10% five years ago. That’s an incredible jump. 84% said that the use of online marketing was the biggest change they’ve faced in the last five year. Look at that chart. Huge grown in all areas of online marketing but here’s the thing – even with all of these outlets, 35% said it was harder than ever to find new customers. Half say customers simply aren’t paying attention to marketing the way they used to. 45% blame it on increased competition. Don’t count these small business folks out yet. Even though they’re not happy with where they are now, only 8% said they might have to close up shop in the next five years. 58% said they expect to be thriving by 2018. Many say that local support has been their saving grace. There’s a renewed interest in shopping small and close to home. Others credit social media as a low-cost marketing tool. “We’ve found that social media and email marketing has made it easier to run our business today, especially around the holidays,” said Mary Jennifer Russell, owner of Sugaree’s Bakery in New Albany, Mississippi, which has a storefront, as well as a growing online mail order and wholesale business. “We’ll post a special on Facebook or through email, and people start ordering immediately online, and also start coming into the store right away.” This report comes from Constant Contact, an email marketing company, but I think that quote is genuine. Think about the time and money difference between an old-school coupon mailer and a coupon email blast to all of your current customers. Which one is more likely to bring people into your business right away when you’re having a bad week? You can download the full report from Constant Contact right now. Click for the press release and drop to the bottom for the PDF link. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Marketers See Big Data ...

As marketers there is too much to keep up with for one person. Online, offline, traditional, digital, social, search, the list can go on and on. However, a recent study from The Economist Intelligence Unit (which was sponsored by Lyris and repackaged in the chart below by Marketing Charts ) makes it clear that big data is a top priority amongst all the things a marketer could know. Of course, just acquiring big data means nothing. It’s the ability to utilize data analysis skills to extract predictive findings that is at the top of marketers’ list of skills they feel are critical. What might surprise some, especially those who are in the ‘latest and greatest done by the cool kids’ school of marketing which assumes social media skills is on the top of every marketers’ wish list’ camp, is that there is real desire to fully understand e-mail best practices. E-mail? Really? Yes and the reason is that it is effective. People pay less attention to things that sound cool but don’t produce. They pay greater attention to techniques that work. So while it is not the sexiest form of marketing, e-mail marketing is important and smart marketers recognize it as such. They recognize it so much so that they are willing to admit that even with e-mail marketing being almost an ‘old school’ technique there is much to learn about best practices especially in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Were you surprised at all by these results? Why or why not?

Cannes Lions 2013 Previ...

With less than one week left till one of the most exciting advertising events of the year, ClickZ speaks to a few industry leaders who give their thoughts on what to expect from Cannes Lions 2013.

Success in Social Media...

Two truths and three steps to guide marketers to create a more cohesive email-to-social strategy.

Salesforce Acquires Exa...

Salesforce made its largest acquisition to date with a $2.5 billion deal to purchase ExactTarget.

With ExactTarget Acquis...

Salesforce.com added more marketing power to its arsenal today with the purchase of ExactTarget for $2.5 billion. It is the company’s largest acquisition to date, second to Buddy Media , which it bought last year for $689 million. In 2011, the company purchased social-monitoring platform Radian6 for $276 million in cash plus additional stock. The  $3.5 billion in acquisitions points to the high costs for Salesforce.com as it makes an aggressive push into the marketing department. ExactTarget puts Salesforce.com into the email marketing business. The company also offers social and mobile marketing capabilities, as well as a marketing automation platform. The deal follows Salesforce.com’s announcement last month of Social.com , which was distinct from the social media ad campaign capabilities that it gained with its acquisition of Buddy Media. More so, Social.com pulls data from a customer’s CRM environment to craft targeted campaigns. With Radian 6, the expectation is that companies can also get a view of the social stream with its CRM data. With ExactTarget, Salesforce.com adds an email-marketing platform that it can use with Social.com. Salesforce.com lacks a true marketing automation platform. ExactTarget does list marketing automation as a capability, but it does not rank as a leader in the category, at least according to Gartner’s magic quadrant. If Salesforce.com does wish to push deep into lead management, it will need to either invest heavily in its own development or acquire a company, which will bring another hefty price tag. Last month, Marketo , a marketing automation leader, had a successful initial public offering. It opened at $13 per share. Today it is trading in the $22 range with a market capitalization of about $812 million. Eloqua, the other leader in the category, sold to Oracle late last year for $871 million. Salesforce.com has established a capability in developing an app ecosystem with its acquisition of Heroku and the development of its AppExchange. Its CRM platform is now the industry leader . Expanding into the marketing suite fits into its core strength. The question is how expensive it’s going to be to appeal to the ever more powerful chief marketing officer.