A friend sent me a link to this video this morning and I just had to share. Read on after the short video, as there’s a link to the full report Gene’s citing (along with an infographic representation of the results which sadly I wasn’t able to provide for you guys directly in this post.)
So why will a lot of small businesses fail this year?
It could have something to do with the fact that of the 1088 respondents to the #SMBReport conducted by Wasp, only 34% of them spend over 4% of their profits on marketing. A further 10% of those polled claim to spend 3 – 4% of their profits on brand building efforts! The remaining 56% spend less than 3% of their profits to market their business.
If you think this sounds like a safe practice, you’d be wrong (if you want to stick around.) Even an established Hair Salon or 30-year old local heating and cooling business needs to keep bringing in new customers if they want to grow and/or continue to profit. The general rule is that a business needs to invest at least 10% of their yearly profits back into marketing the business in the following year (see this.)
Even more scary, if you read the report or infographic (found at: http://www.waspbarcode.com/small-business-report) you’ll see that a whopping 56% of those respondents expect to see their revenue actually grow! (How exactly? I don’t know.)
That means that some of the cheapos who’re holding their purse strings the tightest actually feel like they can hang their hats on the branding they’ve already done.
And 72% of those polled don’t have a CRM in place? I won’t rehash Gene’s points; most of us understand the value a CRM offers, in both maintaining and growing your customer base.
Here’s the link to the report again: http://www.waspbarcode.com/small-business-report
You guys really need to check it out to understand more about the companies that were polled; their sizes, industries, habits, etc. You can use the data you gain to blow past your competitors, many of whom plan to comfortably rest on their laurels instead of forging new relationships in 2015.
