Are small businesses missing the marketing boat?

Jerry Rackley

By Jerry Rackley

Pitney Bowes just released the results of its Small Business Marketing Survey that reveal how the 750 small businesses that responded are communicating with their customers and embracing emerging marketing channels. The report contains some insightful information, and I encourage readers to get a copy of this free report, if for no other reason as a benchmark for comparing your marketing practices.

My attention was drawn to the top three communications channels for small businesses. I confess I didn’t try very hard to guess in advance what they were, but if I had, social media would have been on my list. Surprise! It didn’t make the top three. Instead, three very traditional channels were cited:

  1. Email (46%)
  2. Phone (22%)
  3. Direct mail (11%)

Social media didn't even come in fourth on this list - it was eighth!

My initial reaction to this information was “who are these dinosaurs responding to this survey?” But then, my brain kicked in. I think I get it, and in fact, I’m prepared to defend these choices, if the decisions to use them were made for the right reasons.

It’s easy to understand why email, phone and direct mail still have legs in small business marketing. They’re channels with which we’re very familiar. There is no learning curve to climb to use them. They’ve been around a long time and can still produce results. On these things, we all can agree. But should comfort and familiarity serve as the primary decision drivers for using any channel? I say no.

The marketer’s primary consideration for selecting a channel is ideally effectiveness. What’s the right channel? Here, it’s important to clarify what we mean by “right”. It is that channel that the target of our communications and messages most prefers, the one that influences them most and allows us to reach them most effectively.

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. It’s the same with marketing channels. If all you’ve got is a list of email addresses, your channel selection gets pretty narrow. If you want your marketing and promotional communications to have the greatest effect, you have to ask yourself on a regular basis if you’re using the right channel. And how can you know? There’s only one way: ask the people with which you’re trying to communicate. They are the final arbiters of the channel selection choice.

So, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with using email, phone or direct mail – if you can justify those channel selections based on the recipients’ preferences. To be fair, it’s hard to evaluate the growing number of channel choices and determine the optimal mix. To help with that task, use the Demand Metric Marketing Channel Ranking tool. And if your research confirms that email is the best channel, then click “Send” with confidence. On the other hand, if your research tells you to use social media, take advantage of Demand Metric’s library of assessments, checklists, guides, methodologies, tools and templates to help you do that well.

 

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