Although they're becoming more comfortable with social media marketing, and are increasingly using social networks to engage consumers, small businesses continue to use face-to-face events to establish and maintain relationships with their customers, finds a new survey of nearly 2,000 small business owners by email marketing firm Constant Contact.
Released this month in honor of Small Business Saturday, the "Fall 2011 Attitudes and Outlook Survey" found that 55 percent of small business owners use event marketing to promote their business. What's more, 81 percent report using face-to-face interactions to connect with current or prospective customers, and 62 percent plan to host an event in the next 12 months for the purpose of doing so.
Sixty-nine percent, meanwhile, see events as an effective way to introduce consumers to their products and services, and 68 percent as an effective way to find new customers.
"Small businesses want to have face-to-face interactions with customers and prospects, and event marketing has quickly become a go-to strategy for small businesses who want to connect in person with their current or prospective customers — but need an efficient way to get the work of an event done," said Chris Litster, Constant Contact's vice president and general manager of event marketing. "Events offer small businesses a great way to take a relationship that may have started via email marketing and use an in-person connection to build it into a long-lasting relationship."
Other key findings:
• 81 percent of small business owners report using social media to market their businesses, up from 73 percent in the spring of 2011;
• 96 percent of small businesses that do social media marketing use Facebook and 76 percent use Twitter;
• 72 percent of small businesses have not yet incorporated mobile into the marketing mix; and
• Along with events and social media, small businesses market themselves using email marketing (95 percent), websites (98 percent), print advertising (71 percent) and online advertising (66 percent).
For full results, access the complete "Fall 2011 Attitudes and Outlook Survey" online at www.constantcontact.com.