Small business owners think they understand their customers. But they clearly don’t, judging by the Small Business Now Report -- a two-part study released Thursday by Constant Contact.
Take their media preferences. Small businesses say they are using:
But consumers say are most likely to purchases via:
They also differ on the kinds of emails that are most likely to drive a purchase. Small businesses list these:
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Consumers see things differently. They are most likely to be driven by:
Yet 84% of small businesses are “very or extremely” confident they know what consumers want.
On another front, here is where small businesses stand on adopting new technologies: 35% are using automation, 34% are using AI, 29% use machine learning and 21% use none of the above.
But they see the benefits of such tools:
(That last item is no small thing: 72% say it takes them from one to four hours to create an email campaign).
In general, 53% don’t see the business benefit of modern marketing technologies, and 22% believe they are too expensive.
Still, ecommerce is growing: 58% of small business started selling online for the first time after COVID-19 hit, and 48% are now generating most of their revenue from ecommerce.
But the survey shows that 60% of shopping is done in stores, and 40% is conducted online.
Of the consumers polled, 86% have bought something online in the past month, and 35% say they will buy elsewhere if there is no online store for what they want.
Constant Contact surveyed 1,000 small business owners and 1,000 consumers form June 23 to July 2 of this year.