Anita over at Small Business Trends posted a summary of a survey conducted by Yahoo Small Business. It looks like technology is on small business people’s minds these days. Although the survey is sponsored by Yahoo, it was conducted by Harris. It still could be slanted by Yahoo’s involvement, but is interesting even with this possible bias.
“In a survey of over 1,000 small business owners, the following activities were listed as the most beneficial to the growth of their company, in order of importance:
Having or establishing an online presence (35%)
Having or obtaining dedicated business email (30%)
Increasing online advertising (30%)
Hiring more employees (19%)”
Technology can certainly level the playing field a bit, and can create opportunities that could not exist without its support. However, just as I used to tell small businesses that not all of them needed to be in the Yellow Pages (most usually thought they did), not all businesses today need to have a web presence.
Think like your customer.
If your customers look for your type of business in the Yellow Pages then be there with your advertising (restaurants still get much of their business from this source of information). If they look for your type of business on the web, then that is where you should be.
This is a transition time, however. Many businesses are finding that they have to cover multiple media for their message as customers are not all using the same source for product/service information. Some customers within the same target market are more technologically inclined while others still are not.
In this case, think like your customers.
NOTE: If you found the relatively low priority for hiring interesting, as I did, make sure to read my post from yesterday.
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