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Business

Are SMBs the Greatest Opportunity?

It's small and medium sized business that provide the bulk of the action for American business.
Written by Doc , Contributor

Seems like everyone wants the super-big accounts, if not for profitability then for prestige. But Doc has known for a long time that it's the small and medium sized business that provide the bulk of the action for American business. Brian Yeager pens a good article for printers on the benefits of targeting SMBs.

According to the Small Business Association, there are over 27 million small and medium businesses in the United States, accounting for between 60% and 80% of all U.S. jobs. SMBs are typically characterized as establishments with fewer than 500 full-time employees. Thus, the market opportunity is tremendous, even if you are only able to reach a fraction of SMBs in the country.

We found that just like larger companies, SMBs were diversifying their marketing mix, with traditional media still being an important component but also heavily emphasizing the use of the Web and e-mail to reach their target audiences. Social media was also increasing in importance. At the time, 32.1% of SMBs indicated using Facebook to promote their businesses, while 16.9% indicated using Twitter to do the same. We hypothesize that these numbers have increased substantially in just the last few years.

Furthermore, we found that SMBs had a preference for a "one stop shop" type of experience for printing needs, and we feel that also translates into marketing services, as well.

So the question is, are you appropriately targeting SMBs or still going after those bigger fish?

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