New Data on Small Business Adoption of Facebook Ads and Group Deals (Google Offers, Groupon and LivingSocial)

New marketing trends data from MerchantCircle's 7th survey of small business owners across the U.S. reveals that group deals are gaining popularity among small businesses and shows Google Offers and other niche deal providers are putting increased pressure on Groupon and LivingSocial. There’s also evidence of slowing adoption for Facebook Ads, although favorability for this new advertising medium remains strong among those who are using it.

Key insights from MerchantCircle's research include:

1. Group deals are experiencing steady growth among local merchants

• Nearly 12 percent of local merchants now report having offered a daily deal, up 33 percent since the last MerchantCircle survey in June 2011.

• About 75 percent of respondents say they would offer another deal in the future, citing its effectiveness for customer acquisition as their top reason (61 percent).  Deal profitability also appears to be on the rise: 37 percent now say solid profitability will lead them to offer another deal, up from just 24 percent in June.

• Among the 25 percent who said they wouldn’t offer another daily deal, 42 percent said it was not effective for customer acquisition, 36 percent said it was too costly and 34 percent said they lost money on the deal.

2. Cost is the most important criteria for selecting a deals provider.

• 64 percent citing cost as their top consideration when selecting a deals provider.  Local targeting (57 percent) and the ability to reach a large audience (52 percent) were the second and third-most important selection criteria.

• Businesses that plan to use Groupon in the future report that the ability to reach a large audience is equally as important to them as cost, with 62 percent citing reach and cost as key selection criteria.

3. Groupon and LivingSocial may face increased pressure from Google Offers in 2012.

• About 19 percent of local merchants who have offered a group deal have tried using Google Offers since its launch this summer, as compared to Groupon (26 percent) and LivingSocial (21 percent).  A large number of specialized deals providers have also entered the market; these services have been used by about 43 percent of local merchants who have offered a group deal.

• About 32 percent of merchants planning to use Google Offers for their next deals, as opposed to 26 percent who plan to use Groupon and 16 percent who plan to use LivingSocial.

• Google Offers enjoys the highest retention rate of all the large deals providers: 66 percent of its customers plan to use Google Offers again.  Just 41 percent of Groupon and LivingSocial customers report that they plan to use these services again.

• Before ceasing operations, Facebook Deals had been used by 22 percent of the respondents who’d offered a daily deal in the past.  More than half of these customers say they plan to use Google Offers for their next deal (53 percent).

4. Facebook Ads growth slows among local merchants.

• About 23 percent of local merchants report having tried Facebook Ads to date, which is only five percent more than six months ago.

• That being said, favorability for Facebook Ads remains strong among those who have tried them, with 62 percent saying they would use Facebook Ads again, citing ease of use (62 percent) and the ability to start and stop campaigns (55 percent) as the top reasons for continuing.

• Of the 28 percent who say they wouldn’t use Facebook Ads again, nearly two-thirds report that they didn’t acquire new customers (66 percent).  But more merchants now also cite high costs and low click-through rates as reasons not to advertise with Facebook again: 41 percent of merchants said the ads were too expensive (up from 35 percent in June) and 37 percent reported low click-through rates (up from 29 percent in June).

• While Facebook Ads growth may have slowed, general Facebook marketing continues to be extremely popular among local merchants, with 70 percent of people using the social network for marketing, up from 66 percent in June. 

A big THANK YOU to all our merchant members who participated in the survey.  Stay tuned for more insights into small business marketing in the coming days!

Sincerely,

The MerchantCircle Team

New Data on Small Business Adoption of Facebook Ads and Group Deals (Facebook Deals, Google Offers, Groupon and LivingSocial)

New marketing trends data from MerchantCircle's 6th quarterly survey of small business owners across the U.S. reveals that Facebook Ads are gaining popularity among small businesses and provides new insights into the group deals market, including increased pressure on Groupon and LivingSocial from Facebook Deals and Google Offers.



Click here to download the full report.



Key insights from MerchantCircle's research include:



1. Facebook Ads are gaining popularity among local businesses.



• 66% of local merchants are using Facebook for marketing.



• 22% of local merchants have used Facebook Ads, and 65% would use Facebook Ads again.



• Top reasons to use again include ease of use (67%) and the ability to start and stop campaigns (65%).



2. Merchants are warming to group buying, but adoption is still slow.



• Just 9% of local merchants having offered a daily deal using a service like Groupon or LivingSocial.



• While three months ago, only 50% of merchants who had tried offering a group deal said they would do so again, 77% now say they would be willing to offer another daily deal.



• Top reasons for offering another deal include effectiveness in customer acquisition (58%), favorable deal structure (30%) and profitability of the deal (24%).



• Among those who wouldn't offer another daily deal, 42% said that it was not effective in customer acquisition, 25% said it was too costly and 24% said they lost money.



3. Small business familiarity with Facebook and Google may help them win market share from Groupon in daily deals market.



• 52% cited familiarity with Facebook and Google as a reason they might choose Facebook Deals or Google Offers over competitive daily deal offerings.



• Other reasons for choosing Facebook Deals include bigger audience size (26%) and better local targeting (21%).



• Those more likely to use Google Offers cited Google's bigger audience size (42%) and Google's brand reputation (34%) as top reasons for preferring Google.



4. Relevant Charts:

Adoption and repeat usage of Facebook Ads

Perception of Facebook Ads amongst users

Adoption and repeat usage of daily deals sites

Perception of Daily Deals sites amongst users

All for One and One for All: Bringing Facebook, Twitter and MerchantCircle together

If you're a Facebook fanatic, a Tweet-a-holic and a MerchantCircle member then you’ve been leveraging the most popular social media platforms to promote your business. Until now, any content you’ve built on MerchantCircle you’ve had to manually repost to both Facebook and Twitter. We know your time is precious, so we’ve streamlined the process to save you time.



We're excited to announce the integration of MerchantCircle with Twitter and Facebook enabling members to easily update all social media networks with one click directly from their MerchantCircle account.



Next time you post a blog, create a coupon, upload photos or send out a newsletter, we'll publish that information to your Twitter and Facebook accounts for all your followers and fans. It will also show up on our own MerchantCircle Facebook and Twitter feeds as well for added exposure. When you put in the work, we'll make sure that content lives on other popular social media channels where your customers and potential customers are listening.



MerchantCircle members can simply go to the "My account," "settings," "Twitter and Facebook" and easily link your accounts with one click.



Visit our YouTube channel to learn how you can leverage this new platform: http://www.youtube.com/user/MerchantCircle#p/c/0A2A5D8D0CCD83AB/0/dCgFXnSwANY

Survey: Small Business and Social Networks

An online survey, recently conducted by Internet2Go, through MerchantCircle's most engaged merchants (having created blogs, uploaded pictures, built coupons, newsletters, etc.) - using a sample size of less than 5% - showed some very interesting results on how quickly small businesses are adapting social media.

Granted, the merchants surveyed are already predisposed to our network, we believe the survey shows that merchants are rapidly beginning to understand and embrace social media like MerchantCircle, Facebook, and Twitter.

"We believe the behavior exhibited by these small business owners is a pre-cursor of things to come – that small business owners will increasingly forgo expensive advertising options and embrace publishing their unique content across various social media outlets," said Darren Waddell vice president and MerchantCircle. "While MerchantCircle typically focuses on helping businesses get online for the first time, we are excited to be an important part of the social media strategies employed by this new segment of merchants."

Other survey findings include the following:

- 79% of respondents report annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year with the 44% spending "less than $1,000" annually on advertising and marketing

- 80% of respondents have four or fewer employees

- Asked about their "biggest complaint" regarding online marketing the top two were "too costly" (26%) and "there's not enough time to do it well and still run a business" (15.9%)

- 75% said they monitor online reviews of their business. The most common method was by visiting specific review websites (47%) and by searching on their business name (44%)

- Despite its enormous popularity social media showed the biggest gap between SMB adoption and perceived effectiveness as a marketing platform.

You can read the entire press release here.

Sincerely,
Community Relations

Easy Website Creation

More than 55% of an estimated 15 million local businesses in the US do not have a website (SMI).

You can argue about the value of advertising in the Yellow Pages compared to advertising online all you want (which we've done often here), but there really is very little argument on the importance of a business website. It's often times the gateway between knowing whether a business is legitimate or not and, quite simply, to just check out some of the goods being offered.

While more than 75% of our 550,000 merchants use their MerchantCircle listing as their only and main web presence, we decided to increase our advertising offerings even more to help merchants find more local customers. That's why today, we launched the web's first 'Instant Website' and domain name offering. With just the click of a button, you can pick a unique domain name and all of your MerchantCircle content is pulled to create your new website - instantly. There's no need for HTML experience, finding someone to host it, transferring the domain name - it's the easiest and pain-free method on the web.

Take for instance what Damian McAllister of The Falk Company in Fargo, ND says:

“I bought The Falk Company in 2004 and they had 60 customers nationwide for
their Camfo Crème with no web presence. Since putting my business on
MerchantCircle, I now have 300 customers, but I want to grow my business even
more. Having a domain name and website through MerchantCircle will help me out even more on search engines and it’s been an amazingly simple process.
Literally, I just clicked a button.”

Check out Damian's new website at http://www.camfocreme.com/ below:



Anytime Damian adds a new picture, builds a new coupon, or writes a new blog on his MerchantCircle listing, it automatically updates on his website. It's the equivalent of updating your Myspace page or Facebook profile. No need for any tech knowledge. It's really simple, easy, and quite addicting!

Enjoy,
Kevin L.
Community Relations

Forrester analyst Charlene Li calls MerchantCircle a "favorite"

Coming off a recent "60 Minutes" appearance where she discussed Facebook, Charlene Li (vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research) mentioned MerchantCircle during Tuesday's panel at Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University. Charlene calls MerchantCircle a "great model" and credits us with approaching the local search space from a "totally different perspective".

You can hear the fascinating panel discussion (note: MerchantCircle is discussed at 01:01:15 ) here.

Battle of the Kevin Leu's and What it Means to You

Alright, I've already been called narcissistic, so what have I got to lose? So at least several times a day, I Google my name - Kevin Leu - it's a good name. And for awhile I was running second in search results to some champion, child-prodigy flutist from San Diego. There were many nights when I hoped that he would give up the flute and do something more practical with his life, like gardening. Or maybe he could be like a normal kid and play video games all day long or other teenage activities like sitting in shopping carts while getting pushed at full speed into bushes.

Since this kid wasn't going anywhere, I started to think to myself, I have got to do something noteworthy so that I don't lose the battle of supremacy for the name, Kevin Leu. For example, can you imagine what it must have been like to be the other Howard Stern, Howard K.? I was not going to go through life as the other Kevin Leu; this was war!

Right off the bat, I had heard that linking to a site helps bring it up higher in search engine results. Linking is what I'm doing here, with my profile from my last job at Newscenter in Columbus, OH. It's when you create this link going from one website to another that apparently helps out these search results. So I did that a few times from this exact blog and waddya know? My Newscenter bio was starting to come up higher than that champion flutist.... I can't remember his name.

Well this wasn't half bad. I decided to create a blog recently off Blogger - an excellent resource (you can see my blog by clicking here), and start a company, Kevin Leu Productions and Public Relations (don't tell my bosses). Of course I used MerchantCircle to start my business presence on the web (you can see my business here), and I use our blog services as well to write about my business methods. One of the cool things that MerchantCircle lets you do is include all the links you have from any other websites. So I started to cross link all of them - my Myspace profile, my Linkedin profile, my Facebook profile, my blog, Silicon Valley Bachelor, and my MerchantCircle page.

One day later, I checked in and I was flabbergasted! I was now the top 4 results after I Googled my name and 5 of the top 10! I couldn't sleep that night for at least an hour (but then afterwards I slept very soundly, thanks for your concern). Man this was cool stuff. But now let me move on to you, (begrudgingly - I am narcissistic afterall). What this means is that by following some of the steps we lay out for you when you sign up on MerchantCircle, you too may be the most famous Kevin Leu....errrr, I mean the most popular business in local search results. Be on all the different sites that we list for you on your dashboard and link them together. Write blogs and fill in the keywords. And keep tabs on where you show up on Google. It's fun. Believe me - I do it several times a day.

Until next time, sincerely,

Kevin Leu
(The More Famous One)

A Look Back and Beyond

As we begin to approach the one year anniversary since our launch, I can't help but take a look back at all we've accomplished and what's still in store. My co-founder, Wayne Yamamoto, and I started MerchantCircle with an idea that local merchants needed a venue on the web to reach out to customers and interact with one another. Almost 1 year and 120,000 merchants later, I can say with heartfelt conviction that it's truly been a joy to see our 'idea' and our merchants prosper.

From Healing Therapeutic Massage in Claremore, OK to Wedding Supplies Unlimited in Warwick, RI, our merchants are getting more than just hundreds and thousands of impressions to their MerchantCircle page - they're definitively getting new customers. From Kelvin A. Schroeder's August Jewelers in South Milwaukee, WI to Sims Plumbing Company inc in Des Moines, IA we're bringing new businesses to the web and giving those already with a web presence more tools to play with.

10 years ago, if you asked me to upload a picture onto the computer, I would have needed someone with a computer science degree to help me out. Today, thousands of dry cleaners and contractors are uploading pictures onto MerchantCircle without any help at all. The web began as a way of bringing the globe of information to every user. It's now bringing every user a way to connect to a globe of people, either thousands of miles away or right down the street.

Small businesses create about two thirds of all new American jobs. Not only do local merchants deserve to have the local internet brought to them, but they deserve to not be strong armed into paying thousands of dollars for a print listing in the Yellow Pages. Local merchants are the key to building vibrant local communities. That's why from main street in Los Angeles to main street in Fairhope, Alabama downtown rejuvenations and redevelopments can always be found centered around small businesses.

The future for small businesses on the web is now. At 120,000 merchants signed onto MerchantCircle, we know there's legitimacy in that statement. Merchants are signing on in our nation's biggest cities, but far more frequently in cities many of us have never heard of: Van Buren, AR, Cedar Lake, IN, Lutz, FL, Parker, SD, Mcdonough, GA, Priest River, ID, Atascadero, CA and I could go on.... We are going to bring the local internet to millions of merchants, because millions of merchants today, do not have a website of their own.

As a child growing up in Alabama I learned a lot of valuable lessons from my parents which I now pass onto my own two kids. The joy of this experience is a huge source of pride for me. As I read our MerchantCircle Forum, I gain a similar source of pride watching as merchants from California to North Carolina give tips to a merchant in Florida on coming up higher in search engine results or merchants offering each other tips on blogging.

The internet is fundamentally changing how local businesses operate. Consumers can now express themselves on the web to a legion of viewers. Venues to vent about businesses continue to increase. We realized the mounting concern for merchants to keep track of every place their business shows up and what people are saying about them. That's why we introduced a feature that scours the web for all content on a business so that a business owner can take proactive steps in either changing their business practices or moderating their online reputation.

We're not done evolving because we realize the needs of a business owner are not getting any easier. Many merchants are beginning to get themselves out in a number of different forums on the web. They're creating profiles on Myspace and even Facebook, both outstanding services to network and engage, and we want to make sure their personality on the web can be found on their MerchantCircle page. We're including a section where merchants can list and link their entire web presence for a customer to see.

Web companies like Craigslist, InsiderPages, StepUp/Intuit, and Topix have set the stage for future development and innovation in the local internet space. Craigslist was one of the first websites that gave people from all walks of life a voice on the web and an easy-to-use experience that influenced a generation of potential entrepreneurs. Insider Pages taught us the relevance of finding local businesses using the wisdom of friends and neighbors. StepUp and Intuit have been making life easier for business owners to manage their store online and off. While Topix is inspiring engaging and meaningful discussion on news and events that local people have made relevant. It's exciting to be a part of the local space these days.

We share a passion for local that we believe will get us to 3 million merchants in just a few years. We want to make sure we can always deliver 5 things to our merchant base:

- A voice for them on the local web
- The ability to manage their online reputation
- Simple and effective ways to tap into the value of web advertising
- A permanent presence on the web
- The ability to engage with new and current customers online

We've been fortunate in the fact we have a small cohesive team at MerchantCircle. Everyone in the office chooses to be here, not because they need the money or couldn't find another job, but because they want to be here and believe in what we're doing. My Co-founder and I, wrote our first blog post about MerchantCircle before we launched in November of 2005. You can read it here. Not much has changed, besides the fact that the idea turned into a reality.

So as I look back, I also look forward - A vision is only so grand before something must be done about it.

Sincerely,
Ben T. Smith, IV
Chairman and Co-founder, MerchantCircle

Cultural Learnings Make Benefit Glorious Company MerchantCircle

There's low-tech and then there's me; here at work they call me No-Tech. So if I get something, which isn't often - that means we're doing something right. We realize at MerchantCircle that the overwhelming majority of you did not grow up with the internet. In fact, this year's graduating high school class is the first generation of kids who can't remember being without the internet. (Don't ask me for my sources, I read it somewhere. Either that, or I dreamt it and it made a lot sense to me when I woke up.)

We're not trying to insult anyone, (unless it's me), we just realize that we have to make things easier to understand. We want you to build content on your pages so that you can appeal to customers. For that reason, we now have a getting started guide behind your Merchant Dashboard and just completed a video web tutorial that will teach you how to blog, upload pictures, build ads and coupons, and create a newsletter. I think we're pretty darn easy to use.

I was reading this article in Newsweek about a program called Y Combinator. One of the companies mentioned in the article was called Weebly. They bill themselves as the 'easiest way to create and publish a website online.' I was super stoked because I've always wanted my own website. The other thing that I took notice to, was they received funding from Ron Conway, a guy who also invested in us. For that, he's a visionary! But really, his early investments included Google and Ask Jeeves.

So I check out this site, and it took me nearly two hours to build my website. You can check out my site by clicking here. I probably could have finished quicker but the pages were slow to load and I still didn't figure out how to keep my profile picture from disappearing - which should explain the lack of a picture on my home page. I think Weebly is really cool though, just slow and definitely hard to navigate. I can't imagine what it would be like for someone new to the web. Even though they call me No-Tech, I'm still immersed somewhat in web navigation.

Websites that let you build a website are cool, but my learnings on the web still show that built-in networks, such as MySpace (friends, family), Facebook (high school and college students), LinkedIn (business professionals) or even MerchantCircle (business owners, entrepreneurs), are easier to use and much more engaging and relevant.

Sincerely,
Kevin
Community Relations