violation hulda: Who Supports Small Business? Survey Says Facebook, Not Etsy

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Who Supports Small Business? Survey Says Facebook, Not Etsy

There?s not usually a long line at the window where you leave compliments for Facebook, but in a recent survey by Manta, they did alright.

Manta asked 1,087 small business owners which online marketplaces offered them the most support. Facebook came out on top with 29% of the vote. Granted, that?s not a huge slice but the fact that anybody thought Facebook was supportive of small businesses is pretty amazing.

What?s more amazing is the site that landed on the bottom ? Etsy. This site is made up entirely of artists, crafters and vintage dealers, many of which are one-man operations. But 47% of those surveyed said they thought the site was the least supportive of small business owners. Ouch.

You know who else landed on the bottom? eBay, Amazon and Groupon!

Groupon, the one time darling of the daily deal, is still taking hard hits from unhappy customers. As this slice from the Manta infographic shows, only 3% of businesses saw repeat customers after running a deal. 11% said they actually lost money. Bloomberg Businessweek has more details on that. The big number here is the 82% who said they haven?t and they won?t when it comes to daily deals.

So what do you think? Has that trend finally come to an end or is there still some life left in old engine?

I also found the bottom half of this graphic to be fascinating. Look at the ratio of In-store to Online expectations. If you add in the small slices which are all portions of the online pie, it?s nearly half and half. Looking at this, I don?t know how one-off retail locations stay in business. If you don?t have an online presence you perish and that?s sad.

Manta offered up some tips to help small business owners get through this holiday season. Here are my two favorites and I?ll send you back to them for the rest.

Get Creative, but Keep Your Stress Level In-Check: The holidays are demanding enough as it is, and coming up with a new pie-in-the-sky mobile app or daily-deal promotion at the last minute might suck up hours of your time that could be better spent with your customers. Use your creative juices to build a cool and appealing window display, and put your smartphone to use by taking pictures of new merchandise to post online.

Network to Support Your Fellow Business Owners and Yourself at the Same Time: Pull together a group of three or four other stores in your community to run some cross-store coupon or discount campaigns. Work out a system so each shop is handing out a coupon for another shop in your group each week, and then switch it up. This type of ?progressive? couponing is a great way to drive new customers into your store.

Since we know how much you love a colorful infographic, here it is in full: