Constant Contact
pioneered marketing research for Main Street with do-it-yourself services like
online surveying and email marketing. In May of this year the company published
“Small
Businesses Then & Now,” a survey on the state of health of American
small business, five years after the beginning of the so-called Great
Recession.
The survey results don’t paint a pretty picture of small
business over the last five years. Nearly
two-thirds of all small businesses say running a business is harder today than
ever. How hard? Fifty-five percent of respondents say that the economy’s
delivered a gut kick to their businesses.
Nearly 50 percent say that the trying
to keep up with technology has made business difficult. Floral wire service
company Teleflora may be able to afford
state-of-the-art websites, but Flowers by Florence down on the corner may have
to rely on someone’s nephew to design its site.
Small business operators also say that they’re getting
rocked by competition, including large companies. I think there are a few
things that come into play here.
First, recessions mean pink slips. A lot of
them. Laid-off professionals, finding it hard to hook up another job, often
hang out a shingle or take their 401(k) money and start that business they’ve
always wanted to have. A fast-food franchise.
A consulting business. A landscaping service. Businesses that don’t
require any professional certification and are relatively easy to launch.
Second, as the recession and the slow recovery have dragged
on earnings, employees of large corporations got the word—if you want to keep
your job, get out there and open up new lines of business.
But this blog wouldn’t be the Lobster Shift if we didn’t
take a lobster’s contrarian view of an issue. Take if from the owner of one, a
well-established small business has a lot of advantages over large businesses
and Johnny-come-lately competitors.
According to the survey more than 50 percent of small businesses
say that as a small business they benefit from the loyalty of customers who
want to shop locally. Whether it’s a farmers market, hardware store, or community
bank, a small business has an advantage when it comes to customer loyalty.
Small business owners also live and work in the community. The
barber who cuts my hair works out at my gym, another local business. Somebody
referred me to his barber shop and I referred Dave to the local gym.
Sure, local businesses may charge more. But, in my business
time is money. If I can get in and out of the hardware store, the barber, the
gym or the bank in a minimum amount of time and get back to work, I’m happy.
Perhaps small businesses have one advantage they don’t even
know they have. It’s marketing. Large corporations have to go to New York or
Chicago to hire a branch of a global advertising and PR firm to tell them how
to sell to you.
Small business operators don’t have the money to do that and
probably wouldn’t know where to start if they did. But they do have the barber
shop, the bank, the gym and other places where people in a community get to
know each other. And that’s a huge advantage in business.
And when that fails there’s always Constant Contact.