Market Statistics for SMBs

• 77% of US SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) used online for advertising in August 2009, compared with just 69% that used traditional media.¹

• In 2007, 50% of online users performed searches for local businesses. In 2008, 82% of online users searched locally. Today this number exceeds 97%! ²

• In August 2009, 36.8% of SMBs’ advertising budgets went toward online. That was up more than 14 percentage points over the prior year. ³

• Local search queries outpaced the growth of overall Web search. Searches for local businesses, products, or services grew 58% in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches. By comparison, overall U.S. Web core searches grew at a much smaller rate of 21% year-over-year, nearing 137 billion searches by the end of 2008. ⁴

• 12% of all searches are now for local products and services.⁵

• 75% of all new business comes from online sources and 93% of potential new customers begin searching local products and services with a search engine.

• According to Borrell Associates, there were more than 15 million businesses with less than 50 employees in the United States, of which more than three million spent an average of $1,200 per month on advertising. Borrell Associates estimates total local advertising spend for U.S. SMBs at $101.5 billion.⁶

• There are 2.6 billion local searches performed each month on average.⁷

IN SUMMARY...

• 75% of all new customers come from online.

• 93% of these customers begin their search with a search engine.

• 80% is Google’s share of local paid search

Well over ½ of your whole marketing campaign could come from being on Google full time!

¹ The Kelsey Group and ConStat
² The Kelsey Group
³ Barnes, Chase and Davis
⁴ Comscore
⁵ Comscore/Yellow Pages
⁶ Borrell Associates
⁷ Internet Local Marketing