Digital Marketing Hurdles for Small Business Owners

Recently, GoDaddy teamed up with Alignable to survey more than 100,000 small business owners regarding digital pain points. Small business owners continue to struggle with the digital shift and are having a hard time with various digital marketing hurdles.

Here are some interesting facts from the survey, which we have also depicted in an infographic –

• More than half of small business owners use a generic email.
  • From Andrea Rowland, managing editor for GoDaddy’s small business community – “When you look at the top ten online factors that influence consumer trust, a business’ email ranks fourth,” says Rowland. “When people look for at business’ email they want it to include the business’ domain name.  It looks far more professional than one from gmail or yahoo.”
  • Statistically a domain based email increases deliverability and open rate
• Small Business fail to understand the importance of a strong domain name
  • Says Rowland, “You don’t have to be stuck with something you chose early on that doesn’t work for the business now. Maybe it’s too difficult to remember or it just doesn’t represent the business well. People take a lot of time thinking about the actual name of their business, but in conjunction with that they should also be looking at domain availability for it.”
• 51% of small business owners said they don’t sell online
  • U.S. Department of Commerce reported that online sales accounted for more than a third of all retail sales growth in 2015. Ecommerce sales last year totaled $341.7 billion, up more than 14 percent over 2014.  Thirty-one percent of those surveyed have a dedicated ecommerce site and 15 percent sell on marketplace platforms like Amazon and Etsy, either instead of or in addition to their own ecommerce website.
  • Many business owners report feeling overwhelmed by the choices of platforms they can use to sell products
    • Says Rowland, “that often freaks people out because they think it’s hard enough to manage a simple website without also incorporating money and shipping. That’s a scary thing for a lot of small business owners.”
• Nearly half of small business owners surveyed complained their website doesn’t show up in searches
  • Says Rowland, “If you leave your website idle, no one will find it. That was one major complaint from our survey, that small business owners feel no one is finding their website. You can change that with some basic on-page search engine optimization. You want to make sure the hours are correct, the business name and website address are all up to snuff. Spend ten minutes a week doing a quick check to make sure it’s updated. It’s well worth the time.”
• 34% of small business owners are unstatisfied with the amount of business the website generates

You can read the full survey here

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