BIA/Kelsey has put out a new U.S. spending forecast, saying that small and medium-sized businesses will continue the recent trend of shifting their marketing budgets to digital advertising, performance-based platforms and customer retention business solutions over the next five years.
The daily deals space is getting quite interesting, and is one that local businesses ought to pay attention to. For one, Facebook announced that it is shutting down its Deals service after four months. They are, however, keeping check-in deals, after changing the way Facebook Places works.
comScore has published a new white paper looking at Facebook in a way the firm says it has been unable to do before, using a new platform it has to measure social media. The new techniques are evidently over a year in the making. They are designed to analyze the brand messages that appear in the News Feed on Facebook, and on the profile pages of businesses, to identify the fans of a brand and the friends of those fans.
Before deciding to buy recommended products or services, the majority (81%) of Americans will go online to verify recommendations, specifically through researching product/service information (61%), reading user reviews (55%) or searching ratings websites (43%), according to a new report by marketing firm Cone."Consumers have become extremely savvy about how brands are marketing to them," said Bill Fleishman, Cone's president and head of Brand Marketing.
This week Apple revealed that iPad sales have surpassed two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3rd. Until last week, it had only been available in the U.S. On Friday, the company began shipping units to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.
Intuit, the maker of such financial software as Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax, has released its monthly Small Business Employment Index report for May. The report is based on aggregate and anonymous online employment data from about 50,000 small business employers, each with less than 20 employees, which use Intuit's Online Payroll software.
Millennial Media released its S.M.A.R.T. (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting) report for the US, revealing some interesting statistics that businesses should be interested in as mobile Internet use continues to accelerate. Some key findings:- The number of users who access the Mobile Web increased by around 2% and is now over 73 million- Retail and Restaurants have seen in increase in mobile advertising and have entered the top 10 of mobile ad verticals
comScore recently released its Q1 2010 U.S. retail e-commerce sales estimates. The firm found that online retail spending neared $34 billion for the quarter, a 10 percent increase compared to last year. Are you finding new ways to reach customers online? Comment here.
FedEx Office released the results from its annual Signs of the Times national small business survey, finding that small business owners are "eager to lead the charge" out of the recession. According to the results, about three quarters (72%) say they'll be the driving force behind the U.S. economic recovery this year. 51% said their own businesses have already or will fully recover by the end of the year.
Citibank put out a new report indicating that most small businesses still are not leveraging the social media tools available to them, despite the "relentless buzz" around them. Are you ignoring social media? Tell us why.
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