Study shows common small businesses marketing practices

There's a lot of tradition involved in small businesses, whether a business has been passed down through the family, or owners have developed such a long-standing relationship with customers that the business has become an integral part of the local fiber. Considering this, it's no surprise to see a new survey shows most small businesses are sticking to traditional means of marketing while eschewing modern methods like social media.

The recent 2012 Small Business Marketing Survey released by Pitney Bowes found only 17 percent of the 750 respondents were engaged in social media. Small businesses are also ignoring other digital ways to market: A paltry 4 percent of owners responded they would use QR codes in the coming year.

Meanwhile, traditional avenues dominated most small business marketing strategies: 46 percent said email remains their primary channel; 22 percent favored phone; and 11 percent stuck to using direct mail as their preferred marketing choice.

Additionally, even though a number of businesses rely on traditional mail to deliver invoices and receipts to customers, many ignore the marketing potential of direct mail, possibly because of the recent focus on digital channels. Just 18 percent used mail for marketing purposes.

However, results also showed although small businesses were engaged in marketing, they were missing plenty of opportunities to advance and improve their strategy. Measuring a marketing campaign by way of response rates or click-through rates is central to optimizing a strategy, but an astonishingly high rate of small business marketers neglect the practice: 80 percent did not measure direct mail and 73 percent did not measure email.

Nearly half of the respondents - 49 percent - also indicated they stuck to a single-channel approach, despite the benefits of taking a multichannel approach.

"This phenomenon suggests that businesses are failing to take advantage of the power of integrated marketing campaigns," the report said. "If you are one of those small businesses, you have a real opportunity to increase response rates and steal a march on your competitors through a multichannel approach."