BtoB magazine, in conjunction with Oracle/Eloqua, recently released SMBs: Maximizing Synergies in Technology, Branding and Customer Interaction. The research provides interesting insight into how small and mid-sized businesses are using inbound marketing compared to enterprise companies. The findings reflect what I'm seeing in the marketplace and show how technological advances have leveled the playing field for SMB companies against their enterprise competition. In the article below, we'll highlight some of the key findings of the study to provide a benchmark against which you can evaluate your inbound marketing efforts.

SMBs identify email marketing as an important inbound marketing activity

71% of SMBs surveyed identified email marketing as essential to their inbound marketing efforts. This is not surprising, because email marketing is the most effective lead generation channel for SMB companies. So what does this mean to you? First of all, it indicates that you have a lot of competition with your email marketing efforts. With the abundance of marketing emails in your prospect's inboxes, it's important to use email marketing best practices to stand out from the competition. Some of the best practices that help your emails get delivered, opened and clicked include:

• Segmentation: segment your marketing list so that you can send targeted emails that resonate with your audience. For example, if you target different industries, it makes sense to segment your contacts by industry and send each group industry-specific emails. You should also segment by factors such as job title/role and company size. Internet marketing software company HubSpot found that targeting emails by persona (i.e. - segmenting) increase click-through rates by 16%.
• Don't spam!: sending marketing emails to people who haven't opted to receive them is not only rude, it just might put you out of compliance with CAN-SPAM legislation that governs email marketing. Make sure the people you're emailing want to receive your content. The first thing to do is make sure it's interesting and relevant to your audience. Even if people have opted in to your marketing, stop sending them email if they're not opening them.

Rounding out the top 5 tactics that SMBs consider important are webinars (35%), social media (34%), PR/blogs/case studies (34%) and search engine optimization (33%).

Factors transforming how SMBs market

64% of respondents identified the ability to track ROI as a transformative factor in their marketing approach. Inbound marketing gives SMBs the opportunity to measure all of their efforts, so they're not able to just track ROI as a whole, but also to track ROI by source. Is email marketing producing more leads and customers than social media marketing? Which blog are driving the highest lead conversion rates? These questions and many more are can be answered with inbound marketing analytics. This lets SMBs not only track ROI, but to direct their marketing spend to the tactics that produce the highest return.

The next 3 factors identified (demand/lead generation (53%), social media (52%) and shift of power from brand to customer (45%)) are all related to how businesses and consumers buy today. The Corporate Executive Board found that buyers complete 57% of their sales process before ever contacting a sales person. Product specifications, pricing and educational information are all available onlline (or should be!) Buyers don't need to talk to a salesperson to get the information they need to help their decision-making process. What I take out of this information is that 45% to 53% of SMBs have adapted their marketing to the modern buying process. If you do the math, you find that 47% to 55% of SMBs have not adapted to the modern buying process! If you're in the latter group, I highly recommend that you evaluate an inbound marketing approach in your 2014 growth strategy.

What SMBs look for in their marketing vendors

Unlike their enterprise competition, most SMB companies don't have internal resources to perform non-core business functions. Accordingly, they rely on third-party vendors that understand their businesses to round out their businesses. SMBs outsource their inbound marketing more frequently than enterprise companies. Here are the factors that SMBs identified as important for their vendors to provide:

1. Communicate value by metrics (55%)
2. Easy-to-use software (51%)
3. Easy to do business with (41%)
4. Quick ROI on my investment (35%)

Because of budget constraints for many SMBs, the ability to show ROI for what the vendor provides is very important.

Shocker - SMBs identify increased sales as the desired outcome of inbound marketing

72% of SMBs identified increased sales as the desired outcome of adopting an inbound marketing approach. The next most important outcome, senior management support, was identified by 32% of SMBs. The implication of this is clear: inbound marketing is not an end in itself, but a means to produce more sales. That's why we've consistently advocated an integrated marketing approach that blends marketing, salea and customer service together to sync with the modern buying process.

Summary

The BtoB/Eloqua research shows that SMB companies are increasingly using inbound marketing to fuel their growth efforts. If you're an SMB company and you're not using inbound marketing, you risk falling behind your competitors and being overtaken by new entrants into your market. Review this study as part of your 2014 growth planning to identify areas for improvement.