A recent survey conducted by Constant Contact polled 917 decision makers and reports that the primary concerns of running a small business have largely remained unchanged in five years.

The report also describes about increased usage of marketing tools and challenges around finding new customers and retaining them. For example, there is almost equal split between businesses who find it easier, same or harder to find new customers.

One would have expected that adoption of new tools around email marketing and social media marketing (SoMe) will actually bring down these concerns. Or at least make it easier to address these concerns. However, customers are increasingly paying less attention to marketing and the competition is always increasing. On a positive side, customers are actually spending more money despite higher expectations.

I see this report as a huge opportunity for anyone focusing on small businesses. The core concerns of doing a business will always remain the same – new customers,  retain existing customers. The opportunity lies in finding ways to make it easier for these businesses to find new customers. What can you do as an online marketer to solve issues with customer paying lesser attention to marketing? Is it because the marketing efforts are not reaching the right audience? Is it because wrong tools are being used? How can you reduce time and money to do marketing? How can marketing for these business be done with a philosophy of “making hard things easy”?

You can find a better visualization of the report from MarketingProfs infographics.

Please share your thoughts and what challenges and opportunities you see as you go through the data.

How would such a report look like five years from now?