Small Business Attitudes and Outlook Survey, by Constant Contact Inc. reported that 79% of the SMEs are confident about the neutral outlook of US economy for the next 12 months. 52% of the respondents said that they were confident that their businesses will show a moderate growth in 2010, while 18% of them were confident of significant growth. 26% of the respondents felt that the government was unsupportive for their businesses, and the same number were neutral about the government’s support, while 23% found moderately unsupportive. 19.5% found it moderately supportive.
The other reports of the survey revealed various findings. On being asked which industry best suits the small businesses, the trend was as follows: retail (16.3%), independent consultants (6.9%), professional services or legal & accounting (6.6%), PR, marketing, Advertising agencies (5.2%).
The respondents found Word of Mouth (98.0%), Events (77.3%), Print Advertising (52.3%) and Email Marketing (89.4%) as the important means for finding new customers.
The order of priority by the businesses for marketing their product or service, is Website (91%), Online Advertising (42%), Email Marketing (84%), Blogs (33%), Twitter (27%), Facebook (45%), LinkedIn (35%), MySpace (14%), YouTube (18%)