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Business & Tech

Staples: Small Businesses Want More Marketing Money

Surveys find mixed mood among small business owners.

Though President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to highlight their importance to the national economy, recent surveys intended to gauge the economic outlook of the country's small business owners found a decidedly mixed mood.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that 85 percent of small business owners it surveyed believe the country is off on the wrong track. A Pepperdine University business school study conducted at about the same time, however, found that 54 percent of small business owners were "more confident" or "somewhat more confident" in their business growth prospects for 2012.

Respondents to the Staples National Small Business Survey, meanwhile, were still more upbeat. Staples, which has found that seven out of 10 small business owners are optimistic about the future.

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The Staples study also indicated that more than half of small business owners would do more advertising and marketing if they were able to budget money for that purpose. Entrepreneurs looking for a marketing push might want to consider the company's "Give Your Small Business the Push It Needs" contest, which offers five winning small businesses the chance to win 15 seconds of screen time in a 30-second Staples ad that would run in their local market.

“Staples wanted to do something unique to support small businesses in their local markets," said John Giusti, vice president of small business marketing at Staples.

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Staples values each prize at $50,000, a hefty sum of cash for small businesses that are having a much harder time getting credit today than they were four years ago.

Other results from the Staples study: 

  • Two-thirds (66 percent) of small business owners have some type of marketing and advertising budget for 2012. Among those small business owners, budgets average just more than $2,000.
  • Sixty percent of small business owners changed their sales and marketing efforts as a direct result of the U.S. economy. Results showed small business owners are using less traditional media (29 percent) and more viral marketing and word-of-mouth (33 percent) compared to last year.

Some of the discrepancies in entrepreneurial outlook may be a result of variations in the surveys' definitions of "small business." While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey defines a small business as a company with fewer than 500 employees and revenue of no more than $25 million, the Staples survey targeted businesses with no more than 20 employees.

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