This is the key finding from a new survey from U.S. Bank released during Hispanic Heritage Month.

All told, half of Latino owners said they expected higher revenue this year compared with only about one third of owners overall, according to U.S. Bank’s first survey of Hispanic small business owners.

“Latinos are bullish on their companies’ ability to grow. They are much more optimistic about their likelihood of higher revenues compared to the average entrepreneur,” said Ross Carey, head of business banking at U.S. Bank, in a provided press release.

In other signs of Hispanic company growth compared to the national average, more Latinos said they tried or were able to borrow capital in the last six months (26% vs. 14%); were likely to increase their capital expenditures (55% vs. 40%), and were planning to hire (43% vs. 26%).

The report summary notes that seventy percent of Hispanic small business owners are actively marketing to millennial customers compared with 48 percent of all business owners surveyed.

To review the complete survey summary, click here.

The post New Survey Shows That Latino Small-Business Owners Expect Higher Revenue appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are moving rapidly toward adopting mobile apps, according to the research in question from Clutch, a research, ratings, and reviews platform for business services.

Currently, 42% of SMBs have built their own mobile app, but Clutch’s survey indicates that SMBs increasingly view them as a worthwhile tool to improve business operations and return on investment.

Two-thirds (67%) of SMBs surveyed said they plan on having a mobile app by the end of 2017, a benchmark growth rate of over 50% over the course of the year.

SMBs gave various reasons for building mobile apps as well as identified features they particularly value. Most of those features directly relate to mobile apps’ impact on improving business, particularly their ability to provide solid return on investment (ROI).

“People won’t just go download your app because your business has an app,” said Cameron Banga, Project Manager and Co-Founder of 9magnets, a mobile app development company. “I think businesses are finding that having an app doesn’t increase sales, but the customer service experience on mobile is definitely increasing customer satisfaction.”

All told, there’s much more to the report, which can be accessed in full here.

The post Mobile Apps Viewed by More Small Businesses as a ‘Best Practice for Serving Customers’ appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The survey, commissioned by Staples and conducted by Wakefield Research, discovered that 85% of American small business owners are “optimistic” about the small business climate in the new year, while 67% think business tax reform should be the top policy priority for 2017.

“Signaling further short- and long-term positivity, 67% of respondents plan to hire employees in 2017, while 91% would be likely to encourage their children to start their own business given the current state of the small business environment,” reads a provided report summary.

Among the report’s key findings:

• 97% of small business owners plan to increase investment in their companies in 2017
• 72% plan to increase staff compensation in 2017
• 93% believe running your own business is the best kind of job satisfaction there is

“We’ve been a small business champion for more than 30 years, and are pleased that small business owners are hopeful and confident as we head into the new year,” said Frank P. Bifulco, Jr., executive vice president global marketing, Staples. “We conducted the survey to better understand the pulse of small business owners and to further identify those priority product and service areas in which we can help our customers achieve success in 2017.”

The post Marketers Take Note: Staples Survey Sees Small Business Optimism appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Zapier allows users to easily connect web applications they already rely on in order to automate a business’ critical tasks, the company says.

In short, the company asserts that using Zapier eliminates the need for third-party app developers to create SaaS integrations or build custom software to integrate common workflows between applications.

Users are required to have an active subscription to Act! Premium in order to create meaningful integrations between Act! Premium and applications like Slack, Wufoo, PayPal, and SurveyMonkey using Zapier within the Act! Connect platform.

“Our customers rely on Act! to stay organized and to know the next best step to take with their customers,” said Lorcan Malone, vice president and COO at Swiftpage. “Zapier allows them to automate time-consuming tasks that are critical to running their businesses, making them more productive, and giving them more time to focus on activities that create revenue.”

The post Swiftpage Rolls Out New Offering for Mobile Minded Businesses appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to GeoMarketing, Verve’s self-serve mobile ad platform “lets SMBs select audience targeting segments that can be adjusted based on location and the creative assets and messaging, all of which is directed by a range of consumer data.”

The team at Verve believes that the new offering will help small businesses get more bang for their limited marketing bucks.

“Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and spend $50B on local media each year,” says Verve CEO Nada Stirratt. “Through the power of our new platform, Verve is helping SMBs get the most of out of their precious marketing dollars, executing seamless location-based mobile marketing campaigns.”

To learn more about Verve and what the company is up to, click here.

The post Verve Unveils Self-Serve Location Targeting Platform appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Among the group of SMBs that had or planned to create a website, just 33 percent had a mobile-optimized site in September 2015,” reports eMarketer. “That amounts to 24.4 percent of the overall respondent base. But a year ago, mobile sites were even more rare: 26 percent of SMBs with a website had a site optimized for mobile.”

Even non-optimized websites are not a universal given.

Research from RBC Capital Markets conducted in September, 2015 indicates that 64 percent of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses had a professional website for their business. Another 10 percent planned to create one.

“That represented mixed progress since the prior year, when just 60 percent had a site, but 17 percent planned to create one,” noted eMarketer.

Other issues? Updating them, of course.

Bottom line: it’s major brands that have made major mobile progress. Smaller companies? Not so much.

“Though small-business owners are keen on using mobile themselves, Capital One Spark Business found in April, 2015 that just 6 percent of U.S. small businesses had invested in mobile for marketing.”

It’s just a matter of time until SMBs catch up … but the clock is ticking. Those smaller firms need mobile as much as the big guys now.

The post SMBs Getting More Mobile, But Only 33 Percent Have Mobile-Optimized Website appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

While it’s still a nascent market, vendors looking to push SMBs to take the next step in technology must take their wants and needs into consideration when reaching out, according to recent research.

In fact, June, 2015 polling by SMB Group showed that “figuring out how different technology solutions could help their businesses was the leading tech challenge cited by U.S. small businesses.”

And about half (42 percent) of SMBs made that observation.

“This was the third-biggest challenge among respondents from medium-sized businesses, cited by 31 percent; among this group, implementing new solutions and upgrades was the leading issue (40 percent),” reported eMarketer. “Around two-thirds of respondents from each group said securing or protecting their companies from threats was a challenge — a lingering issue for small businesses.”

What else is an issue?

“Containing technology costs rounded out the top three small-business challenges,” according to eMarketer.

How can vendors improve the purchasing experience?

A majority of respondents need vendors to more clearly articulate how their solutions will help improve specific business goals, as well as provide a consistent experience across channels.

The post The Plight of SMBs and Technology Vendors: What Do Those Businesses Want? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Small biz owners (SBOs) and their phones are “attached at the hip” — sometimes literally.

The latest research from Manta showed that 80.5 percent of U.S. SBOs use their mobile devices for business once a day or more. Almost 25.3 percent used these once an hour, 11 percent between three and five times daily, and 17.3 percent nearly 10 times a day.

“All of that mobile time cuts into computer time,” suggests eMarketer. “Nearly 80 percent of SBOs used their mobile devices while at work in front of their PCs. The main reason for doing so was to check personal messages, cited by 48 percent of respondents. Surprisingly, 25 percent said their email came in faster on their mobile devices.”

Other stats showed only 12 percent admitted to being addicts and 8 percent multiscreened because they preferred using their mobiles over a computer. Another 7 percent said they were often distracted by the alerts from social and gaming apps.

How do SBOs use their phones for business? Most indicated they use mobile devices to schedule appointments and communicate with customers, cited by 55.5 percent.

“Notes and to-do lists as well as social media monitoring and participation were used by nearly three in 10, while a quarter conducted business-related banking,” reports eMarketer. “Expense and inventory management were much less common, as were accounting and drafting text-heavy documents and presentations.”

Manta’s research also indicated SBOs are frequent app users. About half access mobile apps for business between two and three times a day.

The post Mobile Rocks the Small-Business World, Too; 8 in 10 Use Device At Least Once a Day appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Anyone seeking info on businesses in their local communities can be both amazed — and stymied — by the dearth of outreach.

Clutch’s survey shows that “nearly half of small businesses do not actively use social media, and 25 percent claim that they are unlikely to use social media in the future.”

What about those small businesses that do use social media outreach?

“Companies that are active on social media are seemingly finding value, with roughly one-third of those planning to increase their social media resources in 2015,” notes Clutch.

Missing out on the potential of social media is a big deal, according to industry analysts.

“If small businesses want to compete, they have to be participating in social media,” asserted Mike Rosa, director of marketing at online marketing agency 180Fusion. “More and more, people are becoming a little bit wary of traditional advertising. They’re much more likely to take referrals and reviews from people that they know and trust, which can be found on social media.”

Yet another commenter on the Clutch survey — John Jantsch, the founder of Duct Tape Marketing — says small businesses that invest in social media have much to gain.

“You use some of these [social media] tools effectively and, all of a sudden, you’re not selling anymore, and you’re not convincing people whether or not they should buy from you. You become the option of choice by building a brand, and building authority, and being seen as an expert,” Jantsch asserts. “I think that’s available to anybody, regardless of where they’re starting and regardless of the size of their business.”

The post Clutch Survey: Are Small Businesses Missing the Boat on Social Media Marketing? (Plot Spoiler: YES) appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The survey captures the economic sentiment of more than 10,000 small businesses nationwide on a monthly basis.

The U.S. Economic Census shows that over 90% of small businesses in the United States have five employees or fewer.

So what does the data show? According to the report summary, it shows “a slow and steady recovery among America’s smallest businesses.”

Key data points indicate that:

• Overall sentiment has risen 5 points (out of a scale of 100) over the last year.
• Employers are generally feeling better about the economy than business owners who operate alone – there was a consistent 4 point spread between the two groups.

• Small business owners are overwhelmingly optimistic about the future, consistently ranking their expectations of their future financial situation 15 to 20 points higher than their financial situation today.

Want to know more? Check out the full survey results here.

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