According to the MerchantCircle Merchant Confidence Index (MCI) survey, the total Q1 2011 MCI score is 5.1% higher than a year earlier. The largest contributor to its growth is respondents’ expectations for sales revenue growth during the next three months.
| Merchant Confidence Index | ||
| Expectation | Average Response on 1-5 Scale | % Change vs. Feb 2010 |
| Rate today’s economy compared to past 12 months | 3.00 | +11.5% |
| Change in sales revenue over next three months | 3.52 | + 4.8 |
| Change in marketing/advertising expenditures over next three months | 3.07 | +2.3 |
| Change in headcount over next three months | 3.13 | +2.6 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | ||
More than four in 10 small and local business owners expect sales revenues to improve somewhat in the next three months. 13% expect significant improvement, a combined 57% of respondents anticipating some sort of rise in short-term sales revenues.
| Expectations for the future (How do you expect your sales revenues to change over the next three months?) | |
| Expectation | % of Respondents |
| Improve significantly | 12.9% |
| Improve somewhat | 44.0 |
| Remain relatively the same | 28.9 |
| Decline somewhat | 10.3 |
| Decline significantly | 3.9 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
The factor with the highest year-over-year growth rate is respondents’ rating of today’s economy compared to 12 months ago, which improved 11.8% to 15%.
| State of the U.S. Economy (How would you rate today’s economy compared to the past twelve months?) | |
| Expectation | % of Respondents |
| Significantly improved | 3.0% |
| Somewhat improved | 34.6 |
| About the same | 32.3 |
| Somewhat weaker | 19.6 |
| Much weaker | 10.5 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
About six in 10 small and local businesses anticipate their marketing expenditures to remain relatively the same during the next three months. Only 2% expect them to increase significantly, while less than 5% expect them to decline significantly.
| Marketing expenditures (How do you expect your marketing/advertising expenditures to change over the next three months?) | |
| Expectation | % of Respondents |
| Increase significantly | 2.1% |
| Increase somewhat | 23.2 |
| Remain the same | 59.1 |
| Decline somewhat | 10.9 |
| Decline significantly | 4.7 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
When asked about their usage of a variety of online marketing tools and channels, 70% of respondents said they are currently using Facebook. This makes Facebook the most used of any marketing tool covered by the survey, closely followed by Google. LinkedIn comes in third. Generally speaking, the lower the current usage rate of a tool, the higher its planned usage rate, suggesting small and local businesses are open to a wide variety of online marketing channels.
| Adoption of specific online marketing services (Are you promoting your business with the following websites/services? % of Respondents) | ||||
| Site/Service | Promoting | Not Promoting | Not Yet, But Plan To | Not Familiar |
| 70.3% | 20.1% | 8.9% | 0.7% | |
| 66.2 | 25.8 | 7.0 | 0.9 | |
| 58.2 | 29.2 | 7.0 | 5.7 | |
| Yahoo! | 49.2 | 41.7 | 7.8 | 1.3 |
| Yahoo! Local | 45.0 | 41.3 | 8.5 | 5.2 |
| 39.8 | 48.8 | 9.5 | 2.0 | |
| Citysearch | 39.7 | 43.6 | 7.5 | 9.2 |
| Yellowbook | 39.3 | 51.4 | 5.4 | 3.8 |
| Superpages.com | 33.3 | 51.3 | 5.8 | 9.6 |
| Bing | 33.2 | 52.6 | 10.3 | 3.8 |
| YouTube | 26.8 | 54.8 | 16.4 | 2.1 |
| MySpace | 19.2 | 70.1 | 7.7 | 2.9 |
| Groupon | 6.6 | 66.1 | 13.0 | 14.3 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | ||||
And, with regard to expectations of marketing activity in the next three months, only 15% see a decline.
| Marketing expenditures (How do you expect your marketing/advertising expenditures to change over the next three months?) | |
| Expectation | % of Respondents |
| Increase significantly | 2.1% |
| Increase somewhat | 23.2 |
| Remain the same | 59.1 |
| Decline somewhat | 10.9 |
| Decline significantly | 4.7 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
The online survey was to a random sample of 1.6 million local business owners, and There were 8,456 total responses from local business owners across the United States. Overall, about three fourths of the respondents’ budgets for marketing are below $5,000.
| Annual Ad/Marketing Budget | |
| Budget (x000) | % of Respondents |
| <$1.0 | 34.1% |
| 1-2.5 | 21.7 |
| 2.5-5.0 | 16.4 |
| 5.0-7.5 | 8.0 |
| 7.5-10.0 | 6.8 |
| >10.0 <25.0 | 7.7 |
| >25.0 <50.0 | 2.6 |
| >50.0 | 2.8 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
| The Top Three Most Effective Marketing Or Advertising Methods The Responding Business Uses Or Has Used | |
| Most Effective Channel | % of Respondents |
| Search engine marketing | 40.2% |
| Profile on social network | 36.7 |
| Email marketing | 35.8 |
| Other online methods | 34.4 |
| Coupons or direct mail | 23.9 |
| Print newspaper | 19.7 |
| Online yellow pages | 17.6 |
| Blog | 17.0 |
| Banner/display ad | 9.7 |
| Local radio | 7.6 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
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