Recently Hurwitz & Associates released a new survey of north American small businesses defined as 1-20 employees.

There were a few key takeaways, including growing businesses were increasing spending on marketing. And marketing online was a growing trend for new areas of investment. Although this is not probably surprising because for small businesses marketing online and marketing locally really helps the bottom line.

When asked about their marketing practices a high percentage said they were using online tools including social media and email marketing. In fact more than 70% use social media (blogs, social networking, online communities/forums) and just less than 50% use email marketing.

“Email marketing is one of the best ways for small businesses to attract and retain customers while also growing revenue, which were two of the top business challenges identified by small businesses in the survey,” said Steve Adams, vice president of marketing for Protus, the provider of Campaigner.  “The survey also showed the growing importance of email marketing and other Web-based tools in driving business growth.”

Download the full report: “Small Business Marketing Health Check”

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As you can see from the below chart prepared by MarketingSherpa sharing email content via social networks really does have benefits. In a recent survey to a sample of 1400, 80% agreed there were two clear reasons to encourage email subscribers to share your email content.

The clear winners for sharing emails through social networks were

1)  extending the reach of the email content

and

2) increasing your brand reputation and awareness.

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