Marketing to Small SMBS with Sonal Gandhi

In the past, not much was known about very small businesses—aka, micro-businesses—despite the fact that a lot of marketers were trying to reach them. For insight on how channel partners can find and target these potential customers,

ChannelProManaging Editor Cecilia Galvin spoke with Sonal Gandhi, an analyst at JupiterResearch.

ChannelPro: What are micro-businesses, and how big is the market they represent?
Gandhi: Micro-businesses are defined as those with fewer than five employees, and they include sole proprietorships, or as the census bureau defines them, “nonemployers.”

These businesses make up 91 percent of the online small business community. By online we mean that the decision makers for these businesses have access to the Internet—whether from home or from their place of work—and they do it on a somewhat regular basis, meaning monthly or more frequently.

These decision makers spend, on average, 17 hours a week on the Internet, whereas executives from businesses with five to 100 employees spend only 10 hours. They are also spending more time online than they are on any other media, and they have a higher penetration level than executives from larger businesses when it comes to gathering news or information about products and performing online transactions such as bill paying or purchasing.