Here’s the thing about small businesses marketing expectations. SMBs view telephone calls and in person visits as the most important indicators of a successful marketing campaign. If you’re not delivering these to small business clients, you should expect them to look elsewhere for their marketing services.

BIA/Kelsey has been tracking small business sentiment and spending patterns for more than a decade via our Local Commerce Monitor (LCM), an annual survey of 1,000 small businesses (SMBs) with less than 100 employees. BIA/Kelsey’s 2010 Local Commerce Monitor shows that:

1. 75 percent of SMBs view a telephone call to their business phone as excellent or good in terms of ROI (40 percent excellent).
2. 62 percent of SMBs view an in person visit to their business as excellent or good in terms of ROI (40 percent excellent).

However,

1. Only 50 percent view a click on a search ad as excellent or good in terms of ROI (11 percent excellent).
2. Only 30 percent view a click on a map for locations as excellent or good in terms of ROI (5 percent excellent).

The disparity between the reported excellent ROI scores is striking. Marketers understand that in interactive marketing, search clicks and map views are part of the consumer funnel. These actions eventually become telephone calls and in store visits.  You simply cannot have one without the other.

Yet small businesses just don’t believe this. They view actions that are closest to the cash register (calls and visits) as much more valuable. This means agencies that get credit for the calls and visits will receive the greater share of SMB marketing dollars.

Consider search engines in this context. If small businesses are buying paid search, but a third party is tracking and reporting the calls, the third party is the one that SMBs will believe is delivering the value. It doesn’t matter that the search engine in this example originated all the click traffic that subsequently became telephone calls.

This is why the last mile of lead tracking is so incredibly important. You may have to rely on a network for traffic, but if you can insert yourself into the end of the value chain, you’ll be able to satisfy the end clients.

This has obvious implications for resellers and agencies. Those that can build distribution and report results will be in the best position to maintain small business advertising accounts. This is true regardless of where the consumer traffic originates, whether it’s radio, television, search or a social network.

Want to learn more? Visit the BIA/Kelsey site.