Developed APAC SMBs Will Spend More Than US$7.6B To Build Their Online Presence in 2009

SMBs in Australia, Korea and Japan will spend US$6 billion on their websites, and at least US$1.6 billion in online advertising in 2009, says AMI

SMBs in Australia, Korea and Japan are on track to spend more than US$7.6 billion on web hosting, development and maintenance, and online advertising in 2009. In these large and developed APAC countries, SMB spending on building the online presence is higher and growing faster than SMB spending on Internet access.

In 2008, 13% of SMBs in Australia, Japan, and Korea use the Internet to advertise, spending around US$1.6 billion. “The market is growing fast because more customers are going online and businesses are following in their footsteps. Besides, the global crisis is forcing SMBs to find a cheaper and better way to reach their customers, and that is what online advertising offers. We are forecasting higher online advertising spending by SMBs this year,” says Dr. Vu-Thanh Nguyen, Singapore-based research analyst at AMI-Partners.

Currently, the top three online marketing methods among SMBs in these markets are email marketing, blogs, and online keywords. Although social networks like Facebook and Twitter are getting a lot of attention, less than 2% of SMBs in Australia, Japan, and Korea use them to advertise their products and services. SMBs across countries and industries also prefer different types of advertising channels. For example, webcasts and blogs are more popular in Japan than in Australia and Korea. Within Japan, nearly a third of SMBs in the retail industry use blogs to advertise, but blogs are less popular among SMBs in the service vertical.

Web hosting, development and maintenance spending by Australia, Korea and Japan SMBs will reach approximately US$6 billion in 2009, and is projected to grow to US$8 billion in 2013. “For many SMBs, having a decent website is as essential as, if not more important than, having a nice physical office. These days, customers will check out a company on the Internet first before deciding to call or buy anything. SMBs, therefore, will have to make sure that first impressions are good,” says Vu-Thanh.

SMBs themselves also rely on the Internet to gather information for purchasing decisions. IT-oriented websites and search engines, for example, are among the top five information sources of IT decision makers across Australia, Japan, and Korea. However, the top information source for a majority of SMBs is still traditional (print) newspapers and magazines. “There is simply too much noise on the Internet. Established newspapers and magazines have better quality checking and editing processes, and therefore, tend to be more professional and reliable,” Dr. Nguyen continues. “The Internet is very important because it helps to send messages out to a wider and more targeted audience. It makes messages more accessible. But in the end, quality is what counts, not just accessibility.”

For now, traditional media is still the most popular advertising channel among SMBs in Australia, Japan, and Korea. Many SMBs in these large and developed APAC countries continue to advertise via newspapers and magazines, as well as on telephone directories, brochures and flyers.

These findings are highlights from a new global survey by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners. In this article, SMBs are defined as small and medium businesses with less than 1,000 employees and at least one PC.

Related Studies

Challenging economic times typically produce a flight to quality. As the economic crisis wears on, SMBs are becoming increasingly concerned with retaining current customers and finding new customers in a more targeted and cost-effective manner. AMI-Partners’ 2009 Developed Asia-Pacific SMBs Transition to Online Marketing - Internet Access, Web Hosting, E-Commerce and Online Marketing addresses how SMBs are using the Internet in the current environment to aide in these activities. It begins with higher-level market opportunity, then moves to changes and impacts to the market, and then provides data and analysis pertaining to Internet access, website usage, and usage of online marketing media. This report provides decision-makers critical information, e.g., which are the most popular Internet access technologies among SMBs, how SMBs are hosting their websites, what are their expectations and goals, how and where SMBs are conducting e-commerce, where and how much SMBs are spending to advertise their services and products.

Based on AMI-Partners’ annual and quarterly surveys of SMBs across the world, AMI studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. Our data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SMB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call Venu Reddy at [phone], e-mail [e-mail], or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and “go-to-market” solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications, and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.

Contacts:

AMI-Partners
Quoted Analyst:
Dr. Vu-Thanh Nguyen, (65) 6220 5535 ext 111
[e-mail]
or
Media Relations:
In US (New York):
Nancy Carty, 212-944 5100 ext 581
[e-mail]
or
In EU (London):
Claudia Jachtmann, (44) 208 987 2756
[e-mail]
or
In Asia Pacific (Singapore):
Matthew Foo, (65) 6220 5535 ext 101
[e-mail]
or
In India (Kolkata):
Jyoti Singh, (91) 33 4003 3093 ext 223
[e-mail]
or
In India (Bangalore):
Rati Ghose, (91) 80 4148 2661 ext 36
[e-mail]
or
In China (Shanghai):
Clara Chua, (86) 21 6390 6298
[e-mail]