There Goes the Little Man?

One of my favorite country sounds is Alan Jackson's "Little Man." The song serves as a reminder of the small businesses that used to be the place to go for any and all of your needs...you remember, back before mega-stores and national chains came in and took over. I was browsing through Jupiter Research's latest report this past week and it held some scary numbers in terms of how quickly the "big boys" are heading into the search marketing realm.

I think the biggest number to jump out at me was the percentage of large and small businesses that were actively taking part in search engine marketing. Jupiter Research defines "large marketers" as companies with $15 million or more a year in revenue. According to their study, those large marketers made up one quarter of the search industry last year. This year, that number has leapt up to 37%...a pretty dramatic one year increase.

The study also says that 40% of those large marketers are coming to the game with plans to spend half a million dollars per year OR MORE on their search marketing campaigns. Those are some big numbers.

Another telling sign was Jupiter Research's report on the amount of money that companies are spending on search marketing. The number of marketers spending $50,000 a year or less has either stayed flat or dropped, while all other segments of spending (on up to the $2 million a year range) are rising. In other words, more people are spending more money each year on search engine marketing. 66% of those surveyed said they plan to increase their budgets again next year.

So all of this makes me think of the chorus of that great song...

Now the court square's just a set of streets
That the people go round but they seldom think
Bout the little man that built this town
Before the big money shut em down
And killed the little man

Hopefully we're not going to see that happening again, but it's essential to remember that the big boys ARE coming to play and they are coming to play hard. That makes it more essential than ever for you to buckle down, fine tune your online marketing plans and make sure that you can beat them to the punch by being nimble and quick to adapt.