SME Advertiser Behavior & Analytics

Conventional wisdom holds that Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses are too busy actually running their businesses to spend much time analyzing web trends and other metrics. As with most conventional wisdom, I suppose many examples can be found to support the argument.

My observations, however, having spent time with hundreds of SME employees, differ from the conventional wisdom. The SME owners and operators, in my travels, quite acutely monitor and analyze the critical key measures of the internet to them. I've yet to walk into an auto dealer that did not have, at hand, their web lead report that shows leads delivered by source and close rates associated with those leads. Do they typically have a pyschographic expert on staff to analyze consumer demograhics and behavior on their sites? Of course not. Are they paying attention to leads, lead source, lead quality, cost per lead and close rates? You betcha.