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Greg Sterling has an interesting post covering BIA/Kelsey’s recent survey of SMB ad spend. The main finding is that online ad spend is a great indicator of the services an SMB is likely to purchase, with a strong dividing line between the small and big spenders. As Greg notes, this is no big surprise, but it does indicate clearly that a different strategy is required to approach these two very different groups.

The group of SMBs that spends in excess of $25,000 per year in online advertising is likely to be very active and knowledgeable, with an engaged in-house team who understands the need for SEO and SEM and may actively be pursuing better solutions to known problems.

For emerging services such as reputation management, such firms are probably the low-hanging fruit, although they are also harder to impress.

The group that spends less than $25K per year spends a lot less: the average of all SMBs surveyed was just $2,092. Capturing these marketing dollars will be challenging, but the need to manage presence online is increasingly felt by these same SMBs. The leading services will be those that present affordable, easy-to-use solutions that offer real value.

Meeting this second challenge, of course, is the only way to bring reputation management to the broader marketplace.

Guest post by Dream Local Adviser, Damian Rollison who is Director of Research & Development for Moon Valley Software.