There are literally hundreds of companies, publishers, and agencies that are trying to sell digital marketing and other services to American small businesses (SMEs), which represent more than 95% of all US companies. But the market is essentially opaque for these small businesses.
There is almost no place where SMEs can turn for objective information about service providers and their performance. Of course, you can search on "company name" and get information, but it's rather risky.
Alignable, a professional networking site, attempts to fix this by collecting Net Promoter Score (NPS) data from its SME user base. He regularly interviews thousands of his members about their perceptions of dozens of brands. For better or for worse, it does not require that respondents be verified clients.
In the end, Alignable aims to be a marketplace where business owners can answer questions from each other and ask for references.
In recent years, the company has produced a quarterly small business confidence index, based on NPS ratings ("would you recommend") of its members. The company believes that as these ratings become more visible – in the same way that consumer reviews influence buying behavior – some of the rated companies will have a significant impact on the situation. financial.
CEO Eric Groves, one of Constant Contact's top leaders, believes that providers with better NPS ultimately have lower customer acquisition costs. This has not been demonstrated empirically but logically.
According to the company's third-quarter NPS ratings, Amazon is the most reliable SMB service provider in the United States, followed by Stripe, Google, and Apple.
The NPS rating scale ranges from 80 to 80, and companies are grouped into categories but not graduated on a curve; they all get scores that can be compared to companies in other categories. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, most companies providing digital marketing and lead generation services to SMEs fall into the negative category, probably reflecting the dissatisfaction and disappointment of SMEs (and perhaps some unrealistic expectations).
Although Google, the search engine was number two on the list, Google's advertising platform (AdWords) had a negative rating of 27. Facebook Ads got a negative result of 14 and, as hiring tool, the site received a negative result of 47. Bing's advertisement had a negative rating of 48. Yext saw a negative 61 and Yelp a negative 65.
As stated, some of them are based on experience, and some are based on perception or reputation. Alignable does not break into the data or track to see specifically what drives those notes. Nevertheless, there is important information that indicates whether business owners would recommend these services.
You can see the full list of NPS and the discussion here.
