ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

Did you know there is something called the 2008 U.S. Small Business Marketing Frustration Survey? Neither did I 'till it turned up in my Inbox. Apparently, the biggest issue is the inability to consistently follow up with prospects.

Of course, it turns out the survey comes from Infusionsoft, which makes marketing automation software for small businesses. Still, I love lists, so here's their top 10 marketing-related frustrations as cited by small business owners:

1. Too difficult to follow up with cold, warm and lukewarm leads consistently and efficiently
2. Can’t properly track and manage prospects and customers
3. Need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts
4. Poor email deliverability
5. Too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process, no automation
6. Can’t track sales activity
7. Lack of centralization, too many different programs and systems
8. Too costly to maintain servers and IT staff
9. Too difficult to manually manage multichannel campaigns
10. One-dimensional marketing

Want to know my list? Here's five, please feel free to add your own.
1. Clueless marketing staff don't know their products or their customers
2. No marketing plan leads to different reps contacting the same customers
3. Lack of follow up after the first contact
4. Wasting time on small, low-profit customers instead of concentrating on the most important accounts
5. Expensive, hard-to-use marketing systems that take time away from actual marketing