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Do SMBs think they “like” Facebook more than Google? That’s one theory…that Facebook has leapt ahead of Google by offering the free business page, universal penetration, and simple to use, affordable ad options. Such goodwill would theoretically help Facebook as it increasingly competes with Google for SMB marketing dollars.
But hold on: that’s not exactly the case, circa 1Q 2016. Google is enormously useful, and a lot of SMBs have been grousing about Facebook since last year, when it started throttling organic reach in an effort that has helped it get to three million paid advertisers.
The grousing is reflected in Alignable’s SMB Trust Index, which has been getting an NPS score on top vendors from its base of 6,000 SMBs in 7,000+ communities. The NPS score is a simple 1-10 rating. High ratings (9-10) signify “champions,” while low ratings (0-6) represent “detractors.”
Alignable found that Google is the 4th highest rated vendor for SMBs, with a rating of “46.” Facebook, meanwhile, is 12th, with a rating of “24.” This reflects a drop of four points for Facebook from a year ago, when it had a “28” rating.
Keeping it in perspective, however, both Google and Facebook are still showing overall goodwill from their SMB customers. There is quite a difference in their ratings compared to a low performer such as Web.com, which suffered a rating of “-61.”
These SMB Trust Index rankings strike us as unique and useful. In our view, it is likely to have a real impact on an industry that could never quite tell before where key vendors really stood with their SMB customers. In the past couple of years, it would have helped a lot as the media and general public started leaping to negative conclusions about Yelp, Groupon, ReachLocal and the Yellow Pages in general.
