Smart Hustle Survey Results Reveal Who Smart Hustlers Are and Their Goals and Challenges
If you are a Smart Hustle subscriber, you might recall in January receiving a special email requesting your opinions in an exclusive Smart Hustle survey. We ran the survey campaign for about a week and we want to thank the many readers who took time out of their busy schedules to share feedback. Since the results have come in, we have analyzed the findings and today we would like to share the highlights. Here is the Portrait of a Smart Hustler in today’s busy small business landscape.
Who Is a Smart Hustler?
Smart Hustle readers are most likely to categorize themselves as business owners. 52.51 percent answer ‘business owner’ when asked about who they are. However, the results also indicate that some of you prefer to be classified in other ways – Entrepreneur (17.37 percent) or Startup (16.22 percent). This reflects varying preferences for the many labels that are important in the small business community.
The survey also identified diversity in the number of years our readers have been in business. In fact, it is almost an even split, with 47.49 percent who have been in business for four or fewer years, and 42.86 percent who have been in business five or more years.
Smart Hustler Goals
Next, our survey turned to the topic of goals. When we asked if you were more focused on growth in sales or growth in product, we were surprised to find an overwhelming majority (77.61 percent) are looking for more sales.
Our next question zoomed in on the quest for sales. In this question, survey respondents could select as many answers as they wanted. We learned that on the top of your most wanted lists were more customers (72.2 percent), revenue (61.39 percent) and sales (55.6 percent). A smaller percentage of readers were interested in more marketing or media coverage.
Smart Hustler Challenges
A big part of reaching the goals of more customers, revenue and sales is marketing, so we also wanted to ask readers more about their specific marketing challenges.
The answers indicate that many of our readers need help from the very beginning – developing an overall marketing strategy that will promote their brand, products, and services. 33.98 percent of survey takers chose this answer. The rest were divided among more specific marketing challenges – social media marketing (22.39 percent), advertising (13.13 percent), content strategy (10.81 percent) and research (6.56 percent).
Smart Hustler Preferences
Next, we wanted to learn a little about the preferences of Smart Hustle readers. Answers to our first question revealed that readers prefer Facebook (39.77 percent) and LinkedIn (21.24 percent) over platforms like Twitter (12.36 percent), Instagram (5.02 percent) and Pinterest (1.54 percent).
We also found out that many of you prefer articles as a method of content delivery (57.53 percent). However, there is a significant subgroup that prefers multi-media content that includes videos (28.19 percent) or audio (5.41 percent).
Regardless the format, we also wanted to know what topics you were most eager to read on Smart Hustle. This question allowed respondents to choose as many answers as they’d like. Once again, sales and marketing topics took the top spots including marketing (72.91 percent), social media (59.11 percent), and sales (51.72 percent). About one in three respondents also enjoy articles about operations, finance, e-commerce, and lifestyle.
There were a handful of other questions in the survey, but many were open-ended, allowing respondents to type in their own response. To respect your privacy, we will not be revealing individual answers like this – but please know that we read each answer that was submitted and will use those answers to help guide Smart Hustle in the future.
Everyone who answered the survey was invited to sign up for a drawing where two randomly selected respondents would each win a $50 Amazon gift card. Winners were notified and N’Tirzah al Rephaim (Creative Director/CEO of Pretty 2 Feathers Productions) and Nate Rogers (from Level FIVE Consulting) have accepted their prizes.
We will be able to use the information from the Smart Hustle survey to give readers more of what they want – articles on marketing, social media, sales and a range of other topics that provide information to help you meet your goals and rise above your challenges. Once again, we thank everyone who took the time to share their opinions! If you’d like to be included in our next survey, make sure to subscribe to our email newsletter today.