The Web is having a significant and positive impact on the fortunes of builders, according to a new study released today.

The research by thebestof, a national network of local marketing websites, run by local people, that champion the best businesses in their area shows that small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) plan to grow their businesses by on average 38 per cent in the coming year.

However, the more web-savvy SMEs including builders have growth ambitions that are twice those of their conventional SME counterparts (41 per cent vs. 20 per cent).

The study is based on telephone interviews with 500 small and medium sized businesses combined with an online survey completed by a further 2,583 SMEs. The businesses were drawn from across the UK and from a mix of sectors, and included 70 builders.

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The research, which explores SMEs general approach to marketing, reveals that builders typically spend £3,000 on marketing their businesses, and 80 per cent of them plan to spend as much if not more on marketing in the coming year.

However, a significant group are focusing this spend on the internet and this spend is delivering results. For instance, the internet-enabled builders get 24 per cent of their enquiries from the web.

In general, the study paints a picture of an SME community in a bullish mood. One in five plan to launch a new product or service in the next 12 months and a further 13 per cent will expand into a new area. One in six will merge with, or acquire another business and only three per cent plan to scale back their operations.

However, when analysing the businesses which are more web active against those who are not, the study shows that the companies most actively using the internet for marketing, the study shows that the companies most actively online, expect their business to grow twice as quickly as the SMEs who aren’t.

Nigel Botterill, Chief Executive of thebestof comments: “The first wave of the internet seemed to be all about the major brands and retailers, or businesses like lastminute.com or ebay, whose whole premise is built on the internet. What this research shows is that there’s a whole generation of ordinary small businesses – like builders – who have been quietly working in the background, using the Web to steal market share from their bigger competitors.”

(JM/SP)