The results of a confidential four-year study of small business owners and their marketing functions conducted by Miser Advertising and Marketing in Carlsbad, CA have revealed a somewhat disturbing but entirely understandable conclusion.

Marketing is a “waste of time” in the opinion of the majority of small business owners studied. Too many small business owners find that marketing consumes too many limited company resources on a monthly basis and produces too few results to be worthwhile, the company found.

According to Miser Advertising and Marketing, having and executing a marketing plan, unsurprisingly, didn’t seem too important to small business owners either. The company found that small business owners created a marketing plan in the process of writing an initial business plan to launch their business, but since opening their doors for business, that marketing plan is often little more than a door stopper. Add to that the fact that small business owners have a vague, at best, understanding of the psychographic and demographic profile of their customers, and the picture that emerges is somewhat bleak.

Compared to the attitudes of large companies toward marketing, those of small business owners couldn’t be more different. In large companies, attention is paid to marketing on a daily basis. Among small business owners, marketing is of little importance, the firm found.

I mention this because it offers a clue as to what I find all too often in the digital signage market. Of course, advertising is just one of many components of an effective marketing effort, just as digital signage is just one of many advertising media options. But given my experience in the digital signage market, Miser Advertising and Marketing’s findings seem spot on.

Without a doubt, large companies that approach my company about digital signage have a plan with specific marketing goals and benchmarks for the rollout of their digital signage networks and the communication to be replicated. Smaller companies, when they approach us, often seem unsure of their specific goals for digital signage, as well as their message and what they specifically hope to achieve.

Who can blame them? Small business owners are often so busy running the business of their business that they lack the time and resources for anything they consider strange, even in the slightest, to their primary focus. However, regardless of their limited resources, these companies still compete with the larger ones that know their customers, know what messages they want to deliver and how to deliver them, and have the resources to execute their plans. That’s not exactly a comforting thought for small business owners, but it’s the reality.

The cold, hard truth is that not all businesses are successful. Many fail each year for a wide variety of reasons. The lack of a coherent marketing plan that is consistently implemented and modified along the way to ensure it is relevant and effective is important. While it can be a painful stretch for small business owners, hiring in-house marketing talent or outsourcing that function to a talented company with a proven track record will improve your chances of survival.

Only then can various marketing communications strategies be evaluated and implemented. Somewhere beyond that point, decisions about ad budgets, media, and campaigns are made. In that process, some will find that digital signage is the right approach.

But those things need to be done and in place before digital signage enters the equation. I know that once they are, digital signage will prove to be the right medium for many looking to execute their newly created, and now much appreciated, marketing plan.