Small businesses are far more likely to single out in-person interactions as their most effective marketing activity than any other tool available to them, according to [pdf] an August 2012 report by Constant Contact. Of the items they find effective, 46% of small businesses ranked in-person interactions as their most effective marketing activity, with B2B companies more likely than B2C companies to have this attitude (59% vs. 40%).
To put this into perspective, B2B small businesses were roughly three times more likely to say that in-person interactions were their most effective marketing activity as to say the same about second-place websites (59% vs. 20%).
In the Constant Contact survey, small business respondents (B2B and B2C) were more likely to say that in-person interactions were their most effective activity than to say the same about email marketing (20%), traditional advertising (17%), online advertising (17%), events (11%), and social media marketing (11%).