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Make the best of your small marketing budget
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Bikky Khosla | 21 Aug, 2012
Marketing is essential, but If you are like the majority of small entrepreneurs your marketing budget is limited. You need to take every step cautiously, and make sure that resources allocated to marketing are used efficiently. Every rupee matters, and a bad decision on where to spend your marketing money can be fatal for your business. That's why every small business is always in a dire need to optimize its limited budget.
First of all, what I think necessary is to use low-cost marketing channels. Small and medium enterprises should always go for marketing methods, such as up-sells and cross-sells, referral programs, websites and online sales, B2B advertising, business cards, e-mail newsletter, etc. These are inexpensive tools and can be used easily to get your message out to your customers on a regular basis, which you can't do with expensive TV ads or big commercial hoardings. Your limited budget doesn't allow that.
Even if an SME can afford big-budget marketing, I don't think it a smart idea to "copy" what the big brothers are doing. Marketing rules under which large businesses operate are often not applicable to smaller firms. For example, large corporations usually try to differentiate themselves on branding and to achieve that they invest huge money on advertising and marketing materials, but if a small firm imitates the same strategy, this will only place its business on the home turf of larger companies, inviting severe competition.
Target marketing is another effective way. A common mistake made by small enterprises is that they try to market to everyone, and as a result, spend their time and money on addressing a large market the needs of which they are not capable of serving. On the other hand, target marketing makes a firm much more focused -- you know exactly whom to address, which channel to use, what to write, and mend your marketing accordingly. This, needless to say, can cut down your marketing costs significantly. A small business can be more successful by narrowing down its focus and picking a niche small enough to dominate.
Another way -- we all know but often don't care enough -- to achieve marketing optimization is by promoting to existing and past customers. Earning new clients is important, but at the same time it is equally important for a small business to retain the past and existing customers. The biggest asset your company has is your customer base, and keeping it intact can save you a lot of money as it costs less time and money to encourage a repeat purchase than to get a new customer. Follow-up can play a crucial role here.
For any business, marketing is crucial for success, but it can also be very expensive, and when it comes to a small enterprise, the more it can optimize its marketing activities - advertising, public relations, promotions, sales, and others - the better it is. The key to this lies in awareness that will eventually lead to clear seeing of what works for you and what doesn't, and how to make a small marketing budget work.
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nanji | Wed Sep 5 09:45:40 2012
Having a electric showroom in central suburb in Mumbai
small marketing Budget
Sundar S | Fri Aug 31 07:25:37 2012
It gives a very good marketing strategy for SME on whom to target and the importance of retaining the existing clients.
SME marketing idelogy and methodology
vasdev Loond | Sat Aug 25 14:40:27 2012
SMEs start with a clear idea: either to copy and sell at cheaper price. In many cases, quality is relegated to price factor. Such SMEs also prosper as they survive on the weakness of big companies. It becomes all the more easier when such SMEs copy products of foreign countries and in many cases avoid copy rights. On the other hand, others work on innovations and need of the customer, how to facilitate use of their product by fashion, visual look, facilitating maintenance/convenience, replacement, etc. Marketing in both is compulsorily to be preceded by survey, diligent analysis, competition,inconvenience being faced by customers with existing brands/merchandise price compatibility, etc. Marketing personnel must be taken to production units, shown various operations, time and difficulties involved, needs of customers how and to what degree modifications, if any,could be carried. After getting acquainted with production operations, limitations of quantity and quality, they must be trained on marketing strategies: (a) never to talk about competitor, (b) highlight advantages of one's products by price, use convenience, visual acceptability, replacement if found defects and pointed within a specified period etc etc (c) must go ready with answers for all possible questions and answers about product, limitations regarding quantity delivery and quality etc, (d) be confident deal as an owner rather than referring each inquiry to HO.
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Re: SME marketing idelogy and methodology
SUNDAR.S | Fri Aug 31 07:28:26 2012
Good suggestions which will help all SMEs
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Good aspect of marketing for consumable items
Vikram Patel - Venuss Industries And Products | Wed Aug 22 13:40:38 2012
I am concerned about the SME in engineering industries like sheet metal/ pressed metal components manufacturers catering to Automobile, Electrical , Textile, Furniture , Chemical etc industries.
How to approach for marketing?
This will be very much helpful to lot of SMEs in this sector.
Every company has it's own marketing method
Zahir | Wed Aug 22 10:00:41 2012
Simply put, every company has it's own marketing method to increase sales as well as create product awareness. Just as one man's food is another one's poison so is one companies marketing method is another one's poison. If a company advertises in a big way and cannot then meet the demand of its clients, it will lose credibility with the clients.
So every company should plan its marketing budget and use the most viable.
SMEs fail when ignore target marketing
Ramji Raghavan | Wed Aug 22 07:12:03 2012
The article, especially about target marketing, is well written. Often small companies lose their way and the top reason is failure on their part to clearly define their target markets and build a marketing strategy for that particular market. A company can have 2-3 different target markets and strategy for each differs. One size does not fit all. Product can be the same but target market can be different. The basic definition for a target market is that it should be large enough for spending time and money to approach them, small enough to effectively market, have a common profession or interest and most importantly connected with each other in some form, like an association, newsletter, monthly meeting, social group. etc., for example, doctors association, plastic products manufacturer's association, printer's association, builder's association, teachers association etc. While your product could be anything but you cannot speak the same language to a doctor to that of a builder. Communication, campaign, presentation, approach, pre-approach everything differs. My sincere appreciation for the article.
Very True
Andrew Sze | Wed Aug 22 07:05:31 2012
Very True
GOOD EDITORIAL -SME SECTOR
Ramesh | Wed Aug 22 03:47:55 2012
Dear all. I agree to the advice given by the editor for the SME Sector . But a detailed advice for the marketing procedure is to be advised in order to reach the clients to increase the base of clients .The innovative methods discussed is very apt and we need to think of implementing in our company to achieve the desired result.
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