Posts
The Importance of E-marketing to SMEs.
Category:
Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs) are companies characterized by a small limit of turnovers. In the UK, figures showed that by the start of 2008, there was an estimated 4.8 million private sector enterprises out of SMEs which composed 99.9 % of all enterprises. The employment rate for SMEs was estimated at 13.7 million, 21% higher than that in 2007 with a turnover estimated at £1,500 billion (4.2%) higher than the previous year (BIS 2009).
Through internet marketing, SMEs can promote and boost their sales by creating a strong multimedia presentation which can either be posted on their company’s sites or any other online marketing medium. This marketing medium offers many unique benefits which cannot be gotten from traditional marketing or advertising.
The internet proves to be a vital tool in business, its importance as a marketing tool should be captured by SMEs if they are to withstand competition. SMEs are dominant in many industry sectors, representing an important role in the economy. Compared with the large enterprises, the SMEs have fewer financial resources, lower technical expertise and poor management skills (Caldeira & Ward, 2002).
Marketing research on the other hand is a vital tool to every company’s success, especially in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Used to determine feedback from consumers regarding existing or new products, e-marketing comes into play to ease this process, for SMEs especially.
E-marketing facilitates research because it tends to be cheaper in the sense that, it does not cost anything to send out surveys per say, to respondents regardless of location. It is also time saving because the time it takes to post out questionnaires and have them posted back could possibly waste time. Also, responses are faster and returned on time enough for the research to be accomplished (Times 2010).
HOW BENEFICIAL IS E-MARKETING TO SMEs?
The greatest benefit e-marketing offer is personalized marketing which keeps track of a customer’s database (Business link 2010). Meaning that through internet marketing, SMEs can promote their business the way in which they prefer and at affordable prices, compared to other communication media like TV or magazines. Some other benefits are:
- This medium of marketing enables the small and medium enterprise companies to showcase their business (goods/services) in a better convincing way. For example Copacabana restaurant which makes use of this medium to show case their recipes and prices to their various target audience.
- Internet is a medium of marketing used in brand building and also achieving outstanding sales for the SMEs which can give the owners excessive benefit over the bigger firms. A successful example of this is http://www.babymafrica.com/ which made use of this medium introduced to them by http://www.wildfusions.com/ to boost their business.
- One-to-one marketing; which permits them to let their target audience have easy access to them hence getting to know more about whom they are and the products or services they offer.
- With e-marketing, SME’s can create interesting campaigns through interactive campaigns using graphics, music and videos. They could send customers messages or links which could interest them.
- E-marketing permits customers to make purchase directly online without necessarily having to go to the stores or post orders like magazines or TV adverts request them to do. Online companies like Amazon do provide the possibility to purchase products directly online.
- SME’s can get feedback about their campaigns and measure the effectiveness of these campaigns by e-mailing customers who give their opinions about the campaigns and they in turn can use this information to measure how efficient or effective they were.
- With e-marketing, SME’s can reach a very wide range of their target market, because of the flexibility provided by the internet where anyone in the world can have access, in terms of competitive advantage, it also permits them to find new markets and invest at a low cost.
References
Analogik (2010) “What is E-Marketing” [online] ‘available from’ <http://analogik.com/article_principles_of_emarketing.asp> [20 February 2010]
BIS (2009) ‘Department for Business Innovation and Skills’ [online] ‘available from’ <http://stats.berr.gov.uk/ed/sme/smestats2008-ukspr.pdf> [22 February 2010]
Caldiera,M. & Ward, J. (2002) “Understanding the Successful Adoption and Use of IS/IT in SMEs: An Explanation from Portuguese Manufacturing Industries” Journal of Information System (12)121-152.
MICROSOFT (2010) Expert Urges Use of E-marketing for SMEs [online] ‘available from’ <http://www.microsoft.com/UK/SMALLBUSINESS/SBNEWS/SALES-AND-MARKETING/EXPERT-URGES-USE-OF-EMARKETING-FOR-SMES-19315135.MSPX> [23 February 2010]
TIME (2010) First, E-marketing, Now E-research [online] ‘available from <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995937,00.html>[20 February 2010]
