Marketing is in a very interesting space for SMEs. More businesses are “doing” marketing, but we’re seeing less and less “thinking” about marketing and truly aligning it to business goals.
This is due, in part, to the democratisation of marketing platforms (social media, design, surveys, CRMs) so anyone can create marketing collateral, or place their message on a platform, and feel happy that they see the fruits of their labour. But scratch the surface and all too often there’s little thought into why the marketing tactics have been employed and whether they are delivering on the business goals. And this is why marketing gets a bad wrap.
While marketing tools are now universally accessible, reaching audiences has never been harder. Once upon a time you could advertise on TV, print, radio or outdoor and you were guaranteed to reach a large chunk of your audience. Now with media so fragmented it can be challenging to reach a large audience, so SMEs defer to tactics they know and see other businesses succeed in like social media, eDMs, websites – without truly thinking about whether this is going to directly deliver sales – or whether that’s the role of the tactic in the first place. But marketing has such a huge remit and there’s so many different avenues to be explored for a brand.
SMEs are generally led by incredibly capable people who are experts in their field, but often that’s not marketing. And marketing strategy is not something those out of the marketing field always understand the value of. Don’t get me wrong, some business leaders are incredible marketers, so it’s the ones that struggle that we want to help.
After the last few years, we’re seeing SMEs struggle to get their businesses up and running again. And the answer is marketing – but it’s the strategic marketing thinking that will really help. But here we have another hurdle – strategic marketers are expensive and SMEs can’t often justify the cost. The Marketing Room is proud to be able to bridge this gap for SMEs by providing part time access to senior Marketing Managers.
