Digital Marketing for SMEs

Fukuyama

Hi Guys,

I'm currently testing the waters for a business venture.

I've noticed that a lot of Irish small businesses make pretty lukewarm efforts in the digital marketing arena. Not to tar all with the same brush, there are some that are excellent. But on the whole, even attempts at CRM on Twitter or ad campaigns rarely make it beyond the owner playing around for a few days then giving up.

Websites are also very often neglected, not updated and fall way down through the Google rankings because of neglected SEO.

Basically, I want to start a marketing agency to cater to small businesses. Does anyone think there is a general appetite in the SME arena for this kind of venture?

Do small business owners appreciate another company taking the reigns on that front?

Obviously margins will be thin as SMEs don't have much cash these days.

Thoughts?

-- Dean

mneylon

The main issue you'll run into is cost.

SMEs might want marketing, but they won't be able to pay the kind of rates that you'd need to charge.

You might think that you can charge a really low rate, but unless you're living on air it won't be sustainable

was.deevey

One of the things SME's are going to want are guarantees, and a tangible product that you can offer. Unfortunately in the SEO game there are none especially when the margins are low as the majority of "tricks" previously used to gain rank just don't work anymore.

You will probably need to hire Blog posters, Commenters, start Adwords campaigns, manage facebook/twitter campaigns on their behalf etc.. etc.. Depending on their product/service that can become expensive very fast.

However I'm not saying their isn't money to be made so long as the expectations are kept reasonable and if you can see gaps in key wording and search trends that others cant.

Cianos

You've a triad of problems;

• There's a lot of competition out there.
• Your competition are the best at marketing themselves via the avenues you'll presumably be trying to use. ie it's the one industry where 100% of the competition will be trying to outrank YOU, or won't need to because they've enough of the market via referrals.
• SMEs usually don't have the funds to pour in to long term campaigns where a performance increase offsets the fees they'd be paying someone like you.

To explain that last point more, not only do you have to increase their campaign performance significantly for them to see the value, you have to increase it even more in order to cover your fees. This would be fine if they were spending thousands a month on clicks and a 20% performance improvement meant big savings, but if they're only spending a couple of hundred a month, that 20% performance increase would barely cover the fees you're charging, if at all.

If you can solve these problems then there's potential, but otherwise I don't think long term campaign management makes a lot of sense for small SMEs.

Atomico

Blacknight and Cianos have covered it pretty much. There is a catch-22 going on when it comes to SMEs and digital marketing services. They know they need to do it, but they have limited budgets for having someone else do it - with the result that it usually falls down the list of priorities.

Add in the fact that SMEs are also invariably time-poor, and it adds up to something that just gets neglected - a pity, as if you do it right, the results can be excellent.

The trick is really to find those clients who have the budget AND the motivation - it has to be a two-way street for it to work. The best clients are those who are fully engaged with their campaigns. They will also be far more likely to engage your services over a longer period of time.

And if it wasn't tough enough, you are also up against the fact that because it is a 'virtual service', businesses find it hard to place a value on it. This means you really need to have lots of experience and be skilled at getting your value proposition across.

If you haven't got that experience, you might be better off working with an agency or in-house somewhere first, and then testing the waters with some freelance work on the side later on (provided your employer is ok with that).

jetsonx

OP, have you ever watched any of those programs like Alex Polizzi's "The Fixer". Or, have you ever seen Gordon Ramsay
go into a small restaurant business and try to change things. Did you ever see what they have to deal with?

They have to deal with SME owners who are arrogant, tight-wad, stubborn, short-sighted and dare I say just plain stupid.


The fact about Digital Marketing is this: it is a marathon and not a sprint. A mixture of intuition, creativity, steely determination, having a long-tern view and good old-fashioned discipline are need to run a successful marketing campaign on-line or off-line. The qualities often cannot be outsourced. The must come from within the owner.

Bearing in mind that a substantial amount of SME owner's still do not even have a proper website, the prospect of trying to selling them a whole campaign (and getting them to stick with it) seems like to me like a daunting task.

The good well-managed SME's will already have an online strategy set-up by themselves and know the nuts-and-bolts of online marketing. Some of these might want to outsource the function as they do not have the time to manage it. These will be your best prospects.

Those SME's who have no online strategy in place and who have never tried to do it themselves and are looking for some quick business fix. These are the SME's to avoid with a barge pole.

I wish you the best of luck.

mahamageehad

I'm in the process of doing my own little start up at the minute.
Basically I'm selling handmade bags online.
My degree is actually in Digital Media so one would think I'd have that side pretty covered.

However, and here's the catch, despite being knowledgable about the platforms and a content strategy etc I was in no way prepared for how simply time-consuming online media is. Honestly until you've tried to do this I don't think you can really know how much time it takes up. Once it gets beyond the "planning", "setup" and "ideas" phases and comes down to spending time on these networks building a brand hours fly past.

And I am still only talking about social media. Even though I was purchased a .ie domain I haven't had time to even think about a website yet. Digital marketing is incredibly time consuming and I'm not sure the money that a SME could afford to pay you would be worth it for you. Likewise I'm not sure you could possibly make that much of an improvement that a SME would pay you adequately for all the time and effort you've put in.

Sorry if that seems negative but it's an incredibly tough arena to get started in. Especially without industry contacts and recommendations which, to be fair, I'm assuming you don't have. Out of interest had you any kind of pricing strategy in mind already?

Peterdalkey

Interesting thread with some very informed contributions. The whole web presence and digital marketing area is taking over, or at least becoming a large part of the old style sales function for many companies. If you are selling online, it is an everyday task that needs to be tended to every single day. if you do not, then most benefit from past spending soon vapourises.
There are of course elements with which you will need outside expert assistance from time to time, like design and technical functionality etc, but the real slog is the day to day tweaking and updating, monitoring results from changes, campaigns and initiatives and responding to the results. You have to learn what works and what does not, no two businesses are exactly alike and thus no two digital campaigns should be identical. You need to be able to do this in-house and whoever is doing it needs constantly to spend time educating themselves on the latest techniques.
There might be a market for providing some in-company training as a service but I suspect it would be a hard sell as those who recognise the need are probably all over it already and those who don't, will never get it!

Fukuyama

Hmm. Thanks for all the informative responses guys.

To be honest, I'll be avoiding the kind of Mom & Pop operations that are stuck in their ways. I think it's pretty easy to tell a business that wont invest in itself from one that will.

I'm talking to one business at the minute who seem interested.

I do have some experience in this (particularly SEO) but right now I just want to build up a portfolio.

I think right now a lot of businesses, for example, set up the bog standard Twitter account without much thought going into it other than hum-drum posting. Same for Facebook. Targeted ad campaigns don't even ring a bell with a lot of owners. So this could be a very hard sell for some....

If there's any more SME owners out there I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Hanley

This is actually something I'd be interested in hearing more on.

I've a very active growing FB page which is growing well thru targeted ads (20ish new likes daily @ around 6-7c/like - 1,900+ likes in the page in a year only tho, 500+ in the last month).

a lot of enquiries come thru my website which I wouldn't consider at all SEO optimized. A lot of players in my market seem to work extensively on it but to the best of my knowledge don't employ a digital marketing consultant.

Conversions come often from a follow up email campaign via aweber and broadcast messages on specific relevant topics.

If there was some method of measuring ROI over a 3-6 month period on all of the above id gladly throw limitless amounts of money at that sort of thing until the ROI stopped moving up.

In addition if there was some way of integrating client retention strategies as part of its another avenue I'd examine.

cgriffin

Good thread this.
In fairness Dean there seems to be a real negative vibe to what you are proposing to do. Some very good points made with that said but don't be too discouraged.
If you are good at what you do and are willing to put the hard work, cold call, set up meeting with prospects etc there is definitely an opportunity in this area.
As other people have rightly said ideally a digital marketing strategy should been ran in-house. With that said there is plenty of SME's out there that wouldn't have a notion on where to start and as you rightly pointed out many have given it a go themselves for a short while. Failed miserably and abandoned the idea.
Perhaps a good strategy starting out to is to focus more so on what is measurable and measurable quickly.
Forget social media and focus more on PPC and SEO at the outset. If you are able to create adword campaigns which convert to sales and profit for your clients the fees you charge will become secondary.
Keep in mind the page you are sending the campaigns to is twice as important as the creation of the campaign.
Despite what others might say good SEO results can be achieved quickly but it all depends on what your client does, their target market and if their competition is taking SEO seriously.
Eventually your client might decide to bring someone in full-time rather than use you but that will simply be an endorsement of what you have added to their business and if you have delivered results word spreads!
The most important thing to do is research your prospects carefully and ensure there is a meaningful online opportunity for their business which can adds profit when all expenses are taken into account.
Never work for clients that you are not confident you can deliver measurable results for.
It will bite you in the ass when your efforts inevitably fail.