Everybody knows at least a few online marketing campaigns from big multinationals like Burger King and Coca-Cola. They invest a lot of money to get our attention and to create a lot of buzz. But are money and expertise the only factors for an online business-success? Because this would implicate that small and middle-sized enterprises do not have a lot chance to be successfully present on the World Wide Web.
E- Marketing
Before answering this question it is best to keep a few things in mind. E-marketing -the use of digital interactive technologies and information technology to fulfill the traditional marketing practices of creating, communicating and delivering value to customers (Strauss & Frost, 2005)- is more than having a well designed website. It is all about creating an online experience for a -potential- customer who afterwards may want to buy your product if not online.
Implementation in SME’s
A big advantage of E-marketing is internetalisation (Mathews & Healy, 2008). This means that a company does not have to worry about geographical borders so they can reach a lot more consumers. Another advantage is that the cost can be considerably lower than for traditional marketing activities. The biggest costs are in the beginning for example to set-up a website. Afterwards the maintenance of the online media can be done by someone of the company. This also includes the updating of online accounts on social network sites like Twitter and Facebook, link exchange and e-mail marketing (All Business). SME’s can cut the costs of printing catalogues and fancy brochures. Instead they can use digital alternatives like Google AdWords. This is a very easy-to-use and low cost tool to get advertisement space on websites who target the same target group of a SME and also newsletter advertisements are an interesting possibility.
E-Marketing and marketing research
Research is very important before, during and after a company made his first steps online. First it is important to understand which online media are used by their their potential customers. The challenge is to gain awareness on the digital places where the target group spend its time online. Once there is traffic to a company’s website it is important to start to analyze the visitors’ online behavior. There are different ways to analyze what your websites visitors are up to: record the time they have spent on your website, a site overlay in which you can see on what links your visitors have clicked. There are a lot of tools online (like Google Analytics) which can deliver clear reports which help a SME to adapt its online behavior to the results.
An online success story
An example of an SME that really understands the power of E-marketing is Pink Cake Box (McGee, 2008). What do they do? They bake celebration cakes and cupcakes. It all started in 2005 with a store in New Jersey, a website, a blog and three employees. Today, 10 people are working for the company and their blog has at least 120 000 visitors a month. They have a Flickr- and Youtube-account, a Facebook-group with 3235 fans, and a Twitter-account with 1936 followers. They are present on all those media because they strongly believe their success is highly correlated with their reach and visibility throughout the Internet. And they are right.
So to conclude
Why should SME’s go online? (Gilmore, Gallagher & Scott, 2007):
- They do not have to invest heaps of money to build their presence online
- Internet presence can help them target bigger markets
- They basically need to do some studying and research to get started because there are a lot of programmes that make things easier, but afterwards they can do a lot by themselves.
- Internet presence can help an SME to go to the next level and expand their sales by creating a greater awareness among potential customers
Sources:
All Business. (n.d.). Internet Advertising Strategies for Small Businesses. Retrieved Februari 2010, 24, from All Business: http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/advertising-internet-advertising/2641-1.html
Gilmore, A., Gallagher, D., & Scott, H. (2007). E-marketing and SME's: operational lessons for the future. European Business Review , 234-247.
Mathews, S. & Healy, M. (2008). ‘From garage to global’: the internet and international market growth, an SME perspective. Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising , 179-196.
McGee, M. (2008, March 13). Small Is Beautiful. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/a-small-business-marketing-success-story-pink-cake-box-13567
Strauss, J., & Frost, R. (2005). E-Marketing. London: Prentis-Hall.
Picture: http://www.pinkcakebox.com
15 comments:
I like the way in which you have shortly systemized important information, and the structure of the post itself!
As we know, one of the disadvantages of the e-marketing is the lack of face-to-face communication.
It would not be a significant problem if it concerns a medium (big) company that is well-known and has already won its clients.
What actions would you suggest to the small ones, which are at the beginning of their e-marketing experience, so that they could win people, their trust and readiness to be future clients?
Thank you!
Thank you for your comment. We really appreciate this. Your point is really a good one. I've been thinking about it and did some research and this is what I found about it.
Face-to-face communication is all about sender, receiver, message and external factors (like sound, sight, smell). It has some advantages like speed; your voice immediately reaches the receiver and you can have an answer within a few seconds. The external factors have an influence on the message. Whether those are good or bad.(Winger Alan R., 2005)
Although face-to-face communication isn't always that faster because the customer has to go to the company to see someone.
E-communication can't replace face-to-face communication completely, but it can be a good alternative. The most important thing about it is the two-way communication. The sender can play the role of receiver and vice versa.
With a blog, e-mail, chat-widget, Skype-button, ... a visitor can contact the company without travelling. The external factors like smell, light and sound must be translated into the websites lay-out and tone-of-voice. The visitor must feel the experience of the store online. With good e-communication you can give a company a face.
Therefore it is important to be present at the media your public also uses. You have to anticipate on their questions and remarks. This way you can build a strong virtual relationship which almost has the same impact as a real life relationship.
I hope I answered your question. If you have still more questions, do not hesitate to ask us.
Source:
Winger Alan R. (2005) 'Face-to-face communication: Is it really necessary
in a digitizing world?'. Business Horizons 48 247-253
Just to know do you think Google adword is not too expensive. I just think it can become very expensive, because with internet it is a very competitive area and if you want to be view you must pay and sometimes it can be too expensive for the SME's.
Thank you
Just like Facebook Ads, Google Ads gives the possibility to set your daily budget and the cost per click. So it's just as expensive as you want it to be.
https://www.google.com/intl/en_en/adwords/select/steps.html
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=pf
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Hi Floris,
Very well researched post. The power of the Internet as a marketing tool is really tremendous for small business.
There is a huge shift occurring - the power of syndicating your content across multiple channels like youtube, flickr, blogs and facebook allows small business's the opportunity to reach audiences that years ago would have taken tremendous advertising budgets.
Marketing has also become more of a two-way dialog with the customer. No longer are we marketing solely to the customer - it's more like we are marketing with the customer. Our customers take photos of our cupcakes and cakes and help spread them across the Internet.
Thanks again for the post and mentioning Pink Cake Box.
It was very interesting to read your answer! Thank you very much for trowing light on the question I asked!
I realy like your ideas and how you explain it,
I was wondering if you could help me and answer ,how could E-marketing affect the small companies ?
Thank you for your comment.
To answer your question, the way E-marketing impacts small companies can mainly be looked at from the following perspectives:
1.Costs-savings : Small companies usually work within limited budgets. Traditional marketing channels such as TV, radio and press can be very costly. In contrast, the Internet offers cost-effective E-marketing solutions to small companies, most of the time these are even FREE i.e. accounts for Gmail, Blogger, Facebook and Twitter. What's even better is that communications via these channels can be easily maintained and updated by the company's own personnel. This means there's no need for outsourcing of external ad agencies or marketing consultants who'll usually charge a 'bomb'. Even if payment is required such as pay-per-click advertising, it can be made affordable according to choice and budget of the company. With the costs-savings benefit of E-marketing, small companies can better manage their resource allocations for process improvement, product/service innovation, customer service and even future expansion.
2. Increased reach, awareness, loyalty and sales: Small companies can use E-marketing to do what only big companies used to be able to do – reach out to the masses to expand target markets and grow sales. With the borderless access and interactivity of E-marketing, small companies can equally increase their online reach of target customers (whom they want to attract to visit their website) by engaging them through email marketing, search engine optimization as well as interaction on blogs and social network sites. If these channels are used effectively to create a consistently satisfying online experience for customers, they will be happy enough to spread positive word-of-mouth for the company’s products/ services, which will likely help to drive traffic to the company’s website or offline store where potential transactions may take place. With increased sales over a period of time, the small company can even consider the potential of expansion to become a bigger company one day.
I hope I’ve answered your questions! :)
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i agree with the fact that your article state that sme creat awareness for companies online, howvere, these are jobs that human would have had to do. the growing awareness of the avatar world and the globalization of the world we live in is releasing comanpanies of their coparate responsibility of employing people. so companies have to pay a lot to build their external image.
I like the online success story of Pink Cake Box but does the theory about “Implementation of E-marketing in SME’s” apply to them. It seems like they started a blog and got lucky. Did they use any of the techniques you explained in your post?
Somehow it always seems to me that another type of media needs to cover it. In this case they got a huge amount of attention through CNN.
What is your opinion?
I'm sure that they implement it, otherwise they are "just a blog" about cakes...
In the movie she mentions that they are active on social sites en that they have good ratings in search engines, so all those things help to attract people to their blog. And of course being mentioned by the CNN helps a lot, but maybe they have contacted the CNN themselves, to make a report, in order to boost their online visitors...
Again a well structured post that is fun to read, especially with the real-life example. It makes it more credible that even SMEs can really succeed with limited budget.
Especially liked you example and the discussion was also interesting.
I have a different question about the implementation aspect mentioned.
You mentioned the big advantage of E-marketing being internetalisation. Is internationalisation not what 'created' e-marketing more than the biggest success factor?
Thanks for your question. For a lot of companies, the only way to work international is by the Internet. I hope I answered your question.
Mathews, S. & Healy, M. (2008). ‘From garage to global’: the internet and international market growth, an SME perspective. Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising , 179-196.
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