SME Marketing
How to Keep Your Business Growing
Mid-sized companies and smaller companies are important anywhere in the world. In Canada, 90% of the private sector workforce works for an SME (Small and Medium Enterprises). Yes 90%. They contribute to 30% of the GDP which might be small but keeping people employed is what makes a nation tick. Even more vital to a country is the ability to create jobs. 88% of the net employment change, over the last 10 years, is attributable to SMEs. Given this vital role that SME’s play in the economy, what comes with SME marketing are a few critical factors that will keep your business growing.
Marketing and Innovation Produces Results
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produces results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” Peter Drucker
So at the start of the 17th year of the millennium, in a volatile global market: oil prices, unknown leadership across the border, right and left wing extremism, unknown consumers like the millennial: we should focus on marketing and innovation.
Must have Quality and Usability or Don’t Bother
We are often encountered by hard-nosed owners who tell us the importance of service quality and 
product quality, how marketing is a hit and miss and of course the most popular question ‘what is the ROI?’. Our response is; quality and usability are the default, so unless you have something decent to sell, don’t bother with marketing. Remember the four P’s of marketing, Product and Price are two of the most important.
‘There is not much Marketing can do if you do not have a basic product / service at a reasonable cost of production. Once that is in place give it to the Marketing guys, they can be described as ‘mixers of ingredients’
Harvard University, Prof. James Culliton way back in 1948.
Perception is the only Reality in a hyper-choice world
“Do you really need the mixers?”, you might ask. Should not our work speak for itself? In a small world with a few people and a few products; it’s probably ok. Did you know that there are 19,000 variations of Starbucks coffee? Or did you know that in the ’60s the Chevy Impala accounted for 13% of a market that had 40 kinds of cars and now there are 250 and fewer than ten of these have more than a 0.5% market share? And, Amazon has 40 times as many books as a Borders superstore, and Netflix has 18 times more DVDs than Blockbuster. “Perception is the only reality” is a common saying. So you might have the world’s best product but unless the customer knows about the product or services and perceives it as being a good product it remains an unknown, unsold product. So you need to market it and manage perception in this hyper-crowded world.
