SMB? Market Like a Big Fish
Recent research by Constant Contact and Ascend2 shone new light on consumer behaviour towards small and medium sized businesses in this festive shopping season. A whopping 84% of consumers surveyed said they'd visit an SMB or a local business in November and December, with 87% of those saying they'd return during the following year if they'd bought something in the holiday season. In fact, 81% said they'd be open to marketing communications from SMBs they'd bought from well into the next year.
Combining this knowledge with insights into the marketing behaviour of SMBs spotlights an obvious missed trick in the repertoire of many B2C businesses. The top 3 marketing and growth methods used by SMBs are personalised emails and texts (52%), social media ads (42%) and discounts (40%).However, a mere 49% of consumers said they'd received any kind of follow up email from an SMB they'd made a recent purchase with and 27% said they never heard from them again.
Clearly, small businesses need to market themselves like they're a multinational player. Retail giants like Amazon, Next, and every other big retailer that sends something to your inbox as a follow up to a sale because it's effective. While the purchase and product is still fresh in the mind of the consumer they're open to relevant and useful content. A campaign of regular follow up emails will translate into sales and this is something that smaller businesses often don't do well enough.
With consumers actively open to engaging with smaller business in the run up to Christmas and then into 2024 now is the perfect time to send an email campaign to your email list, or to start an advertising campaign on social media that will raise awareness and lead to newsletter sign ups or sales. People are looking for unusual gifts, the small batch artisan items you can't get from a mass retailer, so take advantage of this momentum and get your name and products out there.
Once you've got people through the door or checking out online, make sure you capitalise on this with a follow up email campaign to capitalise on the goodwill and openness towards small businesses that consumers have at this time of year, and into the next.
Don't be afraid to make some noise online – with so many people shopping or at least window shopping from home, small businesses can be just as active and noisy as larger companies. The internet and digital marketing has levelled out the playing field so you don't need to have the turnover of a large retail consortium to use the same marketing channels and strategies as they do.
A small business won't have the knowledge or in-house skills that come with the marketing department of a large multinational, however, so that's where we come in. We become your marketing department, bringing our knowledge and experience to your company. If you want the edge over your competitors who are still trying to do everything themselves and spreading themselves too thinly as a result, then use Parua as your marketing department. We're waiting for your call.
