Two Tips For Marketing To Small Businesses
By Anna Johnson on March 10th, 2009MarketingSherpa recently published an insightful article about marketing to the small-medium business market.
Based on its research into what is, and is not, most effective, MarketingSherpa provided some tips for marketing to small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Here are two points that deserve special mention:
1. SMBs want advice, not sales pitches
What’s more, that advice needs to take into account the fact that SMB owners and managers have little time, little money and, in a sense, need to know how to do lots of different things.
After all, they can’t afford lots of staff, which means the typical SMB owner/manager juggles a lot of responsibilities.
So, if you can help them get on top of what they need to know and do to meet some of those responsibilities, they’ll appreciate you for it.
2. SMBs want tools and resources to do it themselves
Underneath it all, SMBs want other people to do it for them… but the fact is, they often can’t afford it!
That’s why we have legal template sites and the like. I’m sure most SMBs would love a lawyer to take care of all their agreements and legal issues, but they often just can’t afford the typical fee of a few hundred dollars per hour.
So, to the extent you can, provide SMBs with ‘DIY’ tools and resources that make it as easy as possible to accomplish their various different tasks. Templates, software tools, and online services can all help in this respect.
