What you need to know about SME marketing: strategies, tips and ideas

This article was written by Emma Easton, Founder of marketing strategy consultancy, Business Bollox, and deliverer of the Help to Grow: Management Course  

Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) marketing is, in my opinion, the most rewarding and challenging marketing activity you can get involved in. It is rewarding because decisions can be responsive to evolving market conditions and customer sentiment. However, it is more challenging because of the expectation of flexibility combined with fewer resources can increase pressure to see results. 

SME marketing is critically important as over 99% of UK businesses are SMEs, and the marketing activity is what connects those businesses with customers, without whom there is no business, just a hobby.  

Marketing is a two-way street. When marketing works well, it includes learning from customers and influences customer purchasing decisions. When it doesn’t work effectively, poor-quality marketing can quickly drain the coffers, knock confidence, and damage employee engagement.   

This guide will share what you need to know, strategies, and ideas for marketing in smaller businesses.  

Without stating the obvious, SME marketing is the marketing activity undertaken by smaller businesses. SME marketers don’t typically have the big-business budgets for deep research, for TV ads, national campaigns or large out-of-home ad boards that you might see on your travels. They also don’t have the deep strategic level expertise that big businesses have available in house or via outsourcing.  

SME marketing, given the tighter budgets and smaller (if any) teams, is therefore more specialised. All good marketing has shifted away from spray-and-pray, where everything was promoted to everyone, everywhere, to activity that is more strategically targeted. SME marketing has to be hyper focused on the most meaningful market groups to deliver required results. There is much less room for error.  

A marketing strategy is very different from a marketing plan. The strategy is long-term and high-level. It defines the why and what of marketing, setting the objectives, goals, sharing clarity on market and audience, ideal customer profiles etc, and outlines the unique value proposition. The plan is the roadmap of how to put the strategy into action, detailing specific tactics and timescales, budgets and responsibilities, as well as KPIs to track progress. 

When businesses recognise the difference, it can be easier to develop a clear strategy because it’s separate from the tactics, which can distract with the detail of the ‘how’.  

STP:  

Marketing is not about being all things to all potential customers. It’s critical that SME leaders harness the strategically important principles of segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP). To really know their market, leaders need to divide their market into groups with shared characteristics, decide which group they’ll focus on, and subsequently understand how to position their services or products in an engaging way. It’s a foundational step that is missed by many marketers, so make sure you (or your agency) don’t skip this task. 

How will you start your STP activity? 

Brand vs marketing: 

It’s crucial to recognise the difference between brand awareness (which might be to a broader audience) and more focused marketing activity.  

The interrelationship between brand building and marketing is what is known as the ‘two speeds’ of marketing. Brand-building is slower, it’s long term.  

Here's an example, if you see a red advertising board with a partial golden curve shape and the words ‘800 yds left’ when driving along the motorway, you know you’re close to a McDonalds. There are no burger photos and no logo, yet because we’ve become accustomed to the brand we know what it stands for. The faster, short-term sales-activating marketing activity is then in the drive-thru where customers who were reminded of the brand on the motorway, are influenced by banners with the latest seasonal menu.  

Whether you like the example company or not, you can see the simple difference. The brand gives you an emotion, positive or negative, and if it hooks you in, that’s where the marketing, with clever copy, artwork, promotions and pricing gets you to make the purchase. 

What are your two speeds of marketing? 

Make choices about your channels: 

Despite what the so-called influencers might say about being on all social channels, I’d recommend being ‘choiceful’ about what you do and don’t do in your SME marketing. This is why STP is so crucial. If your target market and ideal customer profiles (ICPs), also known as personas, only hang out on LinkedIn, then there is little point spending your time and money to create a presence on Instagram. Keep this in mind when you get the inevitable “well my teenage son said we should be on TikTok” – other non-STP aligning options are available! 

What choices have you made, and where are you no longer spending wasted time? 

Know your numbers: 

Have you heard of funnels or flywheels? These are essentially the ecosystems that your prospects and clients move through. For example, top of funnel might be the stage that your prospect is at once they’ve heard about your business and before they move through the funnel, ideally to purchase. But potential customers falling out of the funnel if there’s not a good match is also ok – no time wasters please!  

A key step in creating an effective funnel is to understand conversion numbers, so you can spend time on the point where most prospects are falling out.  

For example, there is little point in creating a regular email newsletter if you don’t have a list – or it’s very small. If that newsletter is a crucial part of the strategy, then spend time on growing that email list – perhaps spending your time and efforts in promoting a newsletter waiting list for a period as you grow the numbers, and only then shift to creating the newsletter content. That’s an example of making choices and basing them on the data you have.  

Do your STP.  

There’s no point doing marketing until you really understand your market. There’s a reason why the word market is at the beginning of the word marketing! 

Speak with your customers.  

Your customers will give you absolute gold on what they love about your offer (testimonials), what they wish was different (improvements), and what they’d also considered (competition). This can be incredibly useful... remember marketing is a two-way street, and apart from gaining valuable insights, you might be able to up-sell or cross-sell, or get a referral. 

Listen to your STP.  

When you’ve done your STP you should have a good understanding of the size of market, the value of it, who makes purchasing decisions, what influences and engages them, and so on. This is why it’s a critical task, because it answers all those questions that might have previously kept you awake in the night!  

For example, if you have a local audience (the trades) then local SEO is really going to work for you. A bookkeeper to the trades used STP and realised she could connect with prospects by buying cups of tea at the breakfast van in the trade merchant car park – simple and uncomplicated and drove massive results. If you have an international audience, your website might need to be multi-lingual/currency, and social content may need different language voiceovers and subtitles – there are tools that can help with this. Your STP will guide you as to whether you should run events or seasonal promotions, do something completely unexpected, or tow the sector line with a key differentiator. 

Be consistent. 

You must be consistent in your message, your visuals, your tone, your values. Be consistent across channels – make sure it feels like you, even if the specifics are tailored for audience and platform. Be consistent with social media, newsletters, vlogs, etc – if your consistent is once per week, then maintain that, but if it’s once a day, then be consistent in that too.  

Find your brandvocates. 

You’ll already have customers who love you. Find them, work with them, work out how you can leverage their love for what you do to bring you more ideal customers. From partnerships to influencers, to affiliates and referrals, there are lots of options here. Get your product or service to create raving fans, and then get them to talk about you.    

To make SME marketing efficient, marketers need to know and understand their market and to make appropriate decisions on what the strategy and then the tactical plan should be. Do the STP work, set the strategy, execute the plan, track outcomes, and go again. 

The ability to be flexible and responsive is one of the fundamental benefits of small business, and all actions must be rooted being market orientated, not in what the business sells.  

Market orientation rather than product or tech orientation will set you up for success. Even if you start speaking with just one or two customers, the benefit of speaking with real customers and getting out of the leadership day-to-day will pay dividends. Be curious to find out as much as you can about the market and customer landscape and then get laser-focused on the segments you’re going after, not necessarily for ever, but for now, as per your objectives, and move the needle to drive success.