Small and Medium Scale Enterprises attract a lot of attention today. The reason is simply because developing and supporting SMEs is the way out of the current unemployment challenges that we are facing today as a nation.
My focus in this piece is on the challenges of competition among the SMEs on one hand and with other bigger companies on the other. Many of these small business owners are negatively affected by stiff competition leading to some of them dying prematurely. It is quite possible for the SMEs to successfully face competition using various online strategies.
The first point is for every SME, as a matter of necessity, to have online presence, in the early life of the enterprise. I recommend that such enterprises should simultaneously launch their website as they are commencing their business operations. Think about it, with a website, one can easily start a business – imagine what the multiplier effect will be if we have a higher percentage of the unemployed starting their own enterprises using the Internet as the focal point and not having to bother so much about setting up a physical structure. SMEs should have user-friendly websites that are able to sell their products and services each time prospects come calling.
It is important to install analytics on your website because it plays a vital role in measuring the performance of the business online and also assists in the planning of the right marketing strategies for targeting the prospective customer base.
Another good strategy is a generous mix of the SEO and digital marketing and advertising, which if done correctly can effectively confront competition.
The SEO is essential for every business website especially with the rising cost of bids on pay per click. It is necessary to apply the available on-page optimisation techniques to a large extent as this will improve the visibility and page ranking of the website. Major on-page optimisation techniques that can be applied include keyword-rich domain name, website design in mobile and desktop versions, keyword-rich content with appropriate header tags, meta tags and descriptions for each page, alt tag optimisation using a variety of phrases and not necessarily with the keyword as was the case in the past and best user experience and interest integrated web design.
In addition to this, attention should also be focused on off-page optimisation in the form of blog posts, article publishing, press releases and classified postings. If you have a good budget, then you might consider doing a bit of pay per click for your products and services using Google, Facebook and a few others that are popular.
It is, however, pertinent to note that pay-per-click adverts stop the moment the budget is exhausted. It may look cheap at the outset, but in the long run might become expensive if not properly managed. You may, as an SME, decide to have a little monthly budget for pay-per-click adverts if you can afford it. Remember that the world of pay-per-click today is actually the battle of the fittest which means those with huge budgets who can bid more eventually get to win more often.
I have repeatedly written on this column that the SMEs should embrace social media marketing, and the starting point could be creating business pages for the social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other popular social networking sites and promoting your products and services on those platforms.
You do not have to be a professional to start; you can start by adding links to your website products and services for your visitors to easily connect with your website to see the big picture.
For you to drive traffic to your social media sites and website, it is essential for you to update these social media sites as often as possible with issues that will be of interest to your clients so that they can patronise your products and services.
Now, by creating your website through ensuring that all the above on-page and off-page optimisation techniques are updated constantly, you are most likely to always keep abreast or ahead of your competitors. You, however, need to be monitoring your digital marketing activities on a regular basis as your competitors will always tend to apply these practices too. You need to keep abreast of and learn how to use some of the valuable analytic tools that are available online, some free and others on paid format. For a start, you can try out by using some of the free analytic tools in order to properly understand the real essence of those tools. You can later shift to using more popular and advanced paid tools and make good use of them in your analytics.
Monitoring your digital marketing strategies regularly through analytics and social media monitoring tools will tremendously help in measuring your business performance. Based on the observed results from the analytic tools, you can plan your strategies in such a way that all your competitors can be kept at bay.
One final strategy that you can use to edge competition out today is mobile. I am sure you are aware that mobile has taken the lead in terms of usage and it continues to grow. The question is: what is your mobile strategy today? It is possible that many of us have not even thought of one yet, well it is safe to do without it today but I doubt if that will be a better strategy especially as competition becomes fiercer.
Copyright PUNCH.
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