The Twitter age to return to the source of marketing

Recently, I met a small business in Baltimore to discuss how to build market share. This is a strong enterprise, with many large customers, affected by the economic crisis, it is diversifying its business, so it can be independent of several investment operations. Although it provides products for a particular area, the business is no more than any other company in terms of marketing and advertising: it is difficult and needs more customers.

But how to get more customers? How does an enterprise use online marketing to establish its own business? If you read corporate news, you will find that Internet technology companies or large consumer-oriented enterprises have advanced marketing technology. Over the past few years, there have been a lot of reports about marketers seeking social media and plug-ins for online marketing. If you don't use Twitter or don't distribute Facebook plug-ins, you seem like a loser.

The reality is that in the United States there are 95% of employees in the enterprise not more than 500 people, marketing input does not match. If the vast majority of small businesses earn at $2 million a year, profits grow by about 20% per cent, and 20% of their profits are spent on marketing, that means the vast majority of companies have 80,000 dollars or less marketing each year. Imagine a 20% of the investment in trade shows, business development compensation, which means that there is little money for marketing.

Imagine the state of the economy and consider that most of us are likely to have these small businesses as customers, which is not a small problem. What do we say to these customers? Help companies to develop sales, improve visibility, win customers, so that they can stay in the enterprise? Are we going to tell these small businesses to use the same high-end technology as large enterprises? Are we going to tell them that Twitter or Facebook can solve all of these problems?

Maybe some of us will. It is a disgrace. Because there are many advanced technology is very good, may be suitable for High-tech enterprises.

Recently, Globalspec, a company that provides industry-disaggregated data, has released its name, "2009 Industry trends: How do manufacturers conduct marketing today?" 》。 The report describes interesting cases of how to return to basic strategies. Sure, it doesn't sound very good, but it's the point. Even if you don't have a large number of manufacturers or industrial companies in your customers, it's a good way to analyze how small businesses are doing small investments.

The report shows that the most important use of these companies is to use online catalogs and websites, email lists, search engine optimization, newsgroup sponsorship, banner ads, and paid search marketing. As they invest more money to boost traffic, they are also cutting back on two of the most traditional marketing channels: a 30% reduction in trade shows and a 28% per cent reduction in print media input.

The economic crisis is not a reason to reduce innovation. But the economic crisis also means we need to expand our clients. Even if you don't advertise in manufacturing, you might be able to do a lot of marketing for small businesses. When a new technology arises, before we use it formally, we ask ourselves, "Why do we use this technology?" "and" What is our strategy? ”