Cost Effective Ways to Create Brand & Sales Leads December 16, 2011

“If you don’t put yourself in a position to be noticed, you never will be”.

This holds very true for the SMEs, especially for the start-ups, who wish to make their presence felt in a strong & influential way. With the business world becoming ever-competitive, there is a need for SMEs to generate that “X” factor. However, this is not possible unless you have a clear understanding of who your target audience is & what appeals to their buying instincts the most.

1.Social Media Strategies/E-Marketing – Referrals and viral marketing can accelerate your lead generation initiatives in a fun, fast & free way. Use sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc to develop interactive & niche groups & create a buzz about your products & services within minutes & in the most cost-effective way.

With more than 770M users on FB worldwide and a whopping 38M in India itself growing at a mnthly rate of around 8% we cannot ignore this medium for our own marketing.

2.Print and Radio Advertising – A well-crafted advertisement placed time & again in the right publication or broadcasted repeatedly on the radio is an effective way to generate leads & help build brand awareness in today’s competitive business environment.

Eg: People of all ages, regions, castes & creeds enjoy listening to radio. The youth is especially fascinated by the new-age radio channels like Mirchi, My FM, etc. This automatically turns the youth into brand ambassadors of a product or service.

3. Brand Building and Emotional Benefits – People buy benefits rather than features. What appeals to people are not just the features of a service or product but the benefits that tag along.

Eg: Taglines like – Dissolving tablets allow us to take medicine on the go.

Another recent eg is that of Fast Track. The company knows that owing to their own durable watches, people would not be looking to buy another watch soon. Hence, to instigate people to buy multiple watches, they have come up with taglines like – “How Many Do You Have?” And “Move On..”

4.Direct Mail / Email / SMS Marketing – Sending out direct emails to your customers gives your strategy a personalized touch & also it is extremely cost effective. Our common human tendency is such that we enjoy reading mails & SMS’s addressed directly by our name. This tendency can easily be enchashed upon by the SMEs.

Eg: Most people must have received a birthday or anniversary wish message/card from a company at some or the other time. Such messages tug at the emotions of customers & pave the way for a strong & long-lasting customer-provider relationship.

5.Partnership Marketing/ co-branding/ strategic partnerships – Such type of swap branding can enhance the visibility of SMEs & also help strengthen identity.

Eg: An advertisement for tie on a website selling formal shirts. A customer looking to buy formals may most probably be interested in buying a tie along with the shirt. What better a deal for the customer to buy both the things through one single site.

6.Provider-driven Brand Image – This kind of branding serves to build credibility for the provider. After all, customers are always on the lookout for businesses they can blindly trust.

Eg: A punchline of Allstate’s:  “You’re in good hands,”

7.Word of Mouth – One of the most potent, viral & cost effective marketing communications is the word-of-mouth. If you can create a buzz about your products & services amongst the common man, your battle is half won.

8.Content Marketing – The use of blogs, forums, newsletters, whitepapers and e-books are some of the best cost effective ways of content marketing.

Eg: Post open end questions about your products & services on blogs & forums & let people do the talking.

9.Active Participation in Social, Community, Business events – This is the best & most cost effective way of creating leads in your niche market. Showing active participation in such events not only supports your brand image but also brings you at par with prospective co-branders.

Eg: Attend Tradefairs, Business Gatherings, etc.

10.Youtube Video for a Product – For the tech-friendly SMEs, creating innovative youtube of your products & services can enhance your brand visibility. Unlike the TV commercials, this kind of branding is absolutely free with the same or most of the times greater response than TV ads.

It is important for SMEs to remember that, “When there is an original sound in the world, it makes a hundred echoes.”  Thus, unless & until SMEs start ‘thinking out of the box’, they cannot take the lead.

 Contributed by Sushmita Kalashikar

For any of the above requirements pls send a mail to media@smejoinup.com

 

Print Media vs Online Media – Which is a Better Choice for SMEs? December 7, 2011

With the ever increasing competition in the business world, more and more SMEs are understanding the importance of having a strong online presence, especially to get an edge over their competitors. This has triggered a race among businesses to enter the virtual world and generated a growing preference for online media over print media.

Few of the major reasons for online media to get more attention than print media include:

Unlimited Virtual Space: While the print media allocates only a limited space for businesses to market their products & services & is bounded by the limited number of pages in publication, there is an unlimited & unoccupied space available in the online media for businesses.

Instant Results: In order to ensure that the marketing & promotional strategies of businesses are headed towards the right direction, it is important that they get instant feedbacks. While print media may take a long time to reach the masses & instigate them to give feedbacks, results on the online media are most often quick & real.

Interactive Communication: This is possibly the most important advantage of online media over print media. Today there is a need for constant user interaction to ensure business from your present customers as well as gain business from new prospects. This may seem like a tedious job with print media since the response time is longer. On the other hand, with the online media, you can easily have interactive communication by means of live chats, forums, polls, blogs & so on. This sort of communication not only creates a quick buzz for your products & services but also keeps your audience interested.

Enhanced Brand Visibility: While the print media may feature your products, services or special business events only when asked for, the reach of online communication if carried out effectively is practically endless. You automatically tend to surface in searches and within few days you can have millions of people talking about your products & services, that too without shelling out your pockets.

Cost Effective: The biggest advantage that tempts SMEs into going online is its cost effectiveness. While organizing even the smallest business event may cost you a hefty amount, the same can be carried out effectively & conveniently through the online media without losing a penny. The best part is that the response you receive here can be multiple times higher than what you receive with the print media.

Continuous Online Presence: The most important factor that sets online media high up than the print media is that, people may hardly read yesterday’s newspaper, but a piece of information mentioned about you on the online media may be available from a day to years together. More importantly, it doesn’t just stay as it is but also appears frequently on the searches enhancing your visibility.

Reports suggested that there are over 42 million internet users in India with nearly 27 million active users. Now, you can easily imagine what it can be like to reach out with your business to 27 million prospective customers!!

For any media requirement do get in touch with us on media@smejoinup.com

This article was contributed by Sushmita Kalashikar