Why SMEs should Opt for Inbound Marketing?

When you’re about to start a small or medium enterprise of your own, it’s important to make people aware of your venture and the products and services you offer.  Inbound marketing is the new marketing method that uses the latest technology to attract customers. This marketing method is opposed to the traditional, interrupting and less effective outbound marketing. This method uses the new strategy of reaching costumers by providing them precise and useful information reaching them according to their convenience. As traditional marketing is focused on finding costumers, inbound marketing is focused on the idea of getting found by costumers. So inbound marketing brings qualified costumers to the SMEs.

Next Gen Marketing
Inbound marketing is the result of some recent changes in the behavior of consumers. It does not involve the conventional and expensive methods of regular newspapers and television advertisements, billboards on roads and telemarketing calls. It is mainly based on three things--good content, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and social media.

The primary advantage of inbound marketing is its target audience which is all the persons who access the internet. A good content is the key to successful inbound marketing. Users will browse away from your page if they do not find the right information or get confused by the presentation. Similarly, SEO helps the consumer locate the site and its content. SEO practices, on-page and off-page, help SMEs in achieving a higher position in search engines. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. prove to be the first platform for a potential buyer or customer.

Social media networks form another important aspect in inbound marketing. Their range is spread across many channels where people browse on a regular basis. With a substantial sharing of the content, potential buyers are attracted to company's products or services.

Saves Time
A survey has established that inbound marketing, even though time consuming, costs 62 per cent less than outbound marketing or related efforts. It grows over a period of time and only improves in its quality. Also, with inbound marketing, one is directly connected to the target audience. In inbound marketing, one only approaches leads which are interested in the product and provides better chance for selling. It also works as a wisely investment, whereby SMEs can benefit from a long-term marketing strategy rather than a short-lived one such as print ads or video presentations, etc. The right investment on optimized content which can show up on various search engines confers a long lasting touch to the marketing effort.

Flexible Solution
Inbound marketing also offers a flexible solution to SMEs which can modify its campaign from time-to-time as per their requirement. Adopting closed loop marketing analytics from possible leads also helps SMEs to improve their marketing month after month. The system works much better than conventional e-mailing systems where the company has to spend quite an amount just to reach out rather than waiting for consumers to connect with them in the inbound marketing methodology. Often, these e-mails create negative publicity for the SME as the message is branded as a spam or unwanted forwards.

As a power pack of all these advantages, Inbound marketing could benefit SMEs in multiple ways making them more successful.

Send a Self Destructing Private Note Online to Someone: Privnote

Communication is one of the most critical and crucial aspects of any business. In the knowledge economy that we live in, businesses are surviving and thriving on the basis of knowledge they are gathering and generating at the same time, while being part of the ecosystem. Business communication is critical, especially when it comes to sharing crucial but short pieces of information in a certain manner which is understood only by the intended recipient and which self destructs once the recipient reads the information. Critical business communication requires that the communication be done in a manner such that it is kept secure all the time.

Privnote does it for you
If you want to send key notes about the business to a certain intended recipient, all you need to do is to write the same on Privnote and it will be shared online with the target. Once he/ she confirms reading the note, it automatically self destructs and is no longer available to the recipient.

To use Privnote, all you need to do is to log into the following URL: https://privnote.com/, once done, you can start jotting down the notes. Once done the next step is to create the note and share it with the intended audience/ individual. The note self destructs after it has been read.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!

Blog Your Brand – A Vision for the SME to Leverage Networked Blogging

Walk the Walk… Talk the Talk… Times have now arrived for the corporate to consider Blogging the Blog!!

Yes, its true, as social media is arriving and knocking on the doors of enterprises, all businesses whether large or small are taking note, there are new rules getting created. New possibilities opening up. The Corporate today wants to get one with the consumer, interact with his relevant target audience wherever the consumer is!

Your consumers are already on the Internet

With the usage of Internet spilling over to almost all parts of the country, the corporate has a valid and an entirely new and ever increasing scope to interact in real time with its consumers, take feedback and hence constantly evolve as a ‘People’s Brand‘.

Your clients are already talking about you, are you listening?
We are living in change, which essentially is the only contant thing in life. And so is a brand.  A brand needs to evolve with the times, reaching out to the relevant set of people who are talking about you or would want to talk about you!


Blog and Get Blogged about

The emerging SMEs must engage their audience and we suggest our SME partners that they schedule time and participate in corporate blogging. The top management of the SME can achieve fantastic results, while ensuring that they create and establish a personal connect with their target audience/ existing clients by sharing thought leadership and communicating the vision and growth of the company on the Official Corporate Blog.


Should you tie up with an external agency – Case Study?

Nokia before launching N97 in India and Samsung while launching the Jet. What did they do? Call a select group of bloggers and wallah they have arrived at a much lesser cost as compared to doing a TV ad or big hoarding out there, which they will do for sure, but they have captured one strata of the market.

The trends purely show, that there is a BIG opportunity which the SMEs can leverage powerfully to connect with and engage their customers in.

How Do I get Started? Do I need time/ money?

Getting your blog up and running in times today is a 5 minute job. Though to create an Official Corporate Blog, which is positioned and branded right, you can always get the job done by a freelancer/ agency. The leading platforms we suggest are: Blogspot and Wordpress.

To make the blog exist, you may not need much investment, but to ensure that there is solid and powerful content each day on it, sure is a task, which has to be not drilled down, but built and fostered as a culture within the organisation.

Say ‘hi’ to your sutomer each day, reach out and extend your hand! Get connected and retain your loyal customers!!

A focused Corporate blog will EMPOWER your customer to know more and get connected with the brand, thereby fueling Co-Creation and Innovation, enabling mutual growth.

To know more about how you can leverage the power of blogging for your emerging company, send us a comment to this blog and our team of experts will be happy to help you!