FICCI and Facebook collaborate to help Indian SMEs

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and Facebook partner together to help the Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to harness the capability of Internet and Social Media.

Mr Rajiv Kumar, FICCI's Secretary General, said, “FICCI is delighted to be the anchor partner for Facebook in India to run its global SMB Boost program. The SME sector is an area of critical focus for FICCI considering its impact to innovation and growth. In addition to working with Facebook to provide this Boost to our members, FICCI and Facebook will also integrate training sessions on online marketing through social networks in its tradeshows and Conferences for SMEs.”

Moreover, India currently got almost 6400-industrial clusters, out of which almost 6000 are low tech. The poor technology adoption continues to stay as a significant cause for the poor operational and marketing competitiveness in the MSME sector.

Jointly, Facebook and FICCI hope to make technology as the consistent growth factor for boosting the international competitiveness of the Indian SME sector via this partnership.

Read more on: http://news.indiamart.com/story/ficci-and-facebook-collaborate-help-indian-smes-156960.html

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.

How to Generate Cost Effective Web Traffic?

Online marketing is slowly transforming the success scenario of many SMEs and providing them with new, potential arenas. It can greatly contribute in providing them with a larger status and put them in the same league of larger firms.

Website traffic can be increased by developing online partnerships whereby various concerns host each other’s web links and connect every user to the other’s web page and also advertise their own wares. The traffic can also be boosted by promoting search engine listings.

What Does the Customer Look For?

An SME needs to understand the way in which customers rely on search engines and the way they pick up keywords in a particular content. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. are potential platforms for customers, existing and new ones, to search for a particular product and service. They work as effective channels to guide users towards a particular site. One can choose between paid listings or organic listings as per their convenience. Generating back links or link building is vital for a website to have a higher position on the listings.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is fast becoming a favored option for SMEs who are realizing the power of the World Wide Web. SEO involves the process of promoting the visibility of a particular webpage or website through unpaid search possibilities. Initially the search algorithms depended on information provided by the websites such as keywords which was later converted based on the keyword density. Presently, each search engine has their own criteria for listing a particular website. Many of them employ crawlers which browse across various pages of a website and seek out keywords and content elements. SEO can be planned according to the various kinds of search including image search, video search, academic search, news search, among others.

Where & Why to Invest

Many SMEs invest in SEOs as part of their internet marketing strategy and they are incorporated in their website design. SEOs are expected to bring optimum return on the amount invested. Search engines change their algorithms or search criteria and thus websites can suffer a loss in the visitor counts. Thus, SEO-responsive material needs to be updated from time-to-time. SEO could practically include a variety of materials including website designs, content management systems, videos, images, shopping carts, and elements which are programmed for search engine exposure.

SMEs can also boost the prominence of their web page by cross linking which consists of multiple links on various pages to bring the reader/user in connection with some important pages on the site.

Another form of ensuring free web traffic is the mode of free articles. An SME should publish a lot of articles which are themed along their products or services. They can involve their subject of expertise and offer their customers tips and guidelines which can make for an informative read.

You can also start a newsletter that can easily carry a variety of experts on the subjects together. The SME can be also part of online communities and forums where they can share their information and expertise with their potential customers.

So, be everywhere without shelling extra pennies and attract extra web traffic to your website.

Get More with Social Networking

This is the age of the internet. With the technological boom, the internet has become an important marketing tool to augment sales. Social networking sites have become indispensable in this regard as there are 120 to 800 million users of these sites. You can market your product on popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, My Space and Linked In. 

Attention Seeking 

It is important to grab the attention of the consumers and since a large mass of people are into using the social networking websites, you can capture a large amount of audience by targeting any of the generally famous social networking websites. Come up with a unique profile logo so that the customers can recognise your brand. You can make your profile interesting and attractive keeping in mind the recent trends.  

Interactive Medium 

Social networking sites are one of the most interactive mediums which can be used to communicate with the customers, as these networking sites provide the entrepreneurs with a common platform for communication with their customers. You can know customers’ responses and provide them with products according to their convenience. It is an easily accessible medium; with just a few clicks of the button, customers can access information about your product. It is important for you to keep your site updated and customer friendly. Keep posting the latest information about the product on your site. It has become crucial to analyze the new trends through this innovative socialising medium and act smartly to enhance the sales and maintain healthy relations with the customers.
 

Cost effective
This kind of marketing is cost effective and fast. You can invest once and then reap the benefits for a long time – unlike media advertising. It is extremely fast because internet marketing has brought the world to the fingertips. It is with just a single click of a button that customers can learn about your product. 

Targeting customers  

You can target your customers through this medium; this is not possible by advertising your product through other means such as the print and broadcasting media. It is important for you to know the type of audience that you can target and then build a community of potential customers. One needs to keep in mind that online marketing is markedly different from offline marketing. Offline marketing means the solutions seeking the people while the online marketing involves the people seeking the solutions. So the marketing should be planned accordingly.
 

Global market

Social networking sites offer you a global platform to advertise your product. The social media provides a fair opportunity to have unlimited exposure. It has no clearly demarcated periphery and you can expand your horizon. Your product gets more exposure thus incrementing your sales. It can have a global presence and the world becomes a single market.  

If you own or run a SME then social networking sites are the best mediums to promote your product. In a scenario where everyone is seeking cost effective options nothing can be better than launching your product through this fastest growing medium. In the era of cloud computing, it is prudent to choose social networking sites to handle the global competition.

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!