Effective marketing platforms for SMEs

Starting a new venture can be an eagerness of an entrepreneur but running it successfully requires a lot of efforts, understanding and considerable risk. The prosperity and growth of a business is not only dependent on idea, capital infusion, workforce but the adoption of contemporary business tools that holds the similar value in the business.
Internet is indeed one of the most unique and greatest gift of technology to mankind. Internet seems appealing to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who wish to internationalize their activities and products.

How Internet acts as business catalyst
It is a widespread fact that Internet is a powerful tool but what makes it compelling is the system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide. This advanced technology allows people living in completely different corners of the world to communicate easily with each other with utmost interactive tools such as emails, chats, SMS, voice SMS.
The global business fraternity is also experiencing the positive impact of Internet. In reality, it has completely changed the definition of business development as today visibility in the market is at par with quality and quantity in the growth of any business. Global recognisation of a product and business is highly important. Now-a-days, campaigning and product promotion acts as gauge for business growth. The successful product promotion and campaigning generates the need of improving communication and interaction with people. And what would be the best option for widening the communication base besides 'Internet'.


About Online Marketing
Online marketing or web marketing comprises everything to whet the appetite of an organisation as it expands reach in a considerable manner. A single click on the mouse will make a product public along with all required details at any time and from any place. This is a known fact that a constant and healthy communication between all entities of the business, such as manufacturer, supplier, buyer, seller, wholesalers and dealers is vital for the growth of a business. A supply chain management can easily created with the help of Internet, which maintains a closer linkage among all business entities.


Building presence on Internet
Although, building a website is an initial step towards Internet marketing, but the journey does not ends here, one needs much more than a website. In order to attract visitors to the business website, there are some ways to market a website, such as - Building presence on Internet


- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a process of improving the visibility of a website by helping it rank higher in popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo!.


- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and also through advertising.


- SEO Consultation – provides guidance to the company on how people interested in a particular product and services use search engines to find what they are looking for, and how companies can rank well for these searches.


- Social Media Marketing (Facebook, twitter, etc.,) - refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites like facebook, twitter, linkedin, you tube, and to name a few.


- Pay per click (PPC) advertising - a popular way to attract visitors on website. PPC involves creating a link to a site appear next to search results for keywords that are related to your business.


- Listing on online B2B marketplace - allows the company to be visible in a concentrated B2B marketplace where buyers visit often and connect with suppliers for their business. Suppliers too, in turn, can find vendors for their requirements


Programmes offered by players for SMEs:
There are many prominent and leading organisation who understand the needs of small businesses and helping them to survive and come out boldly in this cut-throat competition, such as -


(A) Office 365 Suite For Small Businesses
Recently, telecom major Bharti Airtel announced its partnership with Microsoft India to offer cloud computing services to small and medium business enterprises (SMBs). Under the alliance, Bharti Airtel will deliver Microsoft's cloud-based Office365 solution to SMBs through its cloud platform.
Today, cloud computing has emerged as a new area in IT and SMEs that account for one-third contribution of IT investment, according to EMCZinnov study 2012, find it as the most appealing IT feature. As per the study, India's cloud computing market is pegged at around $400 million and is likely to reach $4.5 billion by 2015 driven by SMEs that constitute the backbone of Indian economy.


(B) Jade Magnet partners Kuliza and Amazon for SMEs push
Bangalore-based professional website advertising agency Jade Magnet had announced its partnership with Kuliza and Amazon in April this year to provide customized websites at Rs 15,000 a year to SMEs as the Lean SME Online program .


Jade Magnet is a crowdsourcing platform that offers design and marketing support solutions while Kuliza creates and manages web hosting infrastructure using the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. The program aims to enable small and medium-sized businesses to go online with professional websites that can create brand identity with creativity and quality.


(C) Brand positioning opportunity for SMEs by Vodafone
Steeping in the trend, telecom major Vodafone India has also announced a enviable opportunity to small and medium enterprises (SME's) for brand positioning in the season 2 of Vodafone Drive into the Big League, the motor racing event.


Under the programme, the SMEs will be opportunitised to get their logo placed on the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes cars that will race at the second Indian Grand Prix to be held in Delhi from October 26-28, this year. SMEs with a turnover between Rs 10 crore and Rs 250 crore and an employee base of less than a thousand are eligible to participate in the Vodafone Drive into the Big League contest.


(D) Indian SMEs getting global push
US-based Parallels, a hosting and cloud services enablement firm, has announced its plans to team up with various service providers and telecom companies in India to provide hosting and cloud services to SMEs. In its attempts to tap Indian SME market, the company has already tied up with 30 service providers since it started its operations in India two years back.


(E) IndiaMART.com's B2B marketplace
Back home in India, a B2B marketplace IndiaMART has also enabled over 6 lakh SMEs with free online catalogs already. It has over 12 lakh SMEs listed on its platform. The 16 year-old B2B portal not only pushes their visibility globally for business but also brings them free information on tenders, trade shows etc, and establishes their credibility through third party verified trust profile on their listings and websites.


(F) Google's 'India Get Your Business Online' initiative
Last year in November, the search engine giant Google India announced the launch of a first-of-its kind program 'India Get Your Business Online', in order to help 5,00,000 small-medium businesses in India to get online in next three years. The programme allows small business owners in India to log on to www dot indiagetonline dot in and use the tool to get a free, easy-to-build website and web hosting for one year powered by HostGator.
This programme is also supported by Federation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME). Speaking to SME News, Anil Bhardwaj, Secretary General of FISME, said, “India get online programme has been an extremely successful initiative of Google which has implemented in partnership with ICICI, FISME and HostGator. True to Google philosophy, its uniqueness lied in simplifying and demystifying the experience of setting-up a business website for small entrepreneurs."

Hangout Now With Your Employees Globally With Google Plus

Google Plus is one of the latest addition to the increasingly building social media networks globally. Though there is a facebook, a twitter already existing, Google + is the latest social media network, which lets you do much more.

Great, but how is it beneficial for emerging businesses?
Every product has a certain market to address and is made with a vision, which largely defines its features and how it is building up. Google + in the similar manner has various features with which it is aiming to engage the TG and evolve the social networking online.

The screen capture above shows how Google Plus looks like!

Hangouts, the game changer!
One of the most interesting features of Google + is the hang-outs. Most emerging businesses always are on the look out for smarter tools which help them take their game to the next level by smartly saving operational costs. Google + hangouts help SMEs connect with their closed network while being online in the format of a video conference.

How do I create and join a Hangout?
One of the strongest features of Google Plus, the Hangout, is easy to work with. All you need to do is click the link on the bottom right which says "Start a Hangout" in green color! Once you do, a new pop-up window appears which shows you the following screen as shown in the screen capture below:

All you need to do to start a video conference with the closed group of people that you have is to click the hangout button in the green color and start the video call. Its free and you can catch up with anyone in your circle "professional" at any point of time, while all have to be logged into the Google network.

And you don't have to log out of your Emails!

While you are in a hangout, you can all the time be logged into your Gmail and do everything you wish to. It automatically figures out your laptop camera and hence you don't really need to do anything else to start a hangout.

How does it help my business?

In the simplest of its essence, a hangout can help small businesses to essentially cut down on cost and time and get global teams together to manage projects, quickly have a discussion around a focused topic and get the execution on track at all times. It can also help you do a virtual walk-through of your progress as an emerging company with your investors and other stakeholders.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about.

Now Get The Social engagement Analytics For Your Website on: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one tool which has been there since a long time now. Almost every website has it and it allows users to get access to some high quality metrics, which enable the website owners to understand how their website is performing.

More importantly for the Small and Medium enterprises, Google Analytics has been the top tool, which has helped them to assess the actual effectiveness of their online properties. With businesses going global online, its actually crucial to understand how your website is performing and what kind of audience is it attracting, from which geographies etc.

What about Social Media?
Google Analytics was lacking this pointer, but lately with the launch og Google+ (their newest social network) a whole new feature on Google Analytics called "Social Engagement" actually lets you understand the impact made on your website not only by the +1's done to your content by people all over the world, but also the tweets and the facebook likes.

As shown in the screen capture below:

You can now measure social engagement on the content shared on your website from across major social networks globally including Google+, facebook and twitter. This obviously helps you understand how is your content engaging your TG on the various social networks.

Obviously you do need to activate social tracking from the various social networks on google analytics, though the Google+ results will come to you automatically. To know how to integrate the various social networks on your site to know the social engagement factor, read the following Google help link: http://www.google.com/support/analyticshelp/bin/answer.py?answer=1316556&topic=1316551

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about

Manage Your Online Identity with: Google's Me On the Web

Manging your online identity in times today has become essentially crucial. Its all the more important for personal branding for individuals to whom brand really matters. And not just that, even for companies both small and large a managed brand presence online creates a lot of difference in they way they are positioned and perceived in the domain and the business world.

Google wants to help users better understand and manage their online identities, as well as learn how to remove unwanted content from Google search results.

Google: Me on the Web
Google's new offering, me on the web has made it far more easier for people to actually manage their reputation online.

Its fairly simple, with the easy to work around Dashboard which Google has created, almost anyone with a Google account, can track their online mentions, view their public profiles on various social networking sites and blogs, manage their overall digital presence and positioned identity. And not just that, many a times you face an issue of how to remove unwanted items about you. your business from the web. Google's Me on The Web helps you do that too!!

What does me on the web provides?

The Google official blog says: Me on the Web also provides links to resources offering information on how to control what third-party information is posted about you on the web. These include common tips like reaching out to the webmaster of a site to ask for the content to be taken down, or publishing additional information on your own to help make less relevant websites appear farther down in search results. 

How does this help SMEs?
In more ways than one. Obviously now you have a one stop to go to, when it comes to manage everything online about your business's online identity. Also now you have the power to know what it takes to manage third party content written about you online. While you can not just see this content, you also have the power to raise a concern and look at how to remove such content if it's not the manner in which it is to be in.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!