First blog post – a very exciting time here at B2B Ageny and hopefully the same for you. I’m going to start with a question that has recurred many times for me and many different types of company. Just how can small businesses compete online?
The majority of the writing I have read on this subject forms part of a sales pitch. A company (usually some type of web development/advertising company) writing about how anyone can make money online – easily. Now, as an educated audience I would expect the readers of this blog to be a stage beyond that making money will ever be easy. Now according to these sales pitches, all you need to do is set up a website (guess what – they can do this for you) advertise said website (yes, they do this as well) and then no time money and customers will be fighting their way to spend money with you. Clearly this isn’t the case.
To analyse online marketing I will start by looking at the most popular form of online marketing and the place where most money is spent – Google. Google has space for aprox 13 adwords on Page 1 and 10 natural search links (depending on how the person has results set up).Therefore at most 23 companies who can offer their services (how often do you look at page 2?). Even for in-depth research most people may only look at 10 links. That means that there for each keyword there may be 7-10 companies who can use Google economically to generate sales. In this way Google becomes similar to other media in that there is a natural convergence to those business with this most resource and the largest economies of scale and lowest prices. Unless you are one of less than 10 companies who do what you do then Google may not be the place to make a success of your marketing spend.
Further to this the areas in which most small businesses compete such as quality of product, quality of service and staff knowledge are impossible to convey online. Ultimately everything is a commodity online – it has to be.
So far there seems to be lots of negativity in this post about a small business being able to compete online. We’re not like that at B2B Agency so if you’ve started skimming, this is the positive bit.
In my experience the way for a small business to compete online is to go niche and be social. Being niche and catering for a smaller part of a market allows a high quality approach. Further to this by engaging with your audience through social marketing it is possible to convey those advantages a small business has. This approach is more resource intensive in terms of time but it can be lower cost and more rewarding…
The next blog post will look at how small businesses can utilise social media to gain a competitive advantage and also the best tools for SMEs to manage social media. I am new to blogging to would appreciate any comments people have. I hope you enjoyed my first post.
