3 Reasons Why SME’s Should Invest in Online Marketing
When I meet other businessmen and marketing managers of small and medium enterprises (SME’s), I’m sometimes disappointed when I hear that they’re not tapping into the internet to market and grow their businesses. If your business caters to a particular niche that has representation online through communities or social networks, then don’t hesitate to invest. Here are 3 reasons why I think SME’s should invest some of their advertising and promotions budget in online spaces.
1. TARGETED
With online marketing, you don’t just go out with guns blazing shooting everyone in sight. That’s a total waste of resources because your hit rate with potential quality customers will probably be low. Besides, if you go through traditional media and don’t have enough budget, your message will just get drowned out by all the other noise.
So the question is how do you target channels and vectors for advertising? One is through the Philippine blogosphere. Identify your niche and find out who the bloggers are that talk about products like yours. Find out their readership. Your question is probably “how?”, right? It’s actually very simple. You don’t need to contact and advertising agency for a list of top bloggers. You can go to the following local blog directories for information:
Let’s say for example I have a business for fashion accessories. What I’d do is go through some of the notable Filipina bloggers who have a good volume of local readership in the field of fashion and lifestyle. I can either negotiate an ex-deal and pay if really needed for reviews, text links, banner ads.
For those with newly opened restaurants or catering services, there are sooooo many food blogs out there waiting for you to tap them so that you can talk to their readers. Please note that traffic is not everything. Make sure you study and scrutinize the blog or website you plan on partnering with so you know that there is a genuine, living, and addressable community.
2. AFFORDABLE
I’m not sure if affordable is the best word to describe this. Maybe cost-effective would be better. Anyway, the rates for online advertising here in the Philippines isn’t too high yet. The demand isn’t there so the supply is abundant. So many channels waiting for prospective new advertisers and partners. With regards to the rates, you’ll have to study up on CPM and CPC. More on that in a separate post. Special note for restaurants. It’s a fact that a lot of food bloggers (like myself) are okay with ex-deals. Hahaha. Just make sure you offer gift certificates good for two-three people so we can use it for dates or with barkada outings.
You can even get away with spending 0 pesos at all in advertising if you aggressively do Social Network Marketing. More on that in a future post.
3. VIRAL MARKETING
Based on my previous post, Philippines Internet Users, you can clearly see on the statistics that online communities are very social and expressive in nature. More than half of them are active in social networks and read blogs. The potential for them to talk about you in their Friendster, Facebook, Multiply, Blog, and Micro-blogs (Plurk/Twitter) is really way up there!
One restaurant in Mall of Asia hosted a free dinner for hundreds of bloggers. The result was almost a hundred bloggers decided to blog about the event. Imagine the exposure and traction this got that restaurant. Let’s say they spent P30,000 – P40,000 to feed the bloggers. Let’s make a general assumption that the average number of unique visitors these blogs get monthly is at 1,500. That’s already 75,000 people reached. If you’re on a tight budget, then just handpick bloggers and websites that have the highest probability of conversion for you.
They will talk about your product/service, and believe it or not, those that read about it will probably talk about you as well.
I can write a whole lot more about this topic because I really believe that there is so much more to gain for both the advertisers and the website/blogger communities. Hopefully we will see more and more of this happen in the new few months. 
You might be interested with my previous posts
9 Responses to “3 Reasons Why SME’s Should Invest in Online Marketing”
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[...] Internet Users 3 Reasons Why SME’s should Invest in Online Marketing Personal Branding through Social [...]
great insight carlo! as the utilization of online marketing to promote IMCs is still a new concept to that consumers are becoming aware of, blogging is definitely the way to go. Think Perez Hilton. the guy is responsible for the success (and sometimes downfall) of upcoming recording artists and bands and celebrities simply because people agree with his opinions. And in every social group, there is always an alpha male/female that is potentially another Perez Hilton. And every member of the group (whether it’s barkada, school/social org, church congregation, fraternity, etc.) is also a member of other social groups where he or she is the one everyone else listens to.
It’s important though that the impact of the first impression on the blogger networks is good if not great. As oft been told, it takes but one bad word from an influential mouth to ruin a good reputation. I’m waiting for your next blog man. Keep it up!
[...] Based on this study and common sense, you can safely say that the real problem is the limited resources. With this in mind, businessmen should really make it a point to make every cent spent on marketing and awareness to have an impact on the bottom line. This leads me back to my earlier post 3 Reasons Why SME’s Should Invest in Online Marketing. [...]
Hi Iro, thanks for the comment.
I agree with you 100% on the Perez Hilton phenomenon. Because of the trust that he’s built with his community, he’s now considered a king maker in the entertainment industry. I can’t count how many times he broke entertainment news faster than actual publications or television shows.
Indeed, I also believe that SME’s should consider tapping blogs and online communities for marketing. Thanks for pointing this out. This actually inspired me to do some research and maybe present an actual case study in my blog regarding this.
[...] and article from eMarketer This basically is a testament to the fact that viral and social marketing is one of the best forms of getting your communication across. I know this may border on heresy for [...]
Great post. You mention: “Anyway, the rates for online advertising here in the Philippines isn’t too high yet.” – in what level CPC and CPM rates are in the top sites? Thanks,
[...] a lot, by I also shared a few insights about how you can apply internet marketing for small-medium enterprises (SME). I won’t go into detail about the technical “bruhaha” of my talk, but I’d [...]
[...] as no surprise since digital marketing is already going mainstream with more multinationals and SME’s embracing new media and incorporating it in their marketing plans. The problem with a lot of seminars right now is that [...]