One of the things that makes small businesses’ growth stall is the marketing strategy for small businesses. Many small businesses tend to rely on word-of-mouth marketing instead of digital marketing, without realizing that digital marketing is way faster, more advanced, and has a much bigger guarantee since it targets a larger pool of customers. Just take a look at this case study.
Case Study to evaluate marketing strategy for small businesses
‘’ In Moshi town, there were two business owners who owned small clothing lines. One had been doing the business for 10 years and his name was Mr. Komu. While the other just started the business 6 months ago on the same street as Mr.Komu and his name was Mr. Smith. Now Mr. Komu was very famous for his business and always used his friends and associates to put the word out for his business so as he can lure customers. The method was effective in his early years until Mr. Smith showed up and opened the same business selling the same clothes at a more expensive price.
Mr. Smith was unpopular in Moshi town when he moved in. And so he realized that in order to beat his competition he had to take extra measures. So Mr. Smith contacted ANC group services and subscribed his business to their digital marketing services. By the third month after the opening of his business, Mr. Smith had already surpassed Mr. Komu’s business’ customer base by twice the number despite the fact that his business was new in Moshi and he sold the same clothes as Mr. Komu’s business only more expensive.
By the fourth and fifth months, Mr. Smith had already been selling and shipping clothes abroad while Mr. Komu had already reduced his staff from 4 to 1 due to the low number of customers. And by the sixth month, Mr. Smith had already opened 3 other branches of the business across town while Mr.Komu was considering changing his business from a clothing line to a food store’’.
WHAT IS THE MORAL OF THE STORY FOR MARKETING STRATEGY FOR SMALL BUSINESSES?
End result of all your searches for marketing strategies for small businesses will be ADAPTIVE TO CHANGE!
Mr. Komu had been doing the business for the past 10 years and he used word of mouth as his strategy to lure down customers. Let’s say the timeframe was from 2000-2010 so from 2000-2005 his method was very successful due to the technology and mass media at that time were less advanced. Now by 2005 a lot of social media companies emerged and made it easier to communicate and do business. And so by the time 2010, a lot of people bought clothes online and so this made Mr.Komu lose customers.
If he had changed his marketing strategy for small businesses to digital marketing like Mr. Smith perhaps he would still have his customers intact and maybe even more. Thus if Mr. Smith hadn’t sided with ANC for digital solutions he wouldn’t be able to compete with Mr. Komu‘s business and have that huge customer base thus it’s very likely that his business wouldn’t have lasted for six months.
LESSON
Thus word of mouth was effective back when social media didn’t exist and most information wasn’t digitized. Now it’s not even guaranteed, very slow, and reaches a pool of customers at a very slow speed. WOM is a fail now, as compared to digital marketing and so starting a small business and relying upon it would be fatal to your business.
Hence, start applying digitalized SEO marketing strategy for your small businesses. If you are new to the digitized world, then rather than trying digital solutions as the marketing strategy for small businesses, it is recommended to contact some Digital Marketing Agencies. This will save your money and time.
