Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Online Marketing: Challenges faced by Indian SMEs

Most of the Indian SMEs have not even considered it. 90% of those who have, don't think its for them and they don't see any use in it. A very small proportion have overcome their mental barriers, adopted it and are reaping the benefits. Its online marketing that I am talking of.

Just like many others, sitting in my ivory towers, i thought 'Online Marketing-What a boon for SMEs; its bound to click. How can they ignore its power'. Especially for SMEs, it is extremely useful tool giving them the power to reach a wide audience fast and cheap. It was enough to get them going and once they start making substantial profits, they could move to other form of media as deemed useful then.

So what are the barriers to the use of online marketing by the Indian SMEs?

  • The very first is Inertia. Inertia to accept anything new, however useful it might be. The reason for this could primarily be the fact that online marketing takes time give results and is a long term decision which the SMEs are not able to accomodate being used to short term decision making.
  • The fact that online marketing does not start giving retuns the day you start doing it makes SMEs quite anxious about the time spent on it coz most of the times it their own time.
Online Marketing just like any other initiative takes time and no one can do anything about it. There are short cuts you can apply but they won't take you anywhere and are definitely not sustaining. Another advice is to please reconsider your strategy if the first one does not reap well. Also, do try to get some expert opinion on why what you do just doesnt work.
In most cases, the problem is something else and is quite trivial which when solved makes your online marketing initiative profitable.
  • Cost involved which would include either the direct costs of the vendor or indirect cost in terms of their own time spent is pervievably higher than the returns. Especially because the TG might or might not notice them first time and hence, doing the same thing 10 times to get attention is both time as well as money consuming.
Costs involved in online marketing are comparatively very less compared to any other traditional form of marketing. Especially considering the fact that once something is put on the web, stays there whether you add on to it or not and hence, for a long term keeps giving you traffic and ROI. Thus making the cost trivial. Just look at it this way: if you are spending time on it, you are basically investing time to know your TG if nothing else. And if you are paying a vendor, you are getting the marketing doen on the web quite cheap.
  • Online marketing is still new and not really tried and tested in India especially for the SMEs which makes it an unsure activity to put resources in.
Being an early adopter would make you comfortably positioned when everyone else is trying to get in and make a place for themselves. That is when you can reap the benefits of the efforts put in now.




1 comment:

  1. This is very informatics article for online marketing....
    Thank u so much////

    Online Marketing in Melbourne

    ReplyDelete