SMB Marketing

The term SMB marketing typically refers to the task of a Chief Marketing Officer crafting a proper strategy to market his company’s products and services to the small to medium business channel. Within every large corporation, there are multiple executives that have some involvement in how a product or service is ultimately sold and delivered to a small-medium sized business, but for the purpose of this article we will solely focus on the marketing efforts.

Defining the SMB Market, let alone crafting a strategy for SMB marketing can be a challenge. According to Wikipedia, a small business is typically defined as one having 10 or fewer employees. A medium business is considered to be an organization with fewer than 500 employees, but having more than 10 employees. These definitions vary from country to country and more importantly, from company to company. Regardless, the SMB market is a growing and relatively untapped market for most Fortune 1000 and large companies. In recent years, nearly every single large company has jumped on the bandwagon and committed to driving significant revenue gains from this small to medium business channel.

From a marketing perspective, there are many considerations that a Chief Marketing Officer will consider for his SMB Marketing campaign and processes. Ahead of considerations for the campaign, the Chief Marketing Officer will work closely with brand managers and product managers to ensure that the product addresses the key points that small to medium business owners seek when purchasing a product or service for their business. These three points that resonate with the smb community are as follows. First, the product or service should help to drive the smb customers sales. In other words, the product or service will be perceived with great value if it can help grow the smb customers revenues. Secondly, they’ll look for products that can help reduce existing costs. In light of a slowing economy, small to medium business owners are constantly in search of products that will reduce relevant line item expenses. Third and lastly, smb customers look for products that can improve their standards of living. In other words, they want a product that might keep them from going to the office on a weekend. Or they may seek a service that allows them to outsource a function of their business that they simply aren’t good at or strongly dislike like their warehousing functions. Regardless, the CMO of every large company will look to ensure that his or her smb marketing strategy incorporates or addresses one of these three items.

Once those items are addressed, the chief marketing officer is now ready to address the issues of pricing and packaging. Is the product priced so that it is perceived as a true value? Is the packaging reduced so that it’s appropriate in quantity and scale for a smaller business? These are some of the key considerations that must be in place for a successful campaign. Finally, the CMO will reach the point where he can craft a specific smb marketing strategy to successfully increase his or her company’s revenues from the smb channel customer.