Archive for the ‘Small & Medium Business’ Category

Internet Marketing – A Low Cost Strategy

Posted by: Wasif Abbas | Posted at: March 30th, 2010 | Posted in Back Office Services (BO), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Small & Medium Business

E-commerce has continued on a strong growth path since it became a viable business channel in mid-nineties. Approaching fifteen years, the rate of its growth is showing no signs of slowing down. According to eMarketer.com, US retail e-commerce sales are projected to grow by 11.1% to $200.6 Billion[1] in 2010. Combine this information with increase in internet usage from 361 million to 1.67 Billion users between 2000 and 2009 at a CAGR of 18.5%[2], it can be concluded that internet as marketing and e-commerce channel continues to hold tremendous potential.

Any growth area will attract attention from companies hungry for more revenues and internet is no different. As the competition heats up, the ability to rank higher in organic search engine results requires more than just a good website. Similarly, another growing area is social media marketing. According to “Best-in-Class Companies” worldwide, 63% of the surveyed companies plan to increase social media marketing spending anywhere from 1% to 25%[3].

Let’s first look at four fundamental stages in developing an online marketing strategy:

Channel

Creating a website without creating a channel is like building a shop in the middle of a jungle. No one knows it exists, so it won’t attract many, if any, visitors. Therefore, efforts such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), blogging, and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) to name a few, help to create that channel through which potential customers are directed to the website. The goal is to drive relevant traffic.

Hold

A successful channel funnels visitors to the website but if the visitor bounces off main or landing page, then not much has been achieved. The visitor must find the landing page relevant and/or attractive enough to explore the website. Therefore, landing page in particular and website in general must cater to what the visitor is looking for. In short, the landing page must effectively convey the value proposition.

Stay

Once a user visits the website, the goal should be to encourage the user to stay.  The website should be well structured so the user can easily find the products and/or services offered. As a rule of thumb, the visitor should visit at least three pages for him or her to get a concrete idea of what the company is about.

Yield

Last but not least, the visitor must send in an inquiry or make contact via phone, email, etc. thus, generating a lead.

While larger organizations have the flexibility to allocate their marketing dollars where required, the small businesses (in $1 – $20 million range) find cost as the main hurdle in devising and implementing a sustained online marketing strategy. One way to address the cost factor is by outsourcing the IM tasks to a reliable outsourcing partner. Almost 80 – 90% of IM tasks can be performed remotely. As a check, you may ask your partner to devise your IM strategy and how it will be implemented. This will help you understand their capabilities and experience. Once IM strategy has been devised and implemented, a good number of the tasks become repetitive in nature thus making those suitable for outsourcing.

Another important factor is your outsourcing partner’s ability to collaborate and stay up-to-date with ever changing IM area. Google and other major search engines change the search criteria when they deem it necessary. IM falls more under Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), therefore, your partner must have depth in its skill set and the intellectual capacity to adapt and keep learning this dynamic area.

Successful outsourcing of your IM activities will not only create and sharpen your competitive advantage but will also contribute to lowering the cost structure – an important goal given the current economy.

[2] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

[3] Aberdeen Group, “The ROI on Social Media Marketing: Why it Pays To Drive Word of Mouth,” March 11, 2009

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The world is flat: Even for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Posted by: R. Bokhari | Posted at: January 19th, 2010 | Posted in Small & Medium Business

Thomas Friedman in his book, The World is Flat, describes how faster and more reliable internet connections spawned an era of flatness in which companies reached across the borders and started using vast manpower pool that became available to them. The big companies were the first to take advantage of this flatness. They had the scale, risk tolerance, economies of scale, and financial muscle to setup those global information supply chains that Thomas Friedman talked about in this book. The workflow software and processes brought together work done by people in different countries, streamlined it, and truly created a global knowledge supply chain – similar to global manufacturing supply chains that started getting setup decades ago.

This global integration of manpower into companies’ every day operations is not restricted to large organizations anymore. In this second phase of flat world, SMEs (Small and Midsize Enterprises) are getting in the act and starting to reap the same benefits that compelled global larger companies to take risk on this novel concept in late 90s. This was a predictable trend. In early 80s as personal computers were introduced, initially they were mainly used in the large organizations because of their cost. However, as they became cheaper, they became available for SMEs to own and improve their productivity. The business process innovations brought by this flat world have also tricked down to SMEs which are increasingly looking beyond their borders to collaborate and improve their operations.

One of the biggest reasons why SMEs are successfully taking advantage of this flat world is that in past few years, a new crop of smaller SME focused providers have come in the marketplace. Their services are specifically tailored to SMEs and they have kept their cost structure low and thus can offer services that are affordable to SMEs. The better known and bigger outsourcing providers have primarily targeted large Fortune 500 type companies and their engagements have involved hundreds, if not thousands, of employees of the outsourcing company forming a team to service the needs of a given client. This structure does not map to the requirements of SMEs which may range any where from a single person to a team of few dozen people. The flexible outsourcing plans, that these new smaller providers offer, have targeted the sweet spot of SME outsourcing.

While the larger outsourcing providers have a bigger proportion of their workforce in cheaper locales, they still have priced themselves out of the SME outsourcing market. SMEs are very price conscious and the service cost has to be attractive enough for them to take the plunge. To keep themselves competitive for SMEs, these smaller outsourcing players, in some cases, have opened offices in other South Asian or African locations which are cheaper than India or Russia but still provide educated and well-trained workforce. The internet connectivity has vastly improved in these newer outsourcing locations and can support the activities of these companies.

The end result has been emergence of these smaller and more nimble outsourcing providers who have placed themselves well to target the under served SME outsourcing market. They have been continuously amassing experience working with SMEs in areas of Business Process Outsourcing and other more advanced areas such as Market

Research, Web 2.0 services, Virtual Assistance, Bookkeeping, and Equity and Financial Analysis. With these lower barriers to setup their own mini global information supply chains, the world has indeed become more flat for these SMEs.

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