“Don’t call me, no I don’t want a meeting but you can email me between 9am and 12pm on Monday or Wednesday.” According to the SME Voice research report, created in partnership with B2Group and the DMA, this is the best way and time to reach SMEs with your marketing messages.
The report is based on a continuous monthly online survey completed by a panel of 1250 SMEs. This monitors SMEs’ contact preferences allowing marketers to use this information to achieve greater cut-through from their marketing activity. The study – conducted by research agency Fast Map – also monitors how SMEs market themselves. According to the report, UK SMEs boast a collective turnover of £1500 billion and many work in the B2B sector whose direct marketing is estimated to be worth £5.7 billion. All this makes SMEs lucrative marketing targets. So what should marketers be doing to reach them?
How to reach out
Chris Combemale, executive director of the DMA, says the report allows readers to track the changes to both sides of media consumption. It offers an insight into how SMEs are spending their marketing budgets so DMA members know what services are popular and what to target them with, as well as knowing their thoughts on how they receive marketing.
Email is not dead, at least not to the businesses who completed the SME Voice research. Email topped the preference list for how to receive marketing communications for the months between July and October. It rose from 69 per cent preferring to receive marketing comms via the medium in July, to nearly 80 per cent in October. At the same time, direct marketing saw a dramatic decrease in popularity going from being the second most popular medium in July (40 per cent) to being the second least popular medium by October (25 per cent).
Combemale suggests the decrease is because, “People are not in the office, they are spending more time on the move and therefore accessing their emails on their smartphones.”
So SMEs are more inclined to favour email marketing communications from you, but how often should you be sending them? According to the report, once a week is ample and Mondays between 9am and 12pm will keep you in their good books.
Andrew Colwell, marketing director at B2Group, agrees Mondays are a good time of the week to contact SMEs via email, “it gives people the chance to view an opportunity for the week ahead and gives them enough time to think and action it. Traditional preconceptions [about email preferences] are going out of the window.”
Can you keep up with the SMEs?
Now you’ve got the preferred medium, day and time to reach SMEs, the report looks at what marketers should be saying. When asked ‘What type of message is most likely to ensure that you read the communication in full?’, in July, most SMEs (29 per cent) said ‘a price reduction-based message. In October, SMEs said they were more likely to read a product-related message in full (27 per cent). These results suggest marketers don’t always need to lead with ‘free’ or ‘offer’ in their campaigns. However, the change in response highlights how fickle SMEs can be.
To see a dramatic drop in interest in receiving DM and a u-turn on what marketing messages are preferred all in the space of four months, shows the way in which marketers reach SMEs can’t stay the same. As the report indicates, what worked three months ago might not get the same result now. This highlights the pressures marketers face to stay on top of trends.
Is it a golden nugget or an anticlimax?
Colwell was pleased to see the quick reaction SMEs had to global issues such as the spending review. He explains that 50 per cent of the questions on the survey can be changed so it offers marketers a real-time insight into how SMEs are reacting to current trends. He continues to describe the report as, ‘a nugget of gold to marketers.’ He says knowing how, when and what marketing messages to hit SMEs with will allow for the intelligent marketing that is needed and expected today
However, not everyone is so optimistic about the benefits the report could have on B2B marketers.
Chris Wilson, MD at marketing agency Earnest, says the research means very little for B2B marketers because, “There is no such thing as the SME market. Marketers need to target specific markets in the SME space.” Wilson says many small businesses feel marketers don’t take the time to get to know them, he advises, “If you’re really serious about SMEs look at regions and sectors within SMEs.” While he thinks the report misses a trick by not segmenting SMEs, he does agree it could be useful to know what days and times to execute an email campaign.
Colwell admits the results could change slightly across different sectors and sizes of small businesses but says B2Group has taken measures to ensure the recipients of the report mirror the UK’s SME market. Although the report is compiled of 1250 responses, B2Group has a bank of nearly 20,000 SMEs who are happy to take part in SME Voice. Colwell explains the results are weighted so a different 1250 reply each month and the survey gets the right number of businesses from certain sectors and of certain sizes to reflect the national average.
Both B2Group and the DMA are optimistic that the survey will grow, and its tracking nature will provide the intelligence many marketers need to meet the pressures of creating a successful, measurable campaign. The popularity and usefulness of the report will be truly tested when it goes on general release in December. While it does offer marketers an insight into the mind of the SME, it might not be enough. Will anything, other than a highly targeted, analysed and nurtured customer base ever be enough? Perhaps marketers should accept the help and insight but not sit back and rely on only that, a marketer’s life would be boring if it were that easy.
