Why the SME market needs more marketing support

SMEs make up a large portion of the UK’s economy. As a matter of fact, in terms of their quantity they make up almost all of it with government research stating that SMEs accounted for 99.9% of all private sector businesses in the UK in 2015. However, with so many SME businesses springing up around the UK, stats also reveal that over half of these SMEs (55%) don’t survive beyond 5 years.

Some of the most common reasons for small businesses failing have been noted as:

#1 Starting the business for the wrong reasons – being motivated solely by money or having no one to answer to

#2 Poor management – lacking the expertise in other areas of the business such as finance and recruitment

#3 Insufficient capital – decrease in bank lending and unrealistic expectations of revenue

#4 Poor Location – either too competitive or away from prime target market

#5 Lack of planning – not anticipating the demands required to succeed in terms of staff, marketing, sales and more.

While marketing can’t atone for all of the above reasons, it can certainly play its role in better managing certain aspects which are leading to businesses failing. A marketing strategy can help to identify potential issues that a business might face either internally or externally and also provide a solution for them.

What we often find at Opportunity Marketing is that many SMEs are set up by enthusiastic entrepreneurs who have a wealth of knowledge for the field they operate in but not necessarily in other aspects required to grow a business, with one of these being marketing.

Some SMEs don’t really even delve into marketing, and the ones that do are often restricted and guided by either the owner’s own interpretation of marketing or recommendations from agencies who manage to sell products and services which aren’t necessarily required. This often leads to large sums of money being splashed out on fancy websites and ads with little attention focused around what it should actually achieve.

The marketing knowledge gap in many SMEs is leading to money being outlaid on marketing activities in a scattergun fashion without any real focus being placed on tracking results. Frivolous spending like this is holding SMEs back, and while it may make them look good on the surface, the vast majority of these marketing activities are failing to generate the return on investment the company requires. This ultimately adds more pressure to an already reducing cash flow and inevitably the potential downfall of another business.

At Opportunity Marketing we have recognised their need for marketing support. Knowing where and how to spend a marketing budget is crucial today, more so than ever before. Do a Google search on ‘Marketing’ and you’ll find a countless number of marketing agencies offering all kinds of services, many of which specific companies may not even require (although they don’t know this). That’s why we focus on getting the strategy right first, and from this we then distinguish exactly what work needs doing and the return on investment our clients can expect from it.

As we can see, the potential need for marketing support across the UK is huge amongst SMEs and we are currently growing our network of franchisees to meet this demand from a larger number of clients around the UK. If you have a background in marketing and want to start working for yourself, why not join the Opportunity Marketing Franchise. Get in touch today to find out more and see if this is a role which is suited to you.