Editorials

by Rajen Kumar

No Escaping Social Media

Running a magazine concentrating on issues of small and medium enterprises and managing with limited resources is a like living life on the edge. In this rush of meeting deadlines,...

Special Reports

Apr 2012

EMRC, Brussels Associates with SME WORLD as its New Media Partner

EMRC has promoted business partnerships with the developing world and has organised dozens of business forums in key decision-making cities, such as Amsterdam, Rome,...

Marketing

Marketing and Brand Building for SMEs

Lotika Goswami
Jun 2011

Page 1 of 4

Marketing is "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and/or society at large.”

The most significant aspect of Marketing is Brand building and Communication. The significance and magnitude of Marketing function and the operations vary from industry to industry and it is very significantly derived by the scale of operations. It is imperative to appreciate and understand that Marketing is like any investment. The more capital you invest, and the more steadily you invest them, the value grows proportionally larger over a period of time. Invest nothing and you will get nothing! This rule applies to all kinds and sizes of business setup. But the relevant question here is – how much should be invested? As a rule of thumb the most followed practice is percent-of-sales approach, devoting some percentage of the revenue to the marketing function. The amount spent can range from 1% on the lower end to 12% or more on the higher end.

But the concept of brand building lacks depth of understanding and is shrouded in lot of myth. A few are mentioned below:

Marketing especially brand building is not important for business setups those who work in a focused niche segment.
Marketing is a process to maximize returns to shareholders by developing relationship with valued customers. MSMEs, like all business setups, have valued customers that make it imperative for MSMEs to undertake marketing processes. MSMEs must manage structured communication and strong association with their key clients which lead to a prolific relationship with them. Such relationships, in long term, will translate into more business from the same client and more reference of new customers.
Marketing and Brand Management is only for bigger organizations.
Marketing process impacts top line as well as bottom line, directly as well as indirectly. Marketing is a process that tries to positively influence behavior of customers. Big organizations undertake marketing process with the same aim. Therefore it is a must even for MSMEs to undertake marketing activities targeted at their customers to positively influence their behavior.
It requires enormous amount of investment.

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