Recreation Shirts came into the Nigerian Market two years ago. They create ready to wear and perfect fit shirts for young women who desire to look chic and trendy amongst their peers.
In the first year of their emergence, Recreation Shirts acquired most of their clientele through word of mouth communication and recommendations given by satisfied clients. As the months progressed, the company got more word out about their services by engaging in print advertising in soft-sell publications as City people, and a stint of television advertising on Dynamix TV, both Nigerian based media.
In their second year, Recreation Shirts looked to gain a much broader and international customer base, but at a reduced cost in advertising. The company created a facebook page and a website to interact with potential and existing consumers about their notable services.
The CEO of Recreation shirts, Mrs. Tale Kevin-Agono explains that the company’s facebook account has generated greater exposure and publicity for their establishment more than the print and TV adverts had done the previous year. This has improved the company’s overall sales.
In her own words she says, “At this stage of our marketing efforts we feel closer to our consumers and believe we can give them better services through our frequent interactions.”
The case study above illustrates the challenges facing small and medium sized enterprises and how e-marketing can address these issues. Considering their size and their limited resources, online marketing couldn’t have emerged at a better time.
Compared to traditional marketing, the benefits e-marketing offers are ideal to the growth of SMEs in modern society. To start with, the increase in the use of the internet offers SMEs a very good opportunity to reach their actual and potential buyers all over the world with their products and services. In offline marketing, the location of a business determines the success or failure of that business. Online marketing on the other hand offers a new avenue to reach billions of people with their product at the same time without the inhibitions of distance and place.
In terms of equal opportunity to reach their target market at low cost, e-marketing places these small businesses and their competitors on the same pedestal. Big companies spend millions on advertising, but with little or no cost at all, small and medium sized enterprises can place their adverts on the same ‘shelf’ and position their brand better in the mind of consumers.
E- marketing gives SMEs the power to reach consumers globally in a wide range of ways and enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. Some of these services embedded in e-marketing are information management, public relations,
customer services and sales. All these can be referred to as the scope of e-marketing, and with the range of new technology available this scope can only grow. Quirk E-marketing (2006:3)Equally, the dynamic nature of e-marketing helps SMEs create and build their relationship with their customers through social networks like facebook, twitter, and the likes. The communication flow here is not one-sided, i.e. from the marketer to the consumers, but customers are given the opportunity to make comments and recommend possible product modifications to meet their needs. This is where Marketing research comes to play in E-marketing.
Marketing research plays a major role in the success of business organisations involved in online marketing. Organisations embark in marketing research when they want to formulate, know the level of consumer satisfaction or modify existing products or service and its packaging or delivery. This helps the company to develop a feasible marketing plan or measure the success of its previous plans.
In conclusion, SMEs rely on e-marketing to push them beyond their capable limits and put them on the same platform as their competitors, with guaranteed returns on investment.
References
Facebook, Recreation Shirts [online] available from http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid= 148372993168 [23 February 2010]
Recreation Shirts, [online] available from http://www.recreationshirts.com/index2.html [22 February 2010]
Quirk E-Marketing (2006), available from http://www.quirk.biz/resources/88/What-is-eMarketing-and-how-is-it-better-than-traditional-marketing [22 February 2010]
I am agree that E-marketing can help you to be discover all over the world.
ReplyDeleteBut,do you think if one day they will have lot of demand for their products they will follow and don't be out. In one way it is good because it's mean their strategy works and they are famous but in the other way they can met problem to send the products.
Or they can send just one product in china or one product USA. It ill not be to expensive for this kind of company. than send all in one time in one area.
thank you,
Good case study, But I feel that in a country that has a low internet penetration and the target market of the SME falls into the category of those that do not have access to the internet; Will the SME be successful with its e marketing initiatives.....
ReplyDeleteHello Babatunde, good point raised. Sadly not everyone can be helped when it comes to having internet access. It's either you have it or you don't.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what SMEs can do in this regard is to employ Differentiated Target Market strategy. This basically involves companies looking at their market segments/potential targets and designing marketing mixes to meet the needs of all or some of these segments (Jobber 2010)
In Nigeria, we can very well say that those who predominantly have access to the internet are city dwellers and high income earners. It's either they can afford to have internet access in their homes or they can make use of internet cafes literally littered about the streets.
These groups of people i.e city dwellers and high income earners comfortably fall under the marketing mix for the use of e-marketing by SMEs and thus can be well exploited in this regard. SMEs can make use of social networking sites such as facebook (which by way is very popular in Nigeria) or other Nigerian based network forums like bellanaija.com to lead internet users to their website.
Those groups that don't fall under the criteria or category of internet users would be exposed to coventional marketing mixes as the print, tv or radio until they are exposed to the internet where the e-marketing intiative would be more useful to them.
In all, this is what good market research would reveal to SMEs so that they don't adopt an exclusive strategy for varying market segements.
Reference:
Jobber, D. (2010)'Principles and Practice of Marketing'. 6th Edition. Berkshire: McGraw-hill Education Limited.
Hey, nice article. It is true what you say about that e-marketing can give the power to SME's to grow globally.
ReplyDeleteBut I was wondering, don't you think for many SME's their main income is in their country itself? And by focussing most on the net they can reach more interested people, true, but the relation with shareholders will fade out?
E- marketing gives SMEs the power to reach consumers globally in a wide range of ways and enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. Some of these services embedded in e-marketing are information management, public relations, customer services and sales.
"In terms of equal opportunity to reach their target market at low cost, e-marketing places these small businesses and their competitors on the same pedestal. Big companies spend millions on advertising, but with little or no cost at all, small and medium sized enterprises can place their adverts on the same ‘shelf’ and position their brand better in the mind of consumers"
ReplyDeleteHow sure are you in term of SMEs can place their adverts and position their brand better than big companies? Can you please give an example?
Thank you.
(Khoa, a member of emarketforensics)
Khoa,we are not saying they are going to overtake the big companies, rather what we mean here is that e-marketing can place SMEs on the same level in terms of reaching of out to the same target market like the big players, but at a lower cost.
ReplyDeleteKayode, thanks for your feedback. However, personally, I think SMEs can't reach the same level of big companies in term of targeting to consumers. SMEs know how to utilize emarketing but big players also are experts on that area because they have large budgets and human resoucres which SMEs can't compare. Indeed, If SMEs can use emarketing well, they are able to bite a part from the market by targeting to another segment of consumers online. It doesn't mean SMEs will reach big players level.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think?
Thanks. Khoa.
Good case study. We can well see the efffectiveness of e-marketing for SMEs to reach a large audience and develop awareness. Nevertheless, we agree with emarketingforensics, they can't reach the same level of big companies in term of targeting to consumers. E-marketing is not enough for a SME to promote the brand, people need to feel, to touch the product, or to speak with an adviser about services. But, e-marketing and marketing research are undoubtly usefull for SMEs to communicate on and improve their product.
ReplyDelete