SMEs Need To Step Up Their Marketing Game Or Become Obsolete

We are seeing a worrying trend now here in this country—first-hand. Too many Asian SMEs disregard essential marketing prowess, particularly in the crucial area of lead generation. Many seem ‘okay’ to rely on luck or follow their competitor's playbook despite the latter being clueless about it too. Instead of carving out their own marketing strategies, these SMEs simply observe what their competitors are doing and try to replicate it. This shallow approach can lead to many negative things. One is the price war. Two, the whole product will become a commodity which again will lead to a price war. And three, a long list of leads will get dry by the day or week.

The retro government-style website, no user journey towards call-to-action and monetisation, nothing on media relations, can’t be found on Google Maps and clueless social media posts are among the marketing assets we noticed they completely either neglect or have no idea whatsoever on how to run and make them ROI-driven. 

This shows one obvious thing. They aren’t able to see the bigger picture here—that this inactive approach can severely limit their growth potential in an increasingly competitive market out there. Once the fund dries, the company will slowly become obsolete, and eventually die too.

This trend stems from a combination of factors. Many SMEs have budgets for everything else but not for marketing. This is pretty obvious. Furthermore, some business owners simply don't understand the importance of marketing and they look at it as a cost centre. Viewing marketing as an unnecessary expense is wrong. They hardly realise that marketing is the real growth engine for the entire company. Another disturbing factor is the tendency for SMEs to prioritise immediate sales over mid to long-term brand building and customer relationship development, leading to sustainable lead generations. 

Dear Asian SMEs, you need to freakin’ wake up. You’ve been sleeping for too long. You need to start empowering your marketing team with the deep knowledge, skills and tools required for them to generate leads better. It has to be now before it’s too late. It’s a war out there. And the last thing is to give yesterday’s weapon for them to fight the future war. 

Don’t remain as a boring brand, it’ll cost you everything. Get started. Let us know once you are ready.

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