Marketing Hack for MSMEs
More than 90% of MSMEs barely make it past the first 5–10 years of their infancy stages. These failures are exacerbated by several factors, which include (but are not limited to); lack of access to funding, a low supply of consumers with buying power, lack of mentorship & coaching, bad timing, and an unsustainable business model.
When trying to figure out how exactly you’re going to penetrate the market as an entry-level entrepreneur, you must invest heavily in your business and brand development. Starting first with the former, search, print, and fill in the Business Canvas Model for your business. This helps create a roadmap as to how the business will operate, its stakeholders, and how it will monetize services/products.
A brand development framework breaks down several areas including values, vision and mission statement, and value proposition. These are areas that will help build a brand that is sellable and relatable to your targeted market. As part of this, you’ll need to also understand your consumers; their behavior, and what tone they’re likely to relate and engage with.
MSME Entrepreneurs are challenged with a lot of factors when building a business. It is therefore important to work with a team that understands the vision and mission of the business and where the business is trying to go. Entrepreneurs need to invest in a community that is centered on value exchange and growth building.
Here are Hacks to use as MSMEs for marketing and growing our businesses.
1. Have a Plan
The best way to extract value is to have a plan as to where you’re going, who you want to collaborate with, platforms you want to use (and why), and targets to reach.
Since you’re a small business, I would suggest you have a results-oriented approach that is focused on hitting targets, numbers, etc. This gives you the certainty that each effort spent goes somewhere tangible. Your objectives and goals will be subject to S.M.A.R.T goal rules and therefore have a strategy as to how you will approach it.
2. Collaboration
Strategic value-based collaborations are powerful when in the beginning stages of your business. What you’re trying to do is bring in talent without the worry of affording them. This includes sales agents, marketers, influencers and ambassadors, and brand developers. So how do you do this?
- Battered system approach: Find out what services they offer, how much they cost, what you’re willing to offer, and what it costs, and agree on the conditions of the exchange. These conditions need a time frame, a monetary understanding of the value, and the exact services being exchanged.
- Commission-based system: these work best for the context of sales agents and influencers where the two parties sit down and agree on exactly the amount to be shared and at what rate.
- Share of the company: This is for when you’re building a long-term team that you will grow the business. Works perfect for specialists in Sales and Marketing to have a long-term approach as to how you plan to grow the business and actively compete in the market. This needs a lawyer present and take some time before you make this decision. Research and ask questions.
As an added approach, the parties can also agree to share each others’ content on their pages and use the platform’s features like Instagram Brand Tags.
3. Social Media
From using Canva.com for posters and having a special budget for Ad campaigns, these cost around M500.00 monthly to budget with an approximate reach of more than 2500 online users. Social Media is the quickest way to reach more, for less. We need to be intentional about opening pages, posting content consistently, and engaging users to build that community of people who understand your brand.
The key to a successful social media presence approach is to stay true to the brand and post consistently. Be respectful and mindful of the users and content you engage and in what tone you engage them.
4. Invest in Content
There is power in content and having an investment strategy on the type of content to produce and exactly how to execute it will build a powerful community online and offline with your consumers.
Creating content could be something as intimate as introducing the team, showing DIYs, showing your people behind the scenes, etc. Consistency in this will help users understand the values and aspirations the brand has and increases support and loyalty.
