Time remains the biggest barrier for SME adoption of web marketing

There’s a massive paradox going on in the world of web marketing.

Cheap technology and new, cheap ways of getting in touch with markets are proliferating. Never before has it been so affordable to communicate with both existing customers and new ones.

What used to take considerable budgets to plan and execute pretty much any type of communication campaign can now take place literally at your fingertips. This ‘promotion at your fingertips’ capability is replacing traditional promotional techniques with an immediate, viral, DIY approach.

But therein lies the rub.

Because as affordable as it is to embark on an email marketing, social networking or even online advertising campaign, such a strategy takes considerable time to learn, plan, execute, mature and measure.

Most small businesses not geared to information on demand

Even the quite basic task of adding new content to a website has proven to be challenging to many smaller organisations unaccustomed to communicating in this ‘just in time’, immediate way.

The inherent problem in the exponential growth of new media communication is that the online promotional mix referred to here in the past is not only making traditional promotional techniques redundant, but also more complex.

Because of varying budgets, market behaviours, web-saviness, time allocations and more, the holy grail of small business marketing, the ‘formula’ for promotion, is completely different not only for different categories of business, but for each individual business.

The old promotional formulas are failing

Unlike the recent past, there is simply no one formula that is going to be foolproof at promoting your small organisation and its product – at least not without significant budget.

In the ‘old’ days, many smaller businesses took at ‘set and forget’ approach to their promotion. Typical promotional tactics included as prominent a ‘Yellow Pages’ ad as they could afford, coupled with some local newspaper advertising and letterbox drop.

While some of these approaches may still provide some promotional mileage, markets are no longer behaving as they once did and so much expenditure on these tactics are wasted.

The problem is, few single solutions exist to make it easier for the small business operator or marketer.

Professional help costs

The digital agencies cost and arm and leg, and the various search, social networking, email marketing, etc gurus are all pushing their respective techniques when they may not be the most effective.

The result is that the smaller business operator becomes completely overwhelmed and as a result, does nothing, only to see them slip behind their web savvy or deeper pocketed competitors.

The latest MYOB Business Monitor report supports these theories.

It reports that even some 15 years after the web’s achievement of critical mass, as few as 35% of Australian businesses have websites at all. A miniscule 18% use social media and even the proven online mainstays – eNewsletters or blogs are utilised by a tiny 13%.

It would be safe to speculate that those businesses that have adopted these techniques are likely to be the most successful or profitable businesses.

Even research is time consuming

So despite all the bytes given to these techniques by this and other websites, the fact remains that it really is all too hard for most smaller organisations to understand and adopt these now proven techniques.

And as much as there’s a supplier market, willing and able to assist these businesses embrace the new media, the complexity of online marketing means that considerable time (read money) needs to be invested to arrive at an appropriate plan or strategy.

And in turn smaller businesses just can’t afford to pay to have it done.

But paradoxically given that the adoption of online communication by their markets, neither can they afford not to.

In addition to being a leading eBusiness educator to the smaller business sector, Craig Reardon is the founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which was established to address the special website and web marketing needs of SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.