Marketing in SMEs: Challenges Compared to Large Businesses

This report provides a comprehensive comparison of marketing strategies employed by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and large businesses. It begins with an introduction to marketing and its importance, followed by an overview of SME and entrepreneurial theory, including a case study of the Bread Factory. The report presents relevant statistics to support its arguments, then delves into the main issues and challenges faced by SMEs, such as attracting new customers, maintaining profitability, retaining employees, and securing finance, contrasting these with the advantages of larger firms. It explores innovative and entrepreneurial considerations in SME marketing, including social media, omnichannel approaches, and innovative communication techniques, highlighting two best practice methods: social media and video streaming. The report also examines how big firms conduct their marketing, using pull strategies and collaborations, before providing a detailed comparison of marketing methods, concluding that marketing is crucial for both SMEs and large organizations, with finance and reach being the main limitations for SMEs. References from Nijssen, Whalen, and Yang are included.

How marketing in an SME
differs from a large sized
business?

Content
 1- INTRODUCTION
 2- SME and Entrepreneurial theory
 3- Statistics and Supporting arguments
 4- What are the main issues and challenges for SME?
 5- Why big firms do not have such challenges ?
 6- Innovative and entrepreneurial consideration in SMEs’ marketing
 7- Two best practice methods
 8- How do big firms do their marketing?
 9- Comparison
 10- CONCLUSION
 11- References

INTRODUCTION
 Marketing is the activity of spreading awareness about the aspects for
making them popular in market. There is huge importance of this
activity in every type of organisation whether small or large. This will
provide an opportunity to build the distinct image where products of an
organisation separately recognised from their name, features and
packaging. In current period of time, this is important to adopt as the
success and sustainability of an organisation depends upon same.
There are large number of benefits are associated with aspect of
marketing towards an organisation such as building distinctive image,
improve sales, increases the number of profits and provide competitive
edge. This presentation based upon an organisation named as Bread
Factory.

SME and Entrepreneurial theory
 Bread Factory is the medium size organisation that provides their
clothing products in UK. This organisation has specialisation in
corporate and school wears. This is a SME because number of
employees and turnover of an organisation falls under the limit. The
number of employees lies within an organisation between the limit of
50 to 259.
 Entrepreneurship is understanding as the practice of starting new
organisations for the purpose of grabbing opportunities present in
market. This is also understood from the point of that it includes
ascertaining of market opportunities through use of technological and
organisational innovation. This is totally about the risk taking and
earning profit.

Statistics and Supporting arguments
 The statistics from the market clearly depicts that 99.9% of all UK
businesses are classed as SMEs (0-249 employees), 0.6% are medium-
sized businesses (50-259 employees), Less than 4% are small
businesses (10-49 employees) and more than 95% are micro-
businesses (0-9 employees).

What are the main issues and challenges for
SME?
 All the different SME’s including Bread Factory faces large number of
issues in market. All these are defined below;
 Attraction of the new customers due to presence of tough competition.
 Maintaining the level of profitability.
 Retention of the valuable employees as they got the better
opportunities from the large organisations side.
 Securing the level of finance as they have carrying business along with
combating the pressure of competition.

Why big firms do not have such
challenges ?
 The big firms not facing challenges as faced by the SME’s. The main
reasons behind this are presented below:
 They have large number of resources to finance their business
activities.
 They have the option of collaboration with other companies.
 High level of branding help in combating the level of competition along
with building distinctive image.
 Big organisations also have high level of market shares from they able
to gain sufficient amount of profits.

Innovative and entrepreneurial
consideration in SMEs’ marketing
 The innovative aspects which are needed to adopt by SME’s including
Bread Factory for marketing are presented below;
 They have to focus over the use of social media platforms
 They have to focus over the use of Omni channel of marketing
 Provide emphasis over the technique of innovative communication
 Focus over promoting strategy of word of mouth

Marketing Channels

Cont.

Two best practice methods
 The two best practices that will be beneficial in all context for SME’s
including Bread Factory are defined below:
 Social media: This is beneficial as cheapest source of marketing that
have reach over large number of consumers in the different markets at
worldwide level.
 Video streaming: This is beneficial because aid in creating distinctive
image where products recognised from brand name and packaging.

How do big firms do their marketing?
 The aspects used by big firms for marketing includes;
 Usage of pull strategy
 Collaboration with marketing organisation
 Use of massive level adverting approaches