insights

If you were to take the economy’s temperature right now, ‘a feeling of uncertainty’ would be running pretty hot.…

Before the pandemic, small businesses were the plucky underdogs, clamouring to occupy the space in the economy where the traditional high street left off. B2B marketers celebrated them, bigged them up, and amped up their ambitions.…

B2B marketers are facing a big issue when it comes to reaching small businesses. Earnest calls this the volume/value quandary. Find out how to stop small businesses falling through the gaps in marketing strategies by watching the video below.…

Small businesses represent a huge opportunity for brands. But, despite good intentions, marketers are still failing to realise their true commercial potential and win the hearts and minds of small business customers.…

The small business market represents a huge and, to an extent, untapped opportunity for brands. But many are still struggling to really connect with small business buyers. 99.8% of EU businesses are classed as SMEs, with £1.8bn in revenue in the UK alone.…

It was exactly a year ago this week that I realised I couldn’t drive. Sure, I’d passed my driving test 13 years earlier, but when I turned the key in my hired Skoda, it quickly became obvious to me that I was in fact still unable to drive. A mere 30 seconds after picking up Claudia, a film producer who was joining me on an 800 mile trip around the UK, I had stalled trying to drive up the small…

Tight for time? Then this checklist is for you – how to build stronger rapports with small business owners, in ten bite-size chunks.  Look beyond firmographicsDon’t forget the human stuff when segmenting. Try psychographics, which look at buyers’ emotional drivers  Go visit peopleFace-to-face meetings build stronger connections than phone calls and emails ever can. Stop selling, start helpingSmall business owners feel swamped. Help solve their problems and the sales will follow. Support networking eventsOffer a space to meet. Run workshops.…

If you didn’t know any better, you might think marketing to small businesses was pretty much like marketing to big businesses, but in miniature. A sort of bonsai marketing. Trimming bits off. Tiny scissors. But no. In fact, you need to do the exact opposite. You need to supersize many aspects of your efforts. Go big or go home. At least that’s what we found out in our Think Small road trip. We recently invited some other curious marketers to talk…

Small business purchase journeys can be quite different from their enterprise counterparts Moving prospects along the awareness-research-purchase journey is bread and butter to marketers, but when the prospect is an SME, things just aren’t that simple. If they were, 90% of brands wouldn’t be struggling right now to connect with small business decision-makers. At some point on the journey, something just isn’t landing. Probably because the marketing was conceived with corporates in mind and, unsurprisingly, SMEs don’t think or act like big corporates.…

Firmographics are used by many B2B marketers to segment their prospects, but these don’t allow for the individual characteristics of SMEs to be taken into account. It’s time for a different approach. The good news is that, according to Circle Research, 91% of B2B marketers segment their market. The not-so-good news, though, is that 81% of them rely on firmographics. Not so good because firmographics are the business equivalent of demographics. They lump small businesses together by size, location and…