SMEs: Online Communication... That Doesn’t Exist

“Wait, you don’t have a Facebook page yet? And no Twitter profile? Seriously, how can you expect to be noticed if you’re not on Instagram?” Every SME not yet present on social media has probably heard these questions—once, a hundred times, maybe a thousand. And eventually, yielding to the pressure of the social media wave, every SME has opened its profiles “to get noticed.” They posted updates on Facebook for Christmas, New Year, and Easter, came up with catchy micro phrases for Twitter, and took unlikely photos to grab attention on Instagram.

But new customers, new opportunities, new markets didn’t come. What went wrong?

This is the question that industry experts have been asking for a decade. Why doesn’t web communication always work for SMEs?

Let’s start with a premise: managing communication and marketing on the web is not a simple task. This alone explains why a large portion of “homemade” web marketing doesn’t yield results. Developing an effective digital marketing strategy takes time and knowledge, both of which require further time to acquire. It’s not enough to just “open a Facebook page” and make yourself available; you need to understand the mechanisms behind a lot of exotic-sounding terms: SEO, ranking, target, tags, inbound, ads…

The good news is that there are experts who master all these terms on a daily basis. So, why not rely on them?
For the past twenty years, the core issue seems to have remained unchanged. SMEs tend to fear that the “game” of marketing isn’t worth the candle, and that investing in it would be time—or rather, money—wasted. The mentality of small and medium businesses often still leans more towards “sales” than “marketing.” But sales maximizes revenue in the short term, not in the long run. Meanwhile, corporate marketing is handled by non-experts with a fair amount of improvisation, which makes it unlikely to bring valid results.

What’s needed, then, is an in-depth understanding of the tools available to communicate the business effectively, but also—and above all—a forward-thinking strategy that keeps everything coherent. The question is: is it worth it?
To answer, we turn to the numbers published by Digital 2019, a study conducted by We Are Social in collaboration with Hootsuite. According to the latest data, in 2019, there were 3 billion active social media users worldwide. In Italy, 35 million people access social media every day, mostly via mobile. On average, Italians spend nearly two hours a day connected to social media and have a profile on at least seven different platforms (81% of users are on Facebook, 55% on Instagram). As for purchases, 75% of users claim to have bought a product or service online, and 93% have visited at least one online store. These are significant numbers, easily reachable if only… the communication was set up properly.

In short, the data to understand where the market is heading, the tools to monitor customers, and the strategies to offer them the best customer care all exist. And it’s very likely that, even if you’re not using them, your competitors are!

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