It’s been a tough few years for SMEs in New Zealand. According to figures from accounting software firm Xero, SME revenue fell by around a third (34 percent) year-on-year in April 2020 during the first Level 4 Covid lockdown. Although the pandemic restrictions have since been lifted, Kiwi businesses are still battling the economic after-effects, including higher interest rates, rising input costs, and consumer wallets emptied by the cost-of-living crisis.
In a challenging economic environment, getting your marketing right is crucial, but SMEs are at a disadvantage in several respects compared to larger, more established corporates. Not only do they have much smaller budgets, limiting the scope of what they can do, but they usually have very small marketing teams, if they have specialist marketers at all. And if they do want to seek external advice, they may find agencies and consultants to be prohibitively expensive.
According to James Roberts, Head of Insight at Lassoo Media, many SMEs are faced with contradictory advice on how to assess their marketing efforts. Part of the issue is that many small business owners and operators don’t have prior marketing experience, “but even for the more medium-size enterprises, setting any marketing objectives, let alone constructive ones, can be challenging,” he says.
“It comes from a lack of understanding of category context. Very rarely do they have budgets to invest in research to understand who their consumers are, why people are or aren’t buying stuff, where their awareness is at alongside their consideration. Iseems like an unnecessary cost when you’re starting a business, but it’s almost impossible to plot a path to somewhere if you don’t know where you are.”
