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Selling to SMBs…Process Automation, Not Print

The small and medium-sized business (SMB) market provides an exciting sales opportunity for print service providers. For those interested in capitalizing on this opportunity, however, SMB marketing requires a unique selling approach. Treating the non-homogenous SMB market as a single entity will result in failure. This document discusses some strategies that services and solutions providers can implement to successfully reach this complex market.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

The small and medium-sized business (SMB) market provides an enticing, yet challenging, sales opportunity for print service providers. There are over 6 million firms with fewer than 500 employees (27 million if including non-payroll firms) across multiple industries. For those interested in capitalizing on this opportunity, SMB marketing requires a unique selling approach. The SMB market is too big to ignore in this Web-based, Internet-driven economy. InfoTrends recently completed a study entitled Capturing the SMB Business Communications Services Opportunity. This study collected online surveys from 2,243 firms with fewer than 500 employees across over a dozen major industries in the United States.

The business potential in aggregate is enormous—the annual mean spending on marketing and advertising was $42,040. Verticals like non-profits, manufacturing, and financial services spent substantially more.

Figure 1: Mean Advertising/Marketing Spend by Industry (2009)


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About Barb Pellow

A digital printing and publishing pioneer, marketing expert and Group Director at InfoTrends, Barbara Pellow helps companies develop multi-media strategies that ride the information wave. Barb brings the knowledge and skills to help companies expand and grow business opportunity.

Please offer your feedback to Barb. She can be reached at [email protected].

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