Effectively Reaching the SMB Market

As the CHO (Chief Harassment Officer) here at Outward Media, I have been researching the best way to use email in prospecting to the B2B market.  Today — I think more than ever — businesses are being hounded by folks like me who want to convert them to Customers.  And us CHO’s have more ways than ever to reach out to and pull those businesses in, convincing them that they need to become Customers.  This blog is but one example of the pulling piece.

One of the toughest markets to penetrate today is the Small-to-Medium-sized Business market (SMB).  Because this is one of the areas of strength for OMI (our B2B database sports 25 million email addresses in the 1-30 employees size buckets), I’ve done quite a bit of research on how to effectively reach — and convert — these businesses.  Many of our Clients across all industries are trying to strategically hone their direct marketing efforts to reach and appeal to these SMB’s to get them to read and respond to their messaging.

Well, according to the market research firms, SMB’s prefer to be communicated with via email more than any other direct marketing channel.  In fact, Circle Research reports that 64% of SMB’s prefer email communications in the UK.  In the US, 67% prefer email over direct mail or telemarketing.

It makes sense — small business owners and executives can read and respond to email messages at their convenience, or quickly file or dispose of them if they aren’t interested (the good news, bad news right?).  It takes only a nano-second to hit the delete key.  It only takes a second to read and respond to direct mail as well — but it’s more handling, stamping, disposing, etc.  Telemarketing is seen as an interruption in the day of busy executives and with caller ID, most busy business owners don’t answer if they don’t recognize the phone number.

So, definitely consider email as a good channel to utilize if your target is the SMB market.  According to that same study by Circle Research, SMB’s also are most likely to utilize social media tools as well to research potential suppliers.  In a nutshell, I think that the SMB market prefers to do business online — when they can do it at their pace and time-frame.

If you have a success story to share about how you’ve been successful in reaching the SMB market, please share!