| hat small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need marketing and branding, to be competitive at a global level, is a given in today's world. There is, however, no clear path to success. |
| To begin with, SMEs have shoe-string bud-gets to work with. Branding generally becomes a last priority since filling in the coffers to manage working capital expenses is a grinding task by itself. Second, the cash crunch is more pronounced in the case of SMEs simply because they have less bargaining power because of their size and reach. The famous economist (not F1 racer) Schumacher authored a book titled "Small is Beautiful". This is not applicable in the case of SMEs who have to scale up to be competitive. |
| It may not be wise to invest at a time when there is an economic slowdown round the corner. So is there a way out to have your cake and eat it too "� in other words, not spend too much money and yet devise a meaningful branding exercise? One answer lies in looking at a cheap yet powerful medium called the Internet. |
| Let's take the example of a small proprietary unit that does contract engineering work for a bigger player (who has sub-contracted the work to this unit). Let's assume the turnover of the small unit is around Rs 10 crore only. Further, it has a sales department (no marketing head), an accounts department (no HR head) and pr duction (operations) and distribution departments with an IT person who handles the networks and ensures the system operates smoothly. |
| All that the proprietor needs to do is set aside only Rs 15,000 (Yes! You read it right) or 0.015% of his turnover to set up a website. In case your IT head knows how to create a website, you can get it done for less than Rs 3,000 (or 0.003% of your turnover). |
| Unbelievable but true. And how do you go about this. First, contact an individual or company who provides hosting services. You can either buy a server (expensive proposition and not advisable in this case) or lease space on the service provider's server (similar to renting a flat). |
| Once you lease the space (around 5 MB should suffice), you can comfortably have 5-10 pages of you company on the Internet. The website will have a URL (domain name) such as www.vibuthi.com (presuming that the name of the company is Vibhuti Pvt. Ltd) and will be hosted on a server. You will have to register the domain name (in this case Vibhuti) with a domain registrar such as register.com. |
| You have to provide the content and the service provider will design the pages for you under subheads such as About us (company information), Products, Services, Clients and Contact |
| Us (your email and mailing address). Your email will now read something like rakesh@vibhuti.com. Doesn't this sound more professional than a rakesh@yahoo.com or rakesh@gmail.com? |
| Now that you have www.vibhuthi.com on the Internet, you can ask the service provider to market your site on the Internet. He will (at no extra charge), then, submit your domain name to major search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc. The next time anybody search for "engineering companies in India", there is a great likelihood that the search engine will throw up your domain name "vibhuti.com" too. Isn't that a great way of getting known for peanuts? |
| Moreover, you can surf the Internet and liaise with potential clients with the name xyz@vibhuti.com. You can put your URL or domain name and email ID on your visiting card. In case clients ask for details, you can tell them to visit your site. You may get a lot of viewers by word-of-mouth too. Besides, you can advertise your Internet site in a newspaper and get added visibility and branding. This, of course, is a small way in which the Internet can help. |
| The writer is in-charge of 'ICE World' at Business Standard |
Top Section
Explore Business Standard