Moving from Enterprise to SME markets - the communication challenge for IT vendors

Published 2003

With analysts predicting flat IT spending at the enterprise level, many enterprise vendors are gearing up to address the more attractive opportunities offered with the SME market. How these companies address their marketing communications in this new sector can play a critical role in their success or failure.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the differences that have to be acknowledged and addressed by marketing communicators.

These distinct differences pose challenges for companies traditionally servicing enterprise level and now moving into the SME market.

• Messages must be aimed lower - in terms of both assumed knowledge and corporate level of the audience.
• The importance of the general manager and CEO requires particular attention, possibly meaning including new publications in your media mix.
• Existing media releases should be edited to delete any assumed-knowledge statements.
• The entire thrust of messages may have to change from tech-centric to solution-centric.

For many large vendor companies, this may be a difficult task, as they have traditionally run with US-prepared releases, mildly edited at best to change them from US to UK English.

Apart from addressing media releases, there are a number of other considerations that should be taken into account when entering the SME market. Ask yourself these questions:

• Will SMEs know enough about my company to be able to assess whether I am relevant to them?
• Will our reputation within Enterprise level possibly make them believe that we are too big for them?
• Do I need to tell them why we are now looking to their size company?
• What level of education may be required by them to be able to make a considered judgement?
• Do my channel partners, and their communication methods, become more or less important to these new prospects?

Finally, if you find that you do have to create new messaging, include new publications and try some new tactics to best address SMEs, make sure you align your internal communications with these changes.

After all, there’s no point in getting it right in print, and then having your sales team delivering your old enterprise messages.

Note: The author of this article is a Sydney based senior independent corporate PR consultant who works exclusively with PR Managers helping them with management of the PR Department or their relationship with their PR agency. In addition he provides specialist corporate PR and communications advice where issues or change are impacting on an organisation. He also blogs regularly on PR and communications topics similar to those in this article.