The SMB is Mobile, Wireless, Plugged In and Growing

On December 3, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson
my real office
My Office as a Startup Tac Anderson via Flickr

I love the SMB market. Hell I was the SMB market (that’s a picture of my office). When clients tell me they want to reach the Small and Medium Business segment I start to drool.

Outside of the Consumer marker there is no larger segment than the SMB and I would argue that it’s the most complex.

SMB could mean anything from one guy at a coffee shop doing “consulting” or a stay at home mom running a blog, all the way up to a 800+ person multinational organization with offices around the globe and an internal IT department, like my employer Waggener Edstrom.

When doing some quick research recently I came across some excellent news for anyone in the mobile and wireless space.

Mobile tech is the hottest market and the SMB is the hottest segment.

Having the benefit of working with companies in mobile software, handset manufacturing, a carrier and PC manufacturing, means I have an excuse to play with lots of these gadgets. I’m currently running around with 3 phones a netbook (until I dropped it, but I will be replacing it) and a laptop.

Increasingly small and medium businesses are becoming more sophisticated and are adopting technology faster than their Medium Managed counterparts. This is the segment that is perfectly primed for disruption. The companies that can tap into this segment will do very well. They’ll have to be scrappy and have a killer value proposition but man it’s a fun market.

Included here are some ways to better understand the SMB market.

How to break out the SMB market:

  • 1-10 = Micro
  • 11-100 = Small
  • 101-999= Medium

But to break out small and medium you have to look at what’s called Managed and Un-managed. (How would you feel about your business being called a small un-managed business?)These are really more levels of technical sophistication but are also related somewhat to size.

Managed means you have your own internal IT staff. Un-managed means you outsource (or duct tape) your IT.

Micro Businesses typically buy like consumers. They purchase mostly at retail or online and purchase out of pocket.

Small and Medium Un-managed is a real hodgepodge, they’re not big enough to sell directly to, but is probably the largest total pool of money.

Managed Medium purchases much more like a traditional Enterprise but not at the volumes so typically don’t get the same level of service. Local reps love Managed Medium because with a little love they are very loyal customers the “big guys” can’t easily steal.

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Despite the Promise of Social Networks Local Businesses Struggle with Marketing ROI

On May 18, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson
pushing social with print. #thefixx
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

I have long felt that social media was grossly underutilized by local businesses. Unlike most corporate social media efforts local businesses have the ability to solidify Online relationships with real life relationships.

Twitter seems to be breaking that barrier faster than any social network to date. Facebook ,like MySpace before it, has been employed but has yet to demonstrate it’s effectiveness. Twitter has some good local examples, I think that one reason is the immediacy and timeliness of Twitter.

Chances are, if you’re like me, several local restaurants, coffee shops and even your local car wash have added you on Twitter. But let’s be honest most of them are not getting the kind of results below. That’s because local businesses are usually really bad at marketing themselves and even worse at measuring it.

Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that’s hoping to go national — Mark Cuban is a backer — has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day’s business.

“Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful,” said Jeff Leach, the restaurant’s co-founder. “Sure, there’s the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. … But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?”

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