Between legal, admin, accounting and front-line duties, marketing can often take a back seat for SME owners who typically spend 80 per cent of their day on their business operations.
It’s the wearing of many hats that makes for many challenges when it comes to creating a successful business.
Pip Edwards, the co-founder of fashion-forward activewear brand, P.E. Nation, highlighted the pains felt by any small business in its early stages. “When you’re founding a business and trying to set it all up, those admin parts, those contractual legal parts can become overwhelming,” she said. “You really have to think that you can’t answer all of those questions, and go out and seek the right advice and make sure you’re continually tapping into that.”
And that’s the key, one that many SME owners who wear all the hats get wrong: you need to build a network and a circle of trusted advisors for support.
However, for many small businesses, it is not a matter of wanting to seek advice, but rather the financial ability to seek it. Yet doing so is becoming more affordable, particularly as the likes of online-only offerings, AI and other technologies come to the fore.
Take bookkeeping. It’s an invaluable resource that every small business needs, but many SME owners think they need to do it themselves as they look to minimise external spending. But rather than ramping up knowledge of Xero or MYOB from scratch, a bookkeeper takes one of the more excruciating parts of the workload away from the business owner whose expertise usually lies with the product or service offering.
With many online-only options powered by AI now available, these types of operational duties have never been more affordable (or helpful) to outsource to technology.
Pip says that understanding the numbers is so important. The structure and process represent 80 per cent of the business’s success, and the concept 20 per cent. Then it’s up to the marketing to make that unique.
Marketing is a function that is often an afterthought for the busy small-business operator. Whilst it’s arguably the most critical function to a business’s ability to grow their customer base and create loyalty, for many, a dedicated marketing headcount or function would break the P&L.
For this reason, coupled with a lack of knowledge, this is the task they put off the most. A recent survey of small businesses across Australia, the US, the UK and Canada revealed that, marketing is the most likely activity ANZ small businesses will delay undertaking
One of the reasons behind this procrastination is a lack of expertise in marketing. The same survey found that the top issue preventing ANZ SMEs from adding more channels to their marketing mix is a lack of knowledge (37 per cent).
And that’s where third parties and, increasingly, technologies like AI can be a really powerful “advisor” to small businesses. AI-driven marketing tools built specifically for small businesses are becoming affordable for those with small budgets, minimal resources and even less time.
Some MartTech platforms are generating entire marketing plans and social-media recommendations, along with email campaigns including copy and images, or complementary SMS campaigns and social posts with AI-generated images. Importantly, as small businesses spend more time with these tools, the technology learns what the audiences are most likely to engage with, leading to intelligent recommendations that lead to more successful campaigns.
An additional survey Constant Contact survey late last year revealed that of those who have used AI in their marketing for over a year, 46 per cent found they saved time and worked more efficiently, 43 per cent found their business grew faster, and 38 per cent got to know their customers better.
The recent advances in AI have made data, analytics and insights accessible, easy to understand and affordable for everyone. The ability to both collate and consolidate data easily will allow business owners to understand their customers with greater depth, leverage their marketing and help alleviate the cumbersome administration of some business processes.
The key, ultimately, is for small businesses to lean on people and resources in order to be successful. As Pip Edwards said, “It’s overwhelming and seeking outside assistance is the best course of action.” In doing so SME owners can do less procrastinating and more of the activities that will allow them to grow their business.
