Targeting Small and Medium sized enterprises with less than 250 employees (SMEs) has been a notoriously difficult area of marketing and communications planning for many years. Even though there are nearly two million UK businesses employing between 1 and 250 people, the available communications options were based around four areas:

1. Direct communications: Direct Mail, telemarketing and email
2. Trade journals (i.e. verticals catering for a specific area of SME activity)
3. Business sections in broader newspapers and magazines (i.e. horizontal targeting of management and business owners)
4. Sponsorship of trade exhibitions and events

Creating something new within these options was a bit like seeing how many different ways one could fold the same piece of paper. Even more difficult was reaching buyers through these channels when they were active and at the point of making a purchase. But now the growth and maturity of internet has spawned a large number of new, highly targeted and relevant opportunities for marketers targeting SMEs. Two new areas that are worthy of strong consideration by those targeting SMEs are:

1) Information Channels - by their nature many SMEs have to solve their own problems when it comes to IT, infrastructure, mobile communications, VAT, finance and email. Because they don’t have many traditional office functions like IT support or finance SMEs have to solve it themselves using access online help sites and user forums. These environments present an excellent targeting opportunity for SME marketers for two reasons. First, they offer good targeting opportunities in terms of audience delivery, but second, they deliver these audiences when they in the all-important ‘problem-solving’ mindset.

2) Business E-Commerce sites – SMEs have to make regular online purchases including IT hardware, software, office equipment and office consumables. It’s easier for SMEs to review products, make purchases and organise delivery online. By shopping online they are able to assure themselves that they have got the best value possible – however they choose to define it. Many of the business shopping sites carry advertising and these offer a new and exciting opportunity to target SMEs when they are in “buy” mode.

Screwfix in the UK offers a great case study in leveraging online for SME targeting. The company is a leading supplier of fasteners (nuts, bolts, brackets, tools etc). They have created a forum which has 12 talk areas - one for plumbers, one for builders, electricians, tilers etc. It’s got 54,000 topics and 540,000 messages across over 1,500 content pages. All the talk areas were active with most showing posts from the last hour as I wrote this post. Screwfix have created their own SME media channel.

Mobile display advertising is going to present the next big SME opportunity. A lot of these guys are glued to their phones. It’s not surprising when you consider that they have to work in a virtual office, taking their phone or Blackberry with them wherever they go by car, truck, van, tube, train, bus or even abroad. Networks are still developing mobile opportunities into commercial packages, but the close “personal space” communication they offer promises to bring an additional set of developments in SME targeting. If these developments are combined with the community based principles of Web 2.0 / 3.0 then we will be witnessing a revolution in SME marketing, that’s if we haven’t already.