Cadence and 'SMEs'
Cadence has a long marketing relationship with the so called SME market. We have worked extensively with micro, small and growing enterprises and also with large corporates who want to work with them. We are building quite a reputation for our insight in this area, national and global brands work with us with ‘SMEs' firmly in mind.
The ‘SME' market is complex. It accounts for 99.9% of all enterprises and roughly half of all employment and GDP. Targeting this sector is very different to targeting the large corporate market. Segmentation in the ‘SME' market is often based on size of business.
Many organisations claim to understand the ‘SME' market. The starting point though to truly understanding it is to accept that as a definition it works against most insightful communications. The term ‘SME' is a blunt catch all term most useful as a cut off in how Government and policymakers define businesses.
We would be hard pressed to find many owners of Small and Medium sized businesses who would describe their business as ‘an SME'.
Just as small business owners do not get out of bed and say ‘I'm an SME', they are unlikely to add to that: ‘and I ought to sort out some SME products today.' That's without considering the vast percentage of so-called SMEs that are in fact sole traders, partnerships, small family businesses etc, who would not identify themselves as SMEs.
While some attempt is made to identify the difference between small retail/leisure and professional services, a true understanding would accept that there are small retail/leisure, medium retail/leisure and small professional services and medium professional services. Within this there are businesses that are small by design and some will be ambitious firms with growth potential. Some will behave like mini corporates and some will work as family style units (even if not family businesses).
The SME market is far more diverse than the large corporate sector and to successfully engage with it requires a more authentic understanding than that which can be gained by treating it as simplistically in communications as it is by statisticians.
Contact us if you want to tap in to this huge and growing market using Cadence's intelligent segmentation.
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