E Marketing Impact on Small Business

Question: Discuss about the E Marketing for Impact on Small Business. Answer: Introduction The terms e-marketing and internet marketing are used interchangeable to mean the same vehicle of communication. In the context of SMEs the SMEs recognize that e-marketing through the use of internet marketing and social media network plays an important role. Whereas e-marketing is defined variously as the use of different aspects of internet to contact buyers, communicate with the buyers to promote and sell the products of SMEs. In the present assignment a proposal is being given to analyse the business of a SME. The SME should be using e-marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing for its business. The research would primarily focus on who the use of internet has shaped in the growth of its business. Other factors which plays a role in business growth of the SME would also be considered. Literature Review Dahnil et.al. (2014). studied the social media marketing strategies being adopted by SMEs. According to Dahnil et.al. the social media has become a tool for communication to conduct business. According to them social media marketing can be said to be a type of e-marketing. Social media marketing leverages the internet for marketing purposes. According to them the terms social media marketing, internet-marketing mean approximately the same processes and can be said to be a type of e-marketing. SMEs using social media marketing uses media platforms like Linkedin, twitter, facebook to enhance their objectives. Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) form a major source of employment. SMEs in Australia have been identified as a major factor for the development of regional Australia. The factors which makes them more versatile is their ability to identify and acquire new knowledge. They use this knowledge to exploit the regional market. The new knowledge they acquire depends on their socialization ability. A study amongst 12 regional SMEs of Australia explored how they use the social media to acquire new knowledge to fuel the innovation. The study found that even though the 12 SMEs use social media they are not aware of the full use of the social media. The SMEs should be made aware of the importance of these networks and the role that these networks can play in their growth. The study also found that the SMEs should be educated about the use of social networks (Bosua, Evans and Sawyer 2013). Social media is being extensively used by the SMEs to further their business interests. A study was conducted regarding the innovations in the social media being used by the managers of SMEs for business purposes. The study involved managers of SMES of the four countries of USA, UK, Australia and India. The managers experience and use of twitter for the enhancement of the SMEs was analysed. Twitter was considered since it offers more advantage than facebook. The study found that SMEs can use twitter for their business. It found no difference between the country and the ability of the managers to use twitter. It only found that more young managers in the SMEs were adept at use of social media networking sites for enhancing their working. Thus the research only strengthened the fact that for enhancing the business opportunities of the SMEs the enterprises should use the internet in all its colours (Wamba and Carter 2013). A study was conducted to analyse the knowledge base used by the SMEs in Australia. The analysis was conducted on a successful Australian SMEs. An SME was selected since an SME is thought of as a key to creation of jobs and wealth in developed countries. The study analysed how the SME enhanced its e-marketing strategies through the development of knowledge development. The study analysed the knowledge management on the basis of how the SME created or captured the information, how it shared or disseminated the information, how it accumulated the information and finally how did the SME use the information for its business. (Coyte, Ricceri and Guthrie 2012). A study was conducted on 40 small and medium business enterprises from Melbourne, Gold-coast and Coffs Harbour of Australia. The study posed in-depth interviews with the stakeholders of the SME organizations. The only factor that linked all the SMEs was the use of social media like facebook, linkedin and twitter for the promotion of the business. The majority of the SMEs was found to be using facebook for e-marketing purposes. Thus facebook was seen as having a clear advantage with regard to the use for marketing purposes. The study also indicated that some of them might not be very happy with the way facebook works. Some of the SMEs indicated the use of social media platforms for e-marketing since it helps them to get feedback on their products. The SMEs used both reactive and proactive strategies for e-marketing (Burgess et.al. 2015). A study conducted analysed the websites of SMEs of Australia and US with three marketing strategies. The websites were tested for the marketing of the SMEs, online marketing communication and the channel used by the SMEs for marketing. The websites were being analysed for their inclination towards the market forces. A total of 316 websites were analysed by certified auditors and again verified by a third auditor. The study found that 23% of Australian websites provided a guest books and 10.9% of the Australian websites enabled the facility of chat between the members. It also found that only 7.3% of the websites had a column called comment. The paper found that more needs to be done by the SME websites for better e-marketing (Adam, Featherstone and Day 2014). A study found that for SME to be effective it has to take into consideration marketing, innovation and learning capabilities all together. These above capabilities go hand in hand for the growth of a SME (Sok, OCass and Sok 2013). Research aim The aim of the research is to find to what extent does e-marketing influence the working of the SME Research question : The research question for this assignment is as follows: How does the organization implement e-marketing for the growth of the business What is the perception of the organization towards the e-marketing strategies How has e-marketing changed the business prospect of the organization Research objective The objective of doing the research is as follows: To find the correlation between the business growth and e-marketing To find the percentage of people within the organization who were happy with the e-marketing strategies being undertaken by the organization To find the level of change in economics of the organization as a result of the e-marketing strategies Research Methodology The present research aims to search the answer to the question as to how a SME in Australia uses e-marketing (social media) for its growth. The research would use a qualitative approach to find the answer. The qualitative research method is helpful since it can gain a deep insight into the experiences and difficulties in conducting a SME business (Zikmund 2013). A qualitative research is helpful because it can explain a phenomenon rather than quantifying the phenomenon. Data Collection and Analysis The data to be collected will be primary research through the conduct of interview. A small business entity from Australia will be chosen. All the employees of the organization are part of the sample study. The criteria for selecting a SME are that the head of the organization should be looking after the marketing and social activities of the SME. The above limitation is chosen since from literature it has been found that the managers are responsible for the marketing decisions. The business should be using active social media services for the purpose of e-marketing of its products. Exploratory data analysis will be used to quantify the data. Factor analysis will be used to identify the variables which are more important than other variables. Correlation analysis will be used to analyse the relation between the variables. Expected research outcome The previous works on the use of e-marketing (social media) for SMEs have found that with the use of different e-marketing strategies there have been differences in the business. As the knowledge about different e-marketing and social networking methods have grown so has, the use of these approaches. Thus the present study will demonstrate that with better awareness of the marketing heads of the SMEs regarding the e-marketing strategies they have become more adept at using social networking platforms. Thus with better capabilities the SMEs have been able to grow in business. Conclusion It can concluded that with the growth of the social media and social networking the SMEs have started to use these aggressively. These aggressive use of e-marketing strategies has paid them well. They have been able to garner more business with limited resources. Thus the SMEs agrees that the social media marketing and internet marketing have helped them in their business. They have learnt the benefits use of social networking media for their growth. The data outcome will suggest how newer techniques of social media networking and internet marketing are being adopted by the SMEs. References Adam, S., Featherstone, M. and Day, K.W., 2014. A comparison of the marketing capabilities of SME websites in Australian and US domains. Journal of Technology Research, 5, p.1. Bosua, R., Evans, N. and Sawyer, J., 2013. Social networks, social media and absorptive capacity in regional Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES) in Australia. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 23(1), p.117. Burgess, S.S., Sellitto, C.C., Buultjens, J.J. and Cox, C.C., 2015, July. How Australian SMEs engage with social media. In Proceedings of the European conference on e-learning (pp. 45-51). Coyte, R., Ricceri, F. and Guthrie, J., 2012. The management of knowledge resources in SMEs: an Australian case study. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(5), pp.789-807. Dahnil, M.I., Marzuki, K.M., Langgat, J. and Fabeil, N.F., 2014. Factors influencing SMEs adoption of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 148, pp.119-126. Sok, P., OCass, A. and Sok, K.M., 2013. Achieving superior SME performance: Overarching role of marketing, innovation, and learning capabilities. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 21(3), pp.161-167. Wamba, S.F. and Carter, L., 2013, January. Twitter adoption and use by SMEs: An empirical study. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 2042-2049). IEEE. Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C., Griffin, M., 2013. Business Research Methods. Cengage Learning.