Internet Marketing and SMEs

Background

Davis et al (2004, 2005) in their studies of Atlantic Canadian SMEs in both 2004¹ & 2005² showed, among other things, that SMEs are adopting the internet at a record pace. However, they identified a large gap in the number of SMEs who have web sites and the number of SMEs who are actually securely transacting on those web sites. Other recent studies of SMEs and internet adoption would support these findings and also suggest that facilitators play a primary role in moving SMEs to the internet or to use advanced internet technology. This seems to be true with internet marketing as well. It could even be suggested that Google, in fact, sees their role as the facilitator of internet marketing. Google, while profit motivated, has, nonetheless, been primarily responsible for enabling the SME market to engage in internet marketing through the introduction of tools and services like Google Analytics™ and Google Adwords™.

There is no better time than the present for SMEs to close this gap. Media consumption is moving to the internet at a rapid pace, while at the same time the tools and techniques available to help a small business market their web site online are relatively inexpensive to use and increasingly accessible and abundant online.