If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going
-Winston Churchill
Of all the industries affected by COVID, small and medium businesses (SMB) have often been the most deeply affected. They’re the local shop you love to visit for gifts. The restaurant in your neighbourhood you go to where you know the names of the staff. Or it’s the florist / dry cleaner / convenience store / barber / bakery you call on to help you live a better / easier / more satisfying life.
These businesses are under attack due to COVID and are often the mainstay of our neighbourhoods. For marketers of big brands, our guest expert for this article suggests that there is an important role to play in supporting their recovery.
We know these business owners are resilient – they wouldn’t have opened up shop if they weren’t confident – but they need our support (professionally and with our spending) to get through this time of hell.
To address the specific challenges of this group, In Partnership With reached out to Miki Velemirovich, the President at Cargo: a Business to Small Business Marketing and Advertising Agency, helping brands market and sell to small businesses. With 20 years of marketing, sales and finance experience with big brands like IBM and Mercedes-Benz, Miki knows what it takes to move the sales and market share needle.
B2B Creates Unique Opportunities for Brands
Some might suggest that there’s limited differences between B2B and B2C. Miki knows from experience there’s definitely a unique approach needed. Especially when you factor in that business to small business (B2SB) is a sliver of the bigger B2B world. In B2B, it’s really more like “H2H” or human to human. But the aspects of small businesses are definitely different. When you consider how to successfully connect with small business owners, it has been quite a challenge for many big brands.
Miki’s professional experience has brought him to the client side more often than not. He had a new division to build with Mercedes Benz selling commercial vehicles purchased by small businesses. What he found was there was often a lack of understanding of customer mindsets and motivations. B2C marketing strategies often ended up being expressed in B2B communications and often it doesn’t really describe this unique purchase behaviour.
Expressed in a different way, a lack of relevant customer experience – understanding what is really important to customers – lowers loyalty. Miki notes for many big brands, a lack of local understanding of a unique target audience drives ineffective marketing (and therefore poor sales).
Small business owners are often misunderstood, under-appreciated and above all, underserved.
Miki understands that SMB (small and medium businesses) are different from big business leaders, and as such, deserve a very different marketing approach.
Enterprise-level B2B strategies often just aren’t effective – and more often than not – small business owners say that brands don’t talk to them. They just sell to them. That’s probably one of their biggest pain points, according to Miki. There just often isn’t much emotion in their marketing approach. Miki knows that in order to move the mind, you have to move the heart first. If you get them to feel then you can get them to act. That is the very simple but powerful premise behind Miki’s business to small business approach.
Approaches for B2B Brands Market to SMB
As an agency, Cargo is unique in that they spend a tremendous amount of time understanding this audience. It’s about exploring their makeup, behaviours, motivations, habits – and most importantly – their purchasing drivers (why would they choose a brand). It’s that deep understanding of the target market that allows Miki’s team to develop very accurate go-to-market strategies. By combining the research-driven, evidence-based insights with Cargo’s experience-based insights, they can solve many business and marketing problems.
The bottom line is that this premise of moving the heart to move the mind is even more important now as small business owners are climbing out of the depths of this pandemic.
Miki knows the emotions are high. Understanding a SMB’s current – and more importantly future mindset – is critical for successful engagement with them.
The reality is that consumer behaviour is changing. That’s causing a significant shift in the business models of small businesses. Add on new ways of delivering products or services and this impacts how they need to be served by bigger brands.
Creative SMB Are a Cut Above During COVID
Miki has observed that the DNA of a business owner means they’re willing to take risks and be vulnerable. One story that resonated with him is of a butcher around the corner from where he lives.
It was the third week of March when Miki was walking his dog and, as it happened, so was the butcher. When asked how his business was holding up at the start of the lockdown, the owner explained that he was “terrified and didn’t know what to do …despite still being open.” Shortly thereafter, he didn’t want to get sick so he closed up his shop temporarily. After a month, Miki ran into him again and expected to hear about a horrible situation.
To his delight, Miki heard good news from the butcher. “You won’t believe what happened. My kids helped me build an e-commerce site and I now sell my meat online. People choose what they want and then I do curbside delivery. And guess what!? This was the best month that I’ve had in five years.” Clearly, the owner was adaptable and had already started to think about how to survive in a very different environment.
Creating a B2B SMB Community
Miki reflected on this and it inspired Cargo to start Project 99. The concept was that there are small business owners who are looking for support. Government support was helpful but there was a lot more to it than just temporary financial infusions. Miki’s advice was more fundamental:
Step away from your business of today and think about it a little bit differently. How do you rebuild, reconnect and recover with the help of other SMBs?
Starting altruistically, Miki and the Cargo team discovered this community-focused platform would be very helpful for big brands to understand this newly designed landscape of SMB. Ultimately, the platform is now driving a lot of insights, go-to-market strategies and market ideas to help engage, motivate and retrain SMB owners.
Digging Deeper with Research
Looking to explore further to find greater understanding, Cargo conducted more research and found some interesting results. Most respondents indicated they were very negatively impacted. But when considering the future, over half said they have an optimistic outlook; only 6% said they are pessimistic.
SMB optimism has been dented but not crushed. There is still a tremendous amount of positivity out there. Some owners even said they believe in the spirit of entrepreneurship now more than ever.
That resonated with Miki’s team at Cargo. There’s a tremendous amount of people who see this as an opportunity. That this is a great time for innovation. With a second wave upon us, many are saying, “I just have to speed up my innovation.”
Optimism is Also Contagious
Miki is clear: struggles are nothing new for entrepreneurs. It’s innate in why they start a business. They just do not want to give up. That’s why they became entrepreneurs.
People become entrepreneurs because they want to hold their future in their own hands.
When they sense that elements are out of their control, they quickly move to the idea of “how do I re-organize, re-design, re-energize my business to take advantage of these changes.” But a lot of brand leaders will say, “but where do I start?” There’s a lot of factors at play, suggests Miki.
The recovery of the small business segment is first and foremost, dependent on location. The second is the lifecycle of the business and the third one is the industry.
Putting this all together, if you’re running a small business in a small town, the number of cases are often far less. When these businesses opened again in May, they were far quicker to be given the opportunity than those in Toronto. For young businesses – less than five years old – and for smaller businesses – fewer than 20 employees – they will face greater challenges to recover.
Miki believes this is simply because they have a far lower degree of liquidity and are therefore more exposed to weaker consumer demand. If a small business requires a high-touch environment, it’s going to be tough. These industries, as we’ve seen, include hospitality, accommodation, personal services, some food services, sports, entertainment and events.
Looking Ahead With B2B Marketing Solutions
The biggest shift for SMB today is towards physical distance, health and safety. Miki believes the solutions are e-commerce and the digitalization of business operations. Online shopping was a choice that only a small percentage of consumers took prior to this pandemic. Pre-COVID, many small and medium sized businesses did not have a strong online presence. So now it’s all about this digitization of not only their sales channels and e-commerce but also business operations. The final aspect is work style, specifically WFH. A lot of SMB just never thought that that was even an option for them. This will necessitate an increase in flexible work options and increased technology integration.
There’s going to be a tremendous demand for workplace innovation.
This greater employer support plays well in areas, such as work-life balance and mental health. Miki notes these are often areas that are completely new for small businesses.
More broadly, SMB are asking “how do I reach my consumer?” A small maker of quality, local goods whose main channel was selling at markets will have to evolve as those markets aren’t operating (or at least in the same way with the same traffic) anymore. They need to find a new way. Miki sees that’s really only available through digital channels because the consumer is sitting on the other end with their laptop.
The SMB Rallying Cry
What’s helpful is that there continues to be a broad sense that we’re in this together. Miki sees that communities are pulling together to help their members and citizens are coming together to celebrate those on the front lines, including in SMB. Customers continue to engage and recognize it’s part of our responsibility to keep our communities together by ensuring that we make choices on where we spend our money.
We need to consciously support local businesses.
Fortunately, Miki notes that many Canadians miss their favourite places. They miss going to their favourite coffee shop, going to their favourite restaurant or going to their favourite local store. But Canadians are – in many cases – doing something about it with their purchase decisions.
Big B2B Brands Need to Support SMB
When looking to work with SMB, Miki notes that big brands can help SMB with their digital transformation, even if they’re not a technology company. There’s always ways to help no matter what service or product you provide. You can still help SMB digitize by reassessing your own digital channels. Remember, because SMB must evolve, if a big brand doesn’t help them and some other big brand does, that customer may be lost forever.
Additionally, big brands can support the need for SMB agility and efficiency. Miki suggests to facilitate innovation by helping them come to the new ways of work to support their business. SMB owners are always looking for a partner.
Don’t just sell to them. Become a trusted partner and align with your mutual purpose.
Small business owners are not going backwards. They want to know that people at the brand that they work with believe in supporting them. Therefore, Miki recommends a proactive mindset shift. The benefit of this shift is that it’s the greatest opportunity of how big brands can engage with this highly passionate audience that is highly positive. That’s a good thing for the future and one that we can all rally around. Even as they’re living through hell at the moment.
In Partnership With
Miki Velemirovich is the President at Cargo, a Business to Small Business Marketing and Advertising Agency. With 20 years of marketing, sales and finance experience with big brands like IBM and Mercedes-Benz, Miki knows what it takes to move the sales and market share needle. Miki contributes widely to the marketing profession, including as a member of CMA’s Councils, with a focus on the Insights and B2B spaces.
Tim Bishop, CM is a multi-disciplined executive with a proven record of optimizing strategic efforts to expand the influence of leading organizations, such as the Canadian Marketing Association, Cineplex Entertainment, Lavalife.com, IMI International and Northstar Research Partners. In Partnership With is his latest focus to curate Canadian marketing experts to celebrate the power of strategic partnerships in a perspective-based content series.