Companies fight visibility battle

The most important marketing problem for small business owners in Australia and New Zealand is not being known by enough potential customers, a survey by Queensland consulting firm Marketing Nous has concluded.

Almost 90 per cent of respondents claimed "low awareness" of their business was a problem, with that factor also nominated as the most important sales and marketing challenge the small business owners faced.

"The survey clearly shows that most small business owners fear their business is not well known in the marketplace," said Marketing Nous director Stuart Ayling.

Other findings from the survey show that many businesses have yet to make a start on using a marketing plan, while 35 per cent do not have any marketing plan in place.

Ayling said although it was tempting to think firms not using a marketing plan were the ones with concerns about low awareness, this was not always the case.

"Even business owners who have a marketing plan and are following it still claim low awareness to be their major problem."

Survey results identified the least important problem to be "low prices", possibly indicating that most small business owners were more concerned about reaching a larger number of customers than they were about their pricing and profit margins.

With 63 per cent of respondents claiming they were following a marketing plan (either rough or detailed), Nous said it was surprising that low awareness in the market was such a highly rated problem by so many businesses.

He believed this might be because many businesses did not have a clear understanding of which marketing activities were best suited to their situation, or were not measuring the results of their marketing efforts.

"It may also be that businesses do not have a clear focus on who their customers are," he said.

"In some cases this will lead to promotional activities targeting too wide an audience, requiring a larger budget and more time, which then creates the feeling that not enough marketing is being done."

Nous said his survey results showed business owners saw themselves as having a great need for ways to communicate more effectively with their potential customers, while not believing their current marketing activities were doing an adequate job.