Rather than attempting to compete with large corporations and their massive marketing budgets, SMEs should concentrate on raising their profiles at a grassroots level, a recent Australian article claims.
The story suggests the sponsorship of charities, sports clubs, youth organisations, cultural events and even school fetes can help smaller businesses build their brand.
However, businesses eager to sponsor a community group are warned not to take a 'what's in it for me' approach; instead they are advised to look for a group with which they have a connection.
Cairns airline Skytrans is profiled in the article with CEO Simon Wild claiming his company's sponsorship of the Taipans basketball team shows a commitment to the North Queensland community.
As an SME owner, we are always looking for ways to keep our brand in front of people. We have found another great way is to join all the council groups in close proximity to our business. We then supported their events strongly for about six months and were be surprised how many people got to know us.
We designed a unique type business card and found that we were often drawn out for any door prizes etcetc and all of this gave us a bunch of free publicity
Posted by: Andee Sellman, One Sherpa | 04 October 2008 at 11:34 PM