The Role of Digital Marketing in Increasing SMEs’ Competitiveness

Rui Pedro Silva

, Henrique Mamede

and Arnaldo Santos

Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

Universidade Aberta, Lisbon, Portugal

Keywords: Digital Marketing, Digital Transformation, Small and Medium Enterprises, Content Management, Online

Engagement.

Abstract: With the significant increase of technology-based newer competitors and the digital economy reshaping the

global economic environment, it is undoubtful that the market is becoming aggressively more demanding for

small and medium enterprises, which is a strong driver of their need to adopt new digital technologies and

transform their businesses. Events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the online engagement

of consumers, and that also means that digital transformation might not only be about the digitalisation of

internal processes and reshaping of business models but as well, and not least relevant, the Strategies used by

SMEs to position themselves in the market and maximise the value of digital marketing to regain

competitiveness and reposition their products.

1 INTRODUCTION

For SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises),

embracing digital transformation is not about

changing internal processes or adopting new

technologies; it fundamentally changes business

models (Loebbecke & Picot, 2015). At the same time,

the digitalisation process is reshaping the way

consumers and businesses interact (Taiminen &

Karjaluoto, 2015). However, we see SMEs struggling

and facing increased difficulties in adopting the

newer digital technologies, mainly due to their

limitations in resources and skills to fully

comprehend the value they can get (Giotopoulos et

al., 2017). For example, in a study carried out by

Ramukumba (2014), it was identified that lack of

funding, management skills, and investments in

newer technologies are ranked as the highest factors

in the failures of SMEs in South Africa.

On the other hand, SMEs have a few essential

positive aspects that support potential successes:

flexibility, faster, and less constrained (Barann et al.

2019), and their flat organisational structure enables

and supports more accessible communication and

close control of what is happening within the

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4827-7944

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5383-9884

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5139-6728

company, which are factors that reduce risk of

failures (Prause, 2019).

With SMEs playing such a vital role, there is a

need to look at digital transformation and

digitalisation with more concrete strategies (Hulla et

al., 2021).

Lemon and Verhoef (2016) stated that

digitalisation pushes companies to develop a

seamless experience with customers across multiple

channels and touchpoints, which are possible ways to

get competitive in the re-shaped way consumers and

businesses interact.

Research such as Vial (2019) and Matarazzo

(2021) demonstrate the trend of SMEs using digital

technologies to improve their relationship and

proximity with customers through different channels.

At the same time, the use of technology in B2B

marketing is gaining momentum (Schultz & Good,

2012; Rapp et al., 2013; Agnihotri et al., 2016;

Guesalaga, 2016)

With the context of the relevance of SMEs for

the global economy, the impact that digital

technologies have on their competitiveness, and the

critical role digital marketing likely plays in

improving customer relationships, this work aims to

Silva, R., Mamede, H. and Santos, A.

The Role of Digital Marketing in Increasing SMEs’ Competitiveness.

DOI: 10.5220/0011118000003280

In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies (ICSBT 2022), pages 93-100

ISBN: 978-989-758-587-6; ISSN: 2184-772X

answer the research question (RQ1): Is the digital

marketing strategy a well-defined factor in increasing

SMEs' digital economy competitiveness?

2 METHODOLOGY

Through a systematic literature review (SLR), we will

break down the research question into three different

categories:

1. SMEs & Digital Transformation success

factors

2. The technology developments in digital

marketing

3. SMEs’ competitiveness and digital

economy

We will use the database Science Direct

(Elsevier) to identify the relevant articles, following

the search strings indicated in Table 1.

Table 1: Query strings for step 1 in each category.

Category Query String

SMEs & Digital

Transformation success

factors

((SME OR "small and

medium enterprises")

AND (("digital

transformation") AND

(("success factors") OR

("success reasons") OR

("success strategies" ))))

The technology

developments in digital

marketing

(("SME" OR "small and

medium enterprises")

AND ("digital

marketing") AND

("technologies"))

SMEs competitiveness

and digital economy

(("SME" OR "small and

medium enterprises")

AND (("digital

economy") AND

(("competitiveness") OR

("winning markets") OR

("gain market share" ))))

Our process consists of four steps (as illustrated in

Figure 1):

- Step 1: Search by the defined query string in all

the article content.

- Step 2: Limit the results from 2018 onwards (to

get the most up-to-date) and only research

articles.

- Step 3: Reduce the results further and filter by

title/abstract relevant keywords.

- Step 4: Analyse the shortlisted articles in step 3

and choose the relevant ones in the review

category.

Figure 1: Literature filtering process.

After finalizing step 4, we will document each

article identifying the relevant contribution to the

category and listing the keywords used by the author.

Per category, we will show a graph with the used

keywords in all the articles analysed in step 4.

3 LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 SMEs & Digital Transformation

Success Factors

For category 1, we have analysed 16 articles and

selected 7, as identified in Table 2.

Table 2: The process of identifying relevant literature for

category 1.

Ste

Results

(

search b

uer

strin

121 articles

(

onl

> 2018 & onl

research articles

)

96 articles

3 (filter title/abstract (("SME" OR

"small and medium enterprises") AND

("digital")))

16 articles

1 (search by query string) 7 articles

Daxhammer et al. (2019) analysed the potential of

implementing multi-sided platforms (MSP) through

SMEs and how this type of business model can foster

innovative strategies in this type of company.

Through their analyses of 36 companies, the

authors have concluded that this model is not yet

highly implemented within SMEs, identifying some

reasons to limit its rollout.

To this category, a few are of importance: (1) The

digitalisation is not yet at the core of companies'

competencies; (2) Daily operations consume much of

the companies' time, leaving no space to innovate; (3)

ICSBT 2022 - 19th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies

The benefit of business models such as MSP is not

apparent for SMEs; (4) The implementation of this

type of innovative model cannot be supported by

internal tech staff; (5) Organization's management

does not fully support it.

Author's Defined Keywords: Innovation

Management, Business Models, Multi-Sided

Platforms

Löcklin et al. (2021) presented a concept to

manage the transfer of datasets between organisations

(Data Administration Shell), addressing a very

relevant topic: The lack of resources that SMEs must

manage data-related projects and their need to often

rely on external providers in the field of data science.

Author's Defined Keywords: Data Science,

Development, Artifact Management

Turkyilmaz et al. (2020) assessed the context of

SMEs in Kazakhstan and the challenges and

opportunities those companies face with digital

transformation in Industry 4.0.

They identify the key strengths such as flat

organisations, strong entrepreneurial spirit, or quick

responses to market changes. On the other hand, the

authors also identify weaknesses: lack of knowledge

of Industry 4.0, lack of qualified personnel, absence

of well-defined strategy, and limitations/constraints

in resources.

The authors also identify opportunities such as

obtaining support from governments, or entering

global value chains, while facing threats such as a low

level of R&D and lack of proper IT ßor infrastructure.

Author's Defined Keywords: Industry 4.0,

Digitization in SME, Drivers and Opportunities for

SMEs, Challenges of SMEs

Hulla et al. (2021) developed research on some of

the challenges of SMEs (within the Manufacturing

sector) in the context of digitalisation and the

competencies needed.

The authors identified five key challenges: (1)

Lack of strategy/roadmap; (2) Not recognising the

value of digitalisation; (3) Lacking the necessary

digital skills and needed competencies; (4) Lacking

resources; (5) Employees not embracing digital.

The authors have as well, identify a few needed

competencies to improve the results of the

digitalisation: (1) Process Know-How; (2) Recognise

the potential of digitalisation; (3) Define a digital

roadmap; (4) Data analysis; (5) Communication; (6)

Basic knowledge on digital technologies.

Author's Defined Keywords: Digitalization,

manufacturing, production, competency

development, SMEs, learning factories, training.

Wang et al. (2021) investigated how digitalisation

activities, integrated with strategic actions, can help

an organisation in a decline turnaround. Data from

Chinese companies from 2012 to 2019 identified

asset retrenchment, cost retrenchment, and new

products as having a significant impact on turnaround

success. The authors also refer to internal and external

digitalisation as two activities with a moderately

positive impact, with external digitalisation

supporting the positive effects of the relationship

between introducing new products and turnaround

success rate.

Their overall study results fully support the

relevance of digitalisation in accessing knowledge

and information that facilitate the effectiveness of a

company's turnaround.

Author's Defined Keywords: Decline,

Turnaround performance, Knowledge-based view,

digitalisation, Retrenchment action, Strategic action.

In their work, Bouwman et al. (2019) examined

whether SMEs in the digital transformation process

get better results when allocating more resources to

experiment with new business models and strategic

discussions.

This work theoretically contributes to a better

understanding of business model innovation

(experimentation) in the context of digital

transformation, showing that technology-based

dynamic capabilities, with organisational agility,

bring a significant improvement in the company's

competitive performance, as well as that policies are

encouraging SMEs to leverage technology, should

drive the usage of tech such as big data or social

media as a tool to experiment new business models

and rolling out new strategies. Quite a significant

contribution when knowing that new technologies

such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence, or machine

learning will expose SMEs to the need to re-thinking

some of their business models.

Author's Defined Keywords: Big Data, Business

model experimentation, Business model innovation,

digitalisation, SME, social media.

Scuotto et al. (2021), in their research, contribute

to the confirmation of the high degree of relevance of

individual digital capabilities in SMEs' growth and

their innovation. The authors assert that SMEs' ability

to innovate highly depends on employees' digital

capabilities to maximise digital technologies.

Author's Defined Keywords: Digital

Transformation, Individual digital capabilities,

Microfoundations, Labor-intense SME, innovation.

Through the 16 analysed articles, we could

identify more than 25 different keywords, with

Digital Transformation, SMEs, and Industry 4.0

being at the top of the used words (as illustrated in

Figure 2).

The Role of Digital Marketing in Increasing SMEs’ Competitiveness

Figure 2: Literature filtering process.

Table 3 summarizes the keywords explicitly used

by the selected authors/articles.

Table 3: Keywords summary of the reviewed articles in

category 1.

Step Results

Daxhammer et al.

(2019)

Innovation Management,

Business Models, Multi-Sided

Platforms

Löcklin et al.

(2021)

Data Science, Development,

Artifact Management

Turkyilmaz et al.

(2020)

Industry 4.0, Digitization in SME,

Drivers and Opportunities for

SMEs, Challenges of SMEs

Hulla et al. (2021)

Digitalisation, manufacturing,

production, competency

development, SMEs, learning

factories, training

Wang et al.

(2021)

Decline, Turnaround

performance, Knowledge-based

view, digitalisation,

Retrenchment action, Strategic

action

Bouwman et al.

(2019)

Big Data, Business model

experimentation, Business model

innovation, digitalisation, SME,

social media

Scuotto et al.

(2021)

Digital Transformation,

Individual digital capabilities,

Microfoundations, Labor-intense

SME, innovation

While we cannot draw any conclusions from the

keywords used, there is a clear pattern in studies in

Industry 4.0, while there are more limited findings in

SMEs outside of that sector (for example, in

services).

3.2 The Technology Developments in

Digital Marketing

For category 2, we have analysed 14 articles and

selected 6, as identified in Table 4.

Table 4: The process of identifying relevant literature for

category 1.

Step Results

1 (search by query string) 196 articles

2 (only > 2018 & only research articles) 137 articles

3 (filter title/abstract “digital

marketing”)

14 articles

4 (filter by relevance after reading it) 6 articles

Cartwright et al. (2021), through a systematic

literature review (SLR), contribute to the

understanding that in the B2C, social media has

emerged as a successful marketing platform, while in

B2B remains to be established at the same level. The

SLR shows that social media channels revolutionize

B2B marketing through strategic platforms in

facilitating sales, integrated communication, and

employee engagement.

This work also highlights the role of organizations

in guaranteeing:

1. Sales employees shall social media

successfully, developing relationships with

customers.

2. Employees play a role in creating and

disseminating content.

3. Employees play an active role in social media

strategy.

Author's Defined Keywords: B2B marketing, social

media, Digital marketing, strategic marketing.

Saura et al. (2021) looked at the main applications

of Artificial Intelligence-based CRMs in B2B Digital

Marketing (summarised in Figure 3).

Figure 3: Summary of characteristics per main uses in AI-

based CRMs in B2B Digital Marketing (Saura et al., 2021).

ICSBT 2022 - 19th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies

The authors have also identified five research

propositions of relevance:

- "Well-defined B2B digital marketing strategies

using AI-based CRMs would determine success

and growth in marketing."

- "The efficiency of AI-based CRMs in B2B

digital marketing when corporate strategies are

focused on lead generation should be explored."

- "Clearly defined uses of AI-based CRMs in B2B

digital marketing would benefit online brand

building."

- "Well-defined key guidelines and actions to

optimise AI-based CRMs would determine

success in using customer experience/journeys

on B2B digital marketing."

- "Innovation development protocols in B2B

digital marketing when using AI-based CRMs

should be developed, tested, and proposed as

business innovation models. "

Author's Defined Keywords: B2B digital

marketing, Artificial intelligence-based CRMs,

Multiple correspondence analysis

Boddu et al. (2021) analyzed the role of machine

learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence in digital

marketing. Their findings conclude that Artificial

Intelligence has a more significant influence on the

future of marketing. SMEs should make that

adoption, being at greater risk if not getting into that

path. They highlight that companies need solid

foundations in technology, data, processes, and

organization (people, skills, and culture) to maximize

the adoption of these technologies. They also

highlight the positive impact of robots in

collaboration with digital marketeers and machine

learning-driven analytical tools in digital marketing.

Author's Defined Keywords: Artificial

Intelligence, Machine Learning, Digital Marketing,

Robotics, Marketing, Management, Organization.

Salminen et al. (2019) compared three different

state-of-the-art algorithms for tagging online website

content and establishing cross-platform applicability.

They concluded that neural network performs better

for multilabel classification, and the model they

developed was able to perform near to a human-to-

human agreement when applied on YouTube.

Author's Defined Keywords: Machine Learning,

Auto-tagging, Web content, Content marketing,

Neural network, Digital marketing.

Sharma et al. (2020) wanted to explore the use of

digital tools by small travel agencies and their

perceived challenges and motivations.

Within this industry, there is a similar pattern of

the growing relevance of social media; at the same

time, websites and e-email still play a crucial role in

digital marketing. Social Media tools such as

Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram as the most

used.

Digital Marketing is seen as an essential piece for

small travel agencies as it allows them to get closer to

the customers and improve engagement. However,

they face challenges, especially fierce competition

security issues (fake profiles, scams, …). Some small

travel agencies avoid the digital channels to protect

the client relationships due to the digital ability to

provide more comprehensive comparison and

benchmarking.

Author's Defined Keywords: Digital marketing,

Small travel agencies, Motivations, Challenges.

Chatterjee & Kar (2020), having the Indian

market as the base, explore the key factors affecting

SMEs' social media marketing and how social media

marketing impacts SMEs. Their research fully

supports the point that social media marketing

positively impacts SMEs' business.

They refer to the exponential growth of social

media marketing adoption within SMEs and how it

positively contributes to their business growth.

They refer to the new technologies such as

"Social-CRM" gaining traction due to capturing

information that enables better interaction with

customers. SMEs adopt this strategy with less

complexity, less cost, and remarkable effectiveness.

Author's Defined Keywords: Digital marketing,

Social media marketing, technology impact, SME.

The analysed literature, through 14 articles, does

show a pretty heterogeneous set of keywords (as

illustrated in Figure 4) with a few taking relevances:

Digital Marketing in 7 articles, b2b marketing, and

social media with three articles.

Figure 4: Keywords used in analysed literature of category

While the keywords do not draw any conclusion,

it reflects that digital marketing and social media are

coming together in some of the articles.

The Role of Digital Marketing in Increasing SMEs’ Competitiveness

When referring to SMEs, B2B marketing has

been more investigated recently. Table 5 summarises

the keywords explicitly used by the selected

authors/articles.

Table 5: Keywords summary of the reviewed articles in

category 2.

Step Results

Cartwright et al.

(2021)

B2B marketing, social media,

Digital marketing, strategic

marketin

Saura et al. (2021)

B2B digital marketing, Artificial

intelligence-based CRMs,

Multi

le corres

ondence anal

sis

Boddu et al.

(2021)

Artificial Intelligence, Machine

Learning, Digital Marketing,

Robotics, Marketing,

Mana

ement, Or

anization

Salminen et al.

(2019)

Machine Learning, Auto-tagging,

Web content, Content marketing,

Neural network, Digital

marketing

Sharma et al.

(

2020

)

Digital marketing, Small travel

encies, Motivations, Challen

3.3 SMEs´ Competitiveness and Digital

Economy

For category 3, we have analysed 22 articles and

selected 1. Additionally, we chose two articles from

category 2 (with a total of 3), as it suits category three

better, as identified in Table 6.

Table 6: The process of identifying relevant literature for

category 1.

Step Results

1 (search by query string) 355 articles

2 (only > 2018 & only

research articles)

187 articles

3 (filter title/abstract

“di

ital econom

”

)

22 articles

4 (filter by relevance after

readin

)

1 (plus 2 from category 2)

Through a systematic literature review, Hossain

et al. (2021) assessed the impact of COVID-19 and

some of the strategies followed by SMEs to remain

competitive.

The authors state the relevance of technology and

digital marketing as means for SMEs to survive. They

intensify the critical value of cloud-based

technologies to allow firms to navigate crises while

highlighting the vital importance of digital marketing

to increase SMEs' competitiveness. They state that

"Enterprises that made the best use of the digital

platform through the adoption of technology, digital

marketing, and innovations secured the peak of

success and profitability."

Author's Defined Keywords: SME, SLR

Setkute & Dibb (2022) bring very relevant

research to this field. They highlight some constraints

in rolling out digital marketing in SMEs, especially

limited resources and marketing-related skills.

The work gives a significant contribution to

identifying the more important role that digital

marketing can play in B2B SMEs, especially when

stating that introducing a digital channel is unlikely to

increase sales or competitiveness on its own, and that

is where digital marketing can play an active role

creating that competitiveness.

Author's Defined Keywords: Digital marketing, B2B

marketing, SME marketing, Marketing practice.

Hong et al. (2021) bring an interesting perspective

of the advantages of digital technology to managing

the supply chain as an effective model to improve

communication, coordination, and collaboration

across organizations.

Author's Defined Keywords: Supply chain

platforms, SMEs, platforms

While the initial search identified 22 articles, it

led to a minimal number of articles addressing the

competitiveness factors of SMEs in the digital

economy space.

Table 7 summarizes the keywords explicitly used

by the selected authors/articles.

Table 7: Keywords summary of the reviewed articles in

category 3.

Step Results

Hossain et al.

(

2021

)

SME, SLR

Setkute & Dibb

(2022)

Digital marketing, B2B

marketing, SME marketing,

Marketing practice

Hong et al. (2021)

Supply chain platforms, SMEs,

latforms

4 DISCUSSION

Our literature review shows that SMEs have some

advantages, especially in their flexibility and ability

to change faster (Turkyilmaz et al.,2020). On the

other hand, these companies are exposed to their

limitations, especially lacking the needed resources

and strategies (Löcklin et al., 2021; Turkyilmaz et

al.,2020).

Our research also identifies a few behaviors that

might potentially help SMEs to increase their

competitiveness, such as more focus on

ICSBT 2022 - 19th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies

experimenting with new business models (Bouwman

et al., 2019), being open to different types of digital-

first models such as multi-sided platform models

(Daxhammer et al., 2019), or still, investing in their

talent and organization, increasing their level of

acceptance and capabilities to the digital technologies

(Hulla et al., 2021; Scuotto et al.,2021; Turkyilmaz et

al.,2020).

The role of digital is not only a step to change the

technology but also a way to increase company

competitiveness (Hossain et al.,2021) or create a

turnaround in their business (Wang et al.,2021).

The role of digital marketing is widely

researched, especially in the space of B2C. This work

also contributes to linking digital marketing to the

competitiveness of SMEs.

We could identify literature that identifies the role

of digital marketing and social media as factors that

support organisations in gaining competitiveness and

improving their relationship with customers

(Cartwright et al., 2021; Chatterjee & Kar, 2020;

Hossain et al.,2021; Setkute & Dibb,2022).

The relevance of digital marketing, significantly

the increase of social media marketing due to its

flexibility and reduced cost (Chatterjee & Kar, 2020),

is also visible in the technological developments we

see happening. Digital marketing is not an only

website and e-mail (Sharma et al., 2020) approach but

somewhat being significantly improved by newer

technologies such as machine learning (Boddu et al.,

2021; Salminen et al., 2019), artificial intelligence

(Boddu et al., 2021; Saura et al., 2021), or even the

platforms like "Social-CRM" (Chatterjee & Kar,

2020). Those technologies are accompanied by

heavier use of social media platforms such as

Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp (Sharma et al.,

2020), increasing SMEs' ability to get closer to their

customers and better position their products.

We couldn't find much relevant literature

analysing the position of SMEs in the digital

economy context and how these companies could

remain competitive while competing with new

entrants with potential more advanced technology.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Our research looked at the three different pillars: (1)

SMEs & Digital Transformation success factors; (2)

The technology developments in digital marketing;

(3) SMEs’ competitiveness and digital economy,

being able to identify clear patterns of factors that

influence SMEs to maximise our of their digital

transformation.

We also found relevant literature regarding the

different technologies that positively impact the

efficiency of digital marketing. A relevance is

because digital marketing has been identified as

positively influencing companies' performance.

If we go back to our research question (RQ1), "Is

the digital marketing strategy a well-defined factor in

increasing SMEs' digital economy competitiveness?"

our research couldn't fully answer it.

We found evidence that digital marketing is

indeed a factor in improved performance in SMEs,

which ultimately increases their competitiveness in a

more general form (Cartwright et al., 2021; Chatterjee

& Kar, 2020; Hossain et al.,2021; Setkute &

Dibb,2022), we couldn't though find evidence that

can ultimately put this in the context of the digital

economy. In reality, we could find evidence that

SMEs aren't yet fully embracing newer digital

business models such as multi-sided platforms

(Daxhammer et al., 2019), which could be an

indicator that though digital marketing can help

SMEs in the short term, it might not be enough in the

future if the SMEs products can't compete.

5.1 Limitations

This research work is based on the ScienceDirect

literature, limiting its conclusions. While the

collected literature provides clear evidence, it can't be

considered definitive due to the limitation of the

source database.

5.2 Opportunities for Further

Research

Our research identifies the relevance of digital

marketing for SMEs (Cartwright et al., 2021;

Chatterjee & Kar, 2020; Hossain et al.,2021; Setkute

& Dibb,2022), mainly social media (Chatterjee &

Kar, 2020); there is though, limited research

regarding the execution of digital strategies in SMEs

and how to make it work while facing limitations in

resources (Löcklin et al., 2021; Turkyilmaz et

al.,2020). It would be interesting to investigate further

how to leverage artificial intelligence, machine

learning, or big data to create less resource-heavy and

more machine-based strategies.

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