Small & Medium Enterprises

With whichever is currently costing most, usually either an invisible business or a process consuming days that should take hours. Doing one properly beats starting three, because the one that finishes is the one that pays for the next.

Not necessarily. Some work is genuinely ongoing; much of it is a defined project followed by maintenance. A retainer that exists to fill hours rather than to do stated work is worth questioning.

The constraint in most SMEs is not budget but attention. Nobody owns digital, so work happens when someone finds time, which means it happens in bursts and then stops.

There is usually no in-house digital specialist. The site was built once and has not changed since, tools were adopted individually by whoever needed them, and the owner or a marketing generalist carries digital alongside another job. Suppliers pitch programmes designed for organisations with dedicated teams, which do not survive contact with an SME's capacity. The result is a series of started-and-abandoned initiatives and justified scepticism about the next proposal.

A small number of things done consistently beats a large plan done once. That is achievable without a dedicated team, and it is what most SME digital advice fails to account for.

Responsibility sits with someone who has another full-time job, so activity is sporadic and nothing compounds.

Each was adopted for a reason and none of them connect, so staff move data between them by hand and nobody has counted the cost.

Recommendations assume capacity that does not exist. A plan requiring weekly effort from a nonexistent role is abandoned within a quarter, which is why the scepticism is earned.