Marketing of SMEs in the digital age: Challenges and issues

Digital marketing is revolutionizing organizational structures including businesses, especially Moroccan SMEs, offering a set of opportunities to improve the traditional way of operating while building a more authentic relationship with customers. Indeed, digital marketing brings forward important characteristics for SMEs in search of efficiency and performance, and it is considered as an interesting alternative to traditional approaches. To this end, the interest of our study is to show the main issues and challenges that the digitalization of the marketing function can have on Moroccan SMEs. In this context, the problematic we will try to answer is an original one aiming to explore the impact of the introduction of digital within the marketing function by taking the case of SMEs. To this end, we opted for a sample of 4 consultants to respond to the exploratory phase and 41 respondents for the confirmatory phase. The results have shown that digital marketing is a double-edged sword in that it can have different impacts on SME structures. With respect to the contributions of the study, we first point out the results will be beneficial for SMEs which constitute a large part of the Moroccan economic fabric, and a concise methodology based on the triangulation between the qualitative and quantitative approach. As for the limitations, we mention that the number of respondents is somewhat limited.   Keywords: Digital marketing, SME, challenges, issues, Morocco. JEL Classification : M31 Paper type : Empirical researchDigital marketing is revolutionizing organizational structures including businesses, especially Moroccan SMEs, offering a set of opportunities to improve the traditional way of operating while building a more authentic relationship with customers. Indeed, digital marketing brings forward important characteristics for SMEs in search of efficiency and performance, and it is considered as an interesting alternative to traditional approaches. To this end, the interest of our study is to show the main issues and challenges that the digitalization of the marketing function can have on Moroccan SMEs. In this context, the problematic we will try to answer is an original one aiming to explore the impact of the introduction of digital within the marketing function by taking the case of SMEs. To this end, we opted for a sample of 4 consultants to respond to the exploratory phase and 41 respondents for the confirmatory phase. The results have shown that digital marketing is a double-edged sword in that it can have different impacts on SME structures. With respect to the contributions of the study, we first point out the results will be beneficial for SMEs which constitute a large part of the Moroccan economic fabric, and a concise methodology based on the triangulation between the qualitative and quantitative approach. As for the limitations, we mention that the number of respondents is somewhat limited.   Keywords: Digital marketing, SME, challenges, issues, Morocco. JEL Classification : M31 Paper type : Empirical researc