Taking on the big guys

Gaining and maintaining visibility amongst a target market, even when you are up against competitors with substantially larger budgets and resources, is attainable with the right strategy and a set of memorable marketing programmes. Here are a few tips ...

Customer intimacy driving versatility

Being a small business means that you have fewer customers than a large competitor. This allows you to spend more time with each customer, and gradually build up a comprehensive picture of the people and needs in that organisation. A more intimate picture than your competitors.

By making better use of this customer intimacy than any of your competitors, you can respond to their changing needs quicker and more creatively. Perhaps even pre-empting customer demand with new and highly relevant products and services.

The marriage of customer intimacy and the versatility to respond to changing needs will allow you to out-manoeuvre your competitors ... no matter how large they are.

Price versus service

Your big competitors will often make good use of their economies of scale to drive down prices and set customer expectations at a level that makes it hard for you to trade profitably. And the more commodity-like that they can make the product or service seem to the customer, the more their pricing advantage affects purchase decisions.

However, as a small business you can 'move the goalposts'. With a little creative thinking you can start to add services and maybe complementary products to differentiate your offer from the competition. You might be more local to the customer so can improve on lead times or hold buffer-stock to protect them from peaks in their demand. You might be able to offer a 24x7 engineer call-out service beating the competition's 'office hours only' policy. There are many simple ways to differentiate yourself.

Once the customers can see that your products and services are different from the competition it will change their expectation of price. Customers will pay more for a better overall service as long as they can see the value of it, which in turn means that you need to be sure that your marketing is truly memorable.

Memorable marketing

Thinking and working pragmatically like this will help you to make your marketing work better for you in a more memorable way. This means that your target customers will be able to differentiate your products and services from those of your competitors and clearly see the value in buying from you.

If you would like some advice on memorable marketing techniques for your own business, or you know someone at another business who might need help, then please contact us. The sooner you start, the sooner you will benefit.