Do you think you are a small brand in size? Do you wish to remain small for business reasons?
How about being a small business with a bigger brand and vice versa? These are all scenarios companies contemplate on in making business successful.
Not impossible
In general, it’s not impossible to compete with big brands as a small business. While you might feel like it’s an uphill battle, there are many advantages of being a small business that you can use to challenge larger companies, such as having a more personal connection to your customers, being able to adapt more quickly to new trends and having a specific niche.
Other small business strategies you can emphasise include focusing on video content for social media, boosting email marketing and offering a loyalty program. All of these will help you grow your small business and become a trusted product or service in your industry.
By nature, big brands are like those personal chains — fixed and inflexible. They offer limited options and they push their “one-size-fits-all” solutions to the largest number of customers possible. This attitude by big brands offers opportunities to smaller brands. Be careful not to make mistakes in competing on price and price only. You will be eliminated from the market over a short time then.
One of the biggest mistakes marketing professionals in small companies make is not thinking big enough when it comes to the content they are making to prop the brand. Your content can be so much more than just simply selling your product – and it has to be if your goal is to grow and expand your customer base.
Your content means the difference between a thousand orders and ten thousand orders. Your content has to reach the widest possible audience – not just your current customers – if you want to scale. If you only make content about your product and why customers should buy your product, it becomes challenging to expand beyond your current audience.
Be personal
The first fact you should take into consideration when building your competitive strategy is that people are social animals. They need to have a personal connection with those that they do business with. The problem for big brands is that this gets all the more difficult, the larger your company grows.
For you, on the other hand, this can be a strategic advantage as a small brand. Whereas a new customer account is only another one of thousands to a big company, for your smaller business they have a name and a face with more intimate interaction.
By cultivating this personal connection, understanding your clients’ needs, and occasionally enlightening and indulging them with your work, you can build ties that are far stronger and last longer than what they will ever have with big brands. Without a huge inventory or a rigid corporate policy, you can be the flexible alternative. Do your research on direct and even indirect competitors, find the gaps in the products and services they offer and cover those needs.
Give your customers what they want, and make customisations to your offerings when they ask for them. This way you are again giving them something that they won’t be able to get from a large company. And even if they prefer the larger brand for its cheaper and more generic stuff, they know they’ll have to come to you when they need something more unique and tailored to their needs. But do this at a profit for sustainability.
Economies of scale
A big brand necessarily needs to cater to the larger possible market. They do so to take advantage of what’s called “economies of scale”, since mass producing fewer product models gives them higher profit margins. This is not just true for manufacturing, but for all kinds of business.
A big educational organisation, for example, will usually only offer the most popular courses — since those are the ones that can fill a large lecture hall and justify the costs of famous qualified and popular teachers and expensive facilities.
Being small, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to cater to a particular niche. This is not because “economies of scale” don’t apply to you, but because what’s a tiny number of customers for a big brand can be a huge opportunity for you.
Sharpen your competitive intelligence by discovering more details about the competitors for a particular niche. Build your strategy to compete, based on the most specific needs of that niche that remain semi-satisfied or not satisfied at all. Dream big and play harder this year.
