By Joseph Carey
Launching a small business can be a challenging for any entrepreneur. This is further aggravated by the fact that just about every market has its share of big competitors. Starting out with a small team, tight budget and relatively lesser experience is quite a risk. Nevertheless, small companies rear their heads every day and few of them even flourish in the face of a severe competition.
Nonetheless, a big chunk of small businesses faces huge challenges against their big counterparts. After a time, they tend to get frustrated or despondent and eventually give up. But this should not be the case with every small company since they have a lot to offer their customers and employees.
What many entrepreneurs may not realize is that small ventures have a certain edge over their bigger competitors that can help them compete with even huge corporations at some level.
Read on to find out some ways that can empower the small businesses to compete with bigger businesses in their target market:
Develop Their Personal Brand
Your major competitors may have an established name, but this doesn’t mean that your tiny venture can’t have a name of its own. You can develop your personal brand that is intractably linked with your own persona. The upside of this fact is that with social media, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a lot of cash with you. All you really need is a positive presence online, with loyal followers and fans.
Your personal brand connects you with your target market, potential customers, stakeholders, and social influencers. All of these parties can greatly help in making your small business a success. Large competitors may or may not have this option. However, what this means is that small companies don’t necessarily have to fall behind when creating a name for themselves.
It is hence recommended that every potential entrepreneur creates a personal brand for themselves. This would help greatly in any future company they might want to start. Even if they don’t they can always benefit from having a strong and sought-after online reputation.
Provide Excellent Customer Service
Customer service and customer relations have gained a new importance in the age of social media. With the success of sites like Yelp, along with the major social media platform, customers now have a lot of power.
If customers are not happy with one aspect of a company, they can easily diminish its reputation by airing their grievances online. Similarly, if they are impressed, they can write out their praises and thereby enhance the company’s name.
Additionally, customers can now ask questions, post complaints or praises, and generally get in touch with any company through their social media profiles. This means that all businesses should be on their toes and ready to respond to a client. It would also be well for a business to take into account the online customer feedback. All these are valuable resources for providing personalized customer service along. The valuable information from customers’ comments doesn’t hurt, either.
In all this online treasure, it doesn’t matter whether a company is large or small. In fact, if a small company goes online, it can provide a customized customer experience as well as the personal touch.
Since small businesses are usually also local, they can connect with their patrons in a way that large market players cannot. Large corporations are usually spread out among different social media profiles for different areas. This can lead to a disconnect between them and their customer base, causing dissatisfaction and frustration.
Ability to Adapt, Pivot, and Innovate
Agility and adaptability are two strengths of a small business that large ones can rarely hope to possess. The small size of certain ventures means that they can adapt themselves to changing market trends. This may lead to their survival in a market that might cause large corporations to suffer losses.
Consider small businesses to be grass, whereas the larger firms are huge, solid trees. When a gale blows, the grasses bend; thereby protecting themselves from the wind and staying their ground. The huge trees, however, stay upright in the face of the wind and end up broken. In the same way as this adage, the strength of small businesses actually lies in their efficient smallness.
If a small business finds that their product isn’t suitable for a certain market they were targeting, they can simply pivot and change their market. They might even decide to change their product altogether. In fact, pivoting is one of the most used strategies by tech startups today.
Since it’s relatively easier to switch things up, small companies are more likely to take risks. They are also more likely to respond to innovation, the results of market research, and leveraging social media. Small companies can almost always spring back, not having much to lose and everything to gain.
Catering to a Niche Market
Even if an industry seems saturated, a truly passionate entrepreneur would be able to find a niche within it. There is almost always a way to present a product or service better. Additionally, there might be something that customers don’t even know they want until they see it.
For example, one might say that they can find mugs and pens everywhere. However, small companies provide customized mugs and pens. By doing so, they can easily build a place for themselves within a market with huge companies. The same goes for just about any customized product. However, customization is only one of the many ways in which a small company might create a niche for itself.
Wrapping Up…
Being a small company in any field is like being a tiny fish in an ocean full of sharks. However, owners of small companies should not despair. The very size of the venture can actually be the way to its success. The workings of a small company are more personal, passionate, and adaptable than that of a large one.
Hence, one should not worry excessively when they see large competitors marketing the same product as theirs. There is always a way to turn customers towards your output instead of theirs. It would take a lot of hard work and dedication but would be well worth the effort in the end.
Joseph Carey is a blogger and writing expert at a private firm. In addition, he also provides assistance to students regarding essay writing service UK. His interests include cooking, painting, and photography. You can connect with him on Google Plus.
