subject: The Basics Of Small Businesses [print this page] There are a lot of small businesses which struggle to come up with an effective marketing plan which can compete with larger firms that offer similar products and services. many small businesses compete solely on price and since larger corporations have access to much more capital and are generally better connected the small business will almost always fail to offer any real competition in this area. This is why it is imperative that the small business come up with an edge that it can be competitive on. This article is going to discuss some of the ways that a company can differentiate itself to make it more competitive.
First of all, one of the biggest complaints about larger corporations is that they offer terrible customer service. If you are in a highly services related field of work then this is a great area in which you can gain an advantage. You may never get the volume of clientele that the larger corporations will competing on price but you will be able to capture a significant portion of the market share competing on this facet.
The second thing that you can do which will make a big difference is to advertise yourself as a "green" company. Big corporations have a big reputation for being bad for the environment ant there is a huge trend in the world right now to change the way things are done so they are more environmentally friendly. If you can change your business plan to be more earth friendly then do it and advertise that fact. This is a great way to attract especially the younger segment which is more concerned about the issue than older generations.
The third thing that is always a good idea is to offer the customer a better buying experience. This is very well demonstrated by grocery stores in competition with wall-mart. Wall-mart has established itself as a price leader and because of its superior position many smaller grocery stores have found that they are incapable of competing on price. Because of this they have started to clean up their stores, offer more cashiers and generally try and make the shopping experience more pleasant. This is an effort to differentiate them. There are many examples of this out there such as the websites woot.com and many others who offer ordinary products at normal prices but have an advantage because of the selling format.
