How a small business can beat a big business in selling products or services

Have you ever become interested in starting a bold new initiative, decided to do it, and then said inwardly, “Wait, what did I really get myself into?” We’ve all been there. There are times to take big leaps, but other times when you honestly assess your lack of experience and resources for something and wisely decide instead to either go back to school or talk to experts and get some experience first. Going national for a small business is kind of like that, especially without infused capital and talent.

Even if you can easily sell your service or products nationally, your initial focus should be local where you can better afford to dominate the market.

If you operate a small business, try competing for national market share with your biggest competitor — probably a large corporation with a local office in every city and hefty marketing budgets for each.

The marketing playing field

You probably do pretty well in your home market where you have a stake, have the resources to cover it and where people already know you. How much money would you need to spend to acquire strong brand awareness across the country where nobody has heard of you? More than you have, so national advertising, including digital, would be ill-advised.

Small business owners who have the ability to sell nationally often compete with dominating giants in their industries. These giants have purchased as well as earned organic search ranking authority in Google and the other search engines, and pay handsomely to keep it!

It can be frustrating to attempt to penetrate an already competitive market with thousands of dollars when your top two or three national competitors are probably spending millions in Pay Per Click advertising and SEO campaigns. You can’t use a penlight to illuminate your brand when you really need the sun.

Outplay and outshine

A local market is vastly different from the whole country. The playing field is leveled when you concentrate your advertising spending within a small geographic footprint such as a county, state or tri-state region. If you’re ready to invest in growth, start with your home turf and define the geo footprint. That way, your ad concentration can match or exceed what the “big boys” are spending there. Of course, this is the market where your name is already known. Widening your market is your next step to growth.

The winning growth strategy

Before you pour money into the 3,000-mile-wide country only to be as visible in most markets as a needle in a haystack, gain some local and regional experience with your digital marketing campaigns.

Even while technology enables more businesses to deliver services nationally over the internet or ship products across the country more rapidly and affordably, the whole thing is too vast for small budgets to have any significant reach. The trick is to aim your high beams in one key market at a time, starting locally where your focused rays of brand messaging can light up the whole area and attract customers.

If you own a small business, start locally with your ad campaign’s initial launch. Use A/B testing of ad messaging in one market, then analyze the results. Apply what you learn regionally in other similar markets.

Plan and execute your ad spending on pace with your growth as you roll out wider campaigns. If your local campaign generates successful results, keep pushing the campaign out further as sales increase. Dial-in your messaging based on the acquired customer data and enjoy your growing success!

Chuck Sink, owner of Chuck Sink Link, a marketing agency in Sunapee, can be reached through chucksinklink.com.