How Can Your Small Business Beat The Big Guys? Look At Finding A Niche

The large corporations are able to get better pricing from their suppliers through huge bulk orders. They are then able to pass on these discounts onto their customers and thereby undercut any of their competition. The large corporations are also able to get really good terms from their suppliers because of the size of their orders. So how can a small business thrive in the face of such seemingly powerful competition?

The answer is really not that difficult. Find or create a niche. A niche is defined as a distinct segment of the market. A niche is filled with customers already ready and willing to buy. The big advantage that a small business has over a lumbering giant of a corporation is speed, flexibility and being that much more nimble and adaptable.

The niche that you may be looking for may be an existing one, but one that is not serviced very well by the big guys. Perhaps it is too much trouble for the giants to spend that much effort in chasing that niche. Here is an opportunity to get into a niche that the bigger corporations do not want to enter. Perhaps they are not geared up to service such a niche. For example - Home Depot, the large DIY and hardware store chain sells lawn mowers and spares for lawn mowers, but does not repair and service lawn mowers. Lawn Mower servicing is not their primary business. Making the initial sale is their business, but repair work on mowers may be too small a niche for them to tackle. So this is a niche that is known, but not serviced by them.

Another opportunity is where the niche exists but is serviced really badly by the large corporations. Their focus is too broad to do a great job and so the door is open to someone who can become known as an expert and specialist in that area. The larger corporations who serve so many niches at the same time cannot afford to be anything but generalists. The specialist can easily compete on delivering better service even if the price is slightly higher. Also larger corporations are perceived as being very impersonal and unfriendly. This also plays into the hands of the specialist who the customer can interact with face to face. Computer services and consulting is a good example of this.

The third type of niche is one that does not exist at all, one that the large corporations have no knowledge of and one that you create yourself. Naturally the competition in this niche does not exist, so you have nothing to fear from the giants there. You may have to be concerned if the large corporations see your small business start to really take off when they realize that they had overlooked that niche and decide to get into it. However the chances are that they would not be very good at it once they get into this new niche!

The small business owner already spends time always on the lookout for new business opportunities. Locating or creating niches is a great way of finding new opportunities.

Mark Bergman has 25 years in business experience, covering areas of consulting in strategic planning and software and general business consulting. He also has started up a number of small businesses which he successfully ran and sold off. He has formal qualifications in both business and computer science. To learn more from Mark you can visit www.startupmysmallbusiness.com/blog.