Defend your business on all fronts

By Jim Blasingame June 30, 2010
Jim Blasingame

Besides the traditional competitive landscape small businesses retailers manage every day, many also feel pressure from two other fronts they don’t know as much about:

  1. The Big Boxes, anchored around the corner
  2. Cyber competitors, untethered in the Internet.

Here are a few ideas on how Main Street business can compete against these two:

Big Boxes

Your most likely prospects and reliable customers are also the least likely to spend much time or money with a Big Box. The same feeling that attracts them to the customization and connection of a small business also causes them to be unimpressed by size and underwhelmed by poor service. Those who don’t fit this profile were never real prospects; get over it – let them go.  Your job is to support this “connection/customization” emotion by delivering value, not price, and to quit trying to be something you’re not.

Remember these two truths:

  1. A small business doesn’t have to conquer the world to be successful
  2. The price war is over and small business lost.

Online

Every day, more of those same customers that love patronizing a small business are increasingly expecting you to provide some level of online support. Your brick-and-mortar store doesn’t have to conquer the e-business world to keep customers happy, but you do have to show up online. Here’s what that means:

  1. Regardless of what you sell or how big you are, here are two words that reveal why you MUST have a website: local search. Your prospects and customers are increasingly using local search – especially on smart phones – to find and consider businesses. Your website must at least describe what you sell and has phone numbers, address and directions. Disregard the use of local search at your peril.
  2. Prospects and customers increasingly expect businesses they like to connect with them with useful information, service announcements and special offerings. “Connect” means by email, texting, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you don’t ask customers for their electronic contact information, which platform they prefer and then connect with them there, your phone will quit ringing and your cash register will stop jingling.

You can compete against the Big Boxes by just not trying to be like them. And regarding traditional best practices and the virtual world, remember this: it’s not either/or, but both/and.

Write this on a rock ... You don't have to conquer the world; just show up and be yourself.

Jim Blasingame, Creator/Host of The Small Business Advocate Show
©2010 Small Business Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Category: Articles by Jim Blasingame
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