Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches underdog story. Look at any movie collection and it will no doubt be packed with stories of up and coming people toppling the big and powerful. For years, the idea of the ambitious upstart was limited to the realms of fiction. Now, thanks to social media, it is something that can really happen for small, efficient, and ultra-effective internet businesses.

Today, businesses can take less advice from promotion-packed business books and a lot more from historic strategy. Social media gives small businesses the power to outshine their large opponents, outmaneuver major corporations, and with a bit of dedication and work, eventually beat their more powerful opponents. If you want to see your online business come out ahead of its bigger opponents, these four strategies will be worth incorporating into your social media marketing plan.

1. Small means mobile. Go where the big guys can’t.

For a major corporation, the cost of reaching a new customer and doing something special is outweighed by the returns coming in from their already large customer base. Go where they can’t. Reach out to customers by providing a special experience — perfect customer service and dedicated customer care — and leave the big businesses wondering how you snapped up customers through special treatment.

2. Big spenders do not look in small places.

Big companies ignore small marketing channels in favor of large-scale marketing opportunities. Rather than reaching out to potential customers through social media, they favor a mass media approach — banner ads, pop-ups, and email lists. Use your smaller size to your advantage and reach out to communities that are normally only peppered with mass marketing. With a personal approach, you will quickly pick up customers and clients that are otherwise left staring at big company advertising.

3. You are short on cash but high on time. Use it.

Time is the one currency that’s ignored by big businesses. For a major corporation, it is more cost effective to spend money to fix a problem than to spend time on it, and as a result customers with special requirements end up getting brushed to the side in favor of grand solutions. You have got time on your hands — use it to differentiate yourself from competitors that do not care about customers. When you can’t compete through scale and power, compete through personal service and time-spent.

4. Small businesses have personality. Corporations don’t.

There are exceptions to this rule. Apple Inc. is built on personality — an enthusiastic and quirky CEO, and products to match — but most large corporations are not. Sure, they have got branding, but it is rarely personal. Ronald McDonald has nothing on you as a person. When your company can effectively market through personality, you are one up on your competitors.

Instead of just thinking of your brand, your customers and clients are always thinking of the people behind the business. These small differences might not count for much offline, but in the world of social media, where word of your personal service can travel, they count for more than you can imagine.

Andrea Kalli
Certified Internet and Social Marketing VA

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Tags and Categories: budget marketing ideas, Marketing and Advertising, small business internet marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Marketing

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