How Can Your Small Business Contend with Well-Established Competitors? Change the Rules
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You're a new small business that's got lots of well-established competitors in your marketplace
. So what can you do to get a toehold, to differentiate yourself from all that competition? Change the rules of the game.
In the town where I used to live there was this Cadillac dealer who bought what had been one of the weakest dealerships in the marketplace. It had passed through two or three different owners over the previous five years. What's more, this new guy in town had lots of in-place, well-established competitors, including two other Cadillac dealers and a very aggressive mega-dealer with more than a dozen car franchises on his lots.
So what did this newcomer do to establish his uniqueness in the marketplace? He changed the rules of the game. He did what no other car dealer in the marketplace had done before: he brought in new and different fun promotions. He did things like staging all night tent sales, complete with a refreshment wagon. He did things like having pony rides and petting zoos for the kids on weekends. In other words, he tried to make buying a car more fun.
The truth was that his products and prices weren't significantly different than other car dealers in the area. The only difference was in how he changed the car buying experience. But it was certainly enough for him to achieve name recognition in an already crowded field of competitors, and to build a successful dealership that's now over 20 years old.
How Can Your Small Business Contend with Well-Established Competitors? Change the Rules