Marketing a small business is not difficult if it can identify something unique that makes it stand out from the crowd. For any small business, marketing can seem a somewhat daunting prospect, with advice thrown from every direction. They get conflicting recommendations on what they should and shouldn’t do, how they ought to spend their budget and what tactics they must use to develop their brand.

Although marketing a small business can seem fraught with difficulty, before you even begin, there are some fundamental questions which, if you can answer them correctly, will save you a great deal of time, trouble and effort. Marketing, at its very heart, is little more than making sure that your business is competitive and successful. In order to achieve this, you should ask yourself the following question:

What makes your business different? Type a search into any search engine for basic goods or services, and the chances are high that you will be presented with millions – possibly billions – of results. How can you possibly compete in such a swamped marketplace? Is the internet not sometimes like the ocean, somewhere into which you hurl your business in the hope it might bob to the surface long enough to catch a breath?

The problem is that too many new and small businesses try to compete with the large, well established businesses or global corporations. These businesses are already successfully enjoying a good market position, and have websites with a strong online presence. Competition is a key word which you will hear in business time and time again. Yet really, rather than considering online marketing as competition, it should be more about finding a niche market, an edge or method by which your business can stand out.

Imagine a supermarket, with shelves packed with products, all neatly boxed and bagged with the same flashy labels and graphics. Each box or packet is trying to stand out by being flashier, more colourful, more striking and bolder than the next, until the shelf becomes saturated and customers ignore the bulk of the marketing which has taken place, and scour for only those products they usually buy, the familiar brand names, or the lowest prices.

But consider instead, if you managed to find your own shelf – a space that was uncluttered. Here your own brand could stand out clearly, and although the shelf may not be right by the door, almost everyone who passes it will see your product, increasing overall sales conversion by a major factor.

How does this translate into the online world? Quite simply, what you must do is identify all of the possible ways in which your business is unlike any other. Whether it is with reference to its geographical location, its combination of features, its prices, its support, its customer service – there are many ways in which you can help to make sure that your business stands out. In a crowded marketplace the only real way to succeed is either to the cheapest or be bigger than everybody else, or stand apart and be unique!

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