Imagine you run a small regional telecoms and IT support company. I’m just using this as an example for illustration – pretty much all of what I’m going to say would apply for any B2B company.

The chances are that your market is dominated (in terms of sales and presence) by a mix of national providers and maybe one or two large regional firms. The question is, how will you as a provider with only a few percent share of your market compete and get noticed?

Follow My Leader

Smaller businesses often take their lead from what the dominant brands do. They look at how their websites are organised and the sorts of things they say, and use it as a template. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking: ‘it works for them and they are successful, so it’s obviously right.’ (Be honest, did this influence your current marketing approach?).

This is a fundamental error for two reasons. First, large dominant brands have many advantages just because they are big; second, by copying their approach you are competing on their terms, which is a battle you can’t win.

If you understand why big companies have inbuilt marketing advantages, you have a chance to map out a more informed, intelligent and effective marketing strategy.

The Advantages Big Brands Always Have

To appreciate why big companies have an advantage I’m afraid I’m going to have to veer off into a bit of marketing waffle. First up, there is Share Of Voice (SOV). ‘Voice’ is the sum of information, communication and publicity for all the brands competing in your market.

The share of that total voice, or SOV, each business enjoys is roughly in proportion to its market share.

This makes sense: bigger brands can afford more advertising, have larger teams to spread the word, you’re more likely to see their vans on the road and they can maybe even afford to sponsor a Premiership rugby team.

Every brand needs to maintain its SOV to keep generating the leads it needs. If you want to grow, you have to buy Excess Share of Voice (ESOV).

Defections and Brand Switching

Research by the Ehrenberg Bass Institute shows that bigger brands suffer slightly less (in percentage terms) from customer defections. They also enjoy a higher preference with customers who switch brands (How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp).

This is the reality you’re dealing with. A marketing strategy that doesn’t recognise this reality is heading for choppy waters.

The biggest brands in your market have the advantage. They may even be able to get by with a lower relative SOV because everyone knows who they are.

What Should Smaller Businesses Do?

First of all, forget about copying your larger cousins. What works for them won’t work for you. The next question is whether you want to focus on differentiation or distinctiveness.

Differentiation May Be Harder Than You Think

Differentiation is a classical marketing approach that focuses on all the reasons why you are different (and hopefully better) than your competition.

This isn’t as easy as it might sound. Are the things you do differently obvious to your customers? Do they care about them? And do they offer enough added value to lure them away from the apparent security of choosing the biggest and best-known name?

A useful analogy for understanding relative or marginal value is 3D TVs. They were different, offered an enhanced viewing experience, but nobody wanted them because they were already happy with HD.

Similarly, many of us have stopped upgrading phones at the end of our mobile contracts because the improvements in the latest models are marginal. Yet the mobile companies still burn millions of dollars promoting those differences.

Avoid the trap of promoting differences that you think are important and exciting, but which aren’t significant to your prospects.

Where Differentiation Might Help

One area where you can usefully differentiate is by focusing on your customers. Understand how they define value, discover what they like and don’t like about their current providers, explore different pricing models.

You can build your website content and marketing communications around what you discover. Focus on the customer and the problems you solve for them. This will differentiate you from the product and service-focused marketing that seems to predominate.

Distinctiveness May Be a Surer Bet

The other option is to be distinctive. This means tearing yourself away from mimicking how the dominant players in your market communicate. Mimicry is a game you can only lose for all the reasons stated earlier.

If your website, marketing comms, imagery, tone of voice and copy are cloned from the dominant player you might even be contributing to their SOV. They have the more memorable brand. People remember the message but forget who told them or maybe misattribute it.

Be different from the competition in the way you communicate and project your brand. Your audience won’t then get confused or forget who’s communicating with them. As I explained in a recent article, modern marketing is a battle to be remembered, not just for attention.

If your brand has a distinctive voice, a novel take on industry issues and memorable brand assets, any ESOV you buy will have more impact. You won’t be inadvertently adding to the voice of the dominant players because you will be so different from them.

The Two Key Questions to Take Away

If you want to set up your business for faster growth think about two key questions:

• First, how can you make your brand more distinctive and recognisable?
• Second, how will you direct your resources to achieve a greater share of the ‘voice’ in your market?

To answer the first question you will need to work with the best creative talent you can afford. And to answer the second, you will need to find an agency that understands that strategy and tactics are different things.

If this has started you thinking, I’m happy to chat about these points in more detail – just give me a call, drop me an email or connect on LinkedIn.