"Maintain, deepen and niche"

European small businesses do not have a hope of competing in the mass market with big players. This is almost wholly due to supply-side constraints: they cannot afford the marketing and generate the brand presence; they cannot commoditise their products enough to compete on cost; they do not possess the capacity to fulfill mass demand or service mass after-sales.

I said this is a supply-side constraint. Because this is the playing field that big players play on. But is it currently also their undoing. I say "currently". Actually, arguably, the seeds of the current recession go back at least to 1997 when it became evident that mass production, across almost every market, was over-supplying the market with un-differentiated goods. Think about it: Banking, electronic goods, even holidays: walk down the high street even in 1997 and every single offering in every single shop was exactly the same (or as near as no difference) to any other. The only possible distinction came down to price. Every major player could supply the demand of the entire market on its own. The only means of competing was through continued operational cut-backs and adoption of technology and operational efficiency. There was absolutely no - or nearly no - competition between actual products any more. This is why we saw the flurry of mergers in the late 1990s and why things nearly came undone in the dot-com burst in 2002. The economy required further concentration of mass producers (i.e. merger) to concentrate productive capacity in fewer players. It is what is also desperately needed now - although politically unacceptable because of the jobs implications. (Which made less of a noise, of course during the good times!).

The flip side is that companies darn well need to start focussing on demand - and this is where small businesses are at no disadvantage. Let the big players focus on concentration and further operational efficiency. Small players need to be moving like billio to grab customers and that's why I title this post "Maintain, deepen and niche". Have you seen that dreadful Thompson holiday advert currently doing the rounds? Where it looks like they'll put you in a studio: bring in the sand, fabricate a pretty view; "massage-away" any black clouds and turn on UV lamps to give you a fake tan? I mean, this expresses the "mass-commoditisation-ultimate-eccentricity" that big companies now face. There is no distinction any more.

For European small businesses to stay competitive: "Maintain, deepen and niche":

- Maintain - seems clear enough - but you need to be working like stink to keep your existing customers. Do this and do this step first.

"Maintain" DOES NOT mean "keep doing exactly what you do". It means going all out to improve what you already give existing customers. If you can't improve your product, at least give it a facelift. What about a total makeover of the tired website that is sitting gathering dust in cyberspace (and never brought you much traffic in the first place). If you can't actually upgrade your product, delight existing customers and improve your chances of hooking new ones by taking positive and cheap steps to "Maintain" your existing pipeline. If you have a shop: paint it.

"Deepen" means "ADD" stuff to what you offer. That means offering more to existing customers than you already give them (i.e. "deepen" their relationship with you) or add "more" to your proposition to attract new customers. Do "more" to attract new customers. Have you considered optimising that now re-vamped website to become more competitive in search terms. European business! Are you actually selling in more than one language? (Small aside: but doing this saved our holiday business' bacon in the last 18 months. And it seems so obvious.). Deepen your market.

!"Niche" means work out what it is you do that everyone else doesn't and sell to that. Look: small businesses can't afford the marketing budget that big ones can, but there are loads of free tools on the web you can use (or Briquesetclics.fr can help you use). Simple example: do a search on Google for what you think you offer: Say "Gites". Oh dear: 11 million pages return this. :-(
So try "Gites in France". Better. Only 4 million pages return this. But apply "Niche" to your thinking and you realise that there are fishing lakes within 5 Km of your "Gite". Only 418,000 pages return "Fishing in France". Mmm interesting. So now search for "Fishing in France accommodation" and you're down to 300,000 and actually starting to get competitive. With a 10 page website offering a good mix of "niche" phrases like this and properly optimised - you're actually very likely to possess search terms that will get you onto Google page 1 if not page 2.

Briquesetclics.fr enshrines "Maintain, deepen and Niche" in its Internet offerings to European small businesses. You can compete in this tough time, but you must not compete on the same playing field as the big players. Their pitch is presently water-logged