Small businesses have a few natural advantages over large businesses when it comes to marketing. As marketing methods evolve, those large businesses are finding that customers and audiences respond much better to personalized messages, which means they have to work hard to rethink their all-encompassing strategies. Small has become the new big, so to speak.

Here are a few ways that small businesses take the upper hand:

  1. Reaching the target audience – Small businesses may not have as much of a budget as some of the big guys who’ve been around forever, but they usually have much closer relationships with their audience. Expensive television ads will no longer trump face-to-face connections or the offering of real, honest, helpful advice. Small business owners should take advantage of their ability to reach audience members on a more personal level.
  2. Customer Loyalty – This is a bit of an extension of number one, in the way that building these close relationships with your customer base brings trust and loyalty to the table. Your tight relationship with your customers will undoubtedly keep them from switching to the competition, which just opened a shop across the street with cheaper prices.
  3. Nurturing that Relationship – Small businesses offer another huge advantage in marketing versus larger businesses. They are more likely to respond to customer feedback. If a few customers are beginning to request a new service, or a new product, it’s much easier for a small business owner to consider these new ideas, and perhaps work with them. This sets your business apart from larger businesses that may not care as much.
  4. Less Red Tape – Again, tying into number three, if you are running a small business, you don’t have to deal with the “red tape” that most big business managers run into. If you want to experiment with a new service or pivot from your original venture, you can make the quick decision to do so, and you can do it efficiently without having to deal with an over-complicated bureaucracy. You can collect customer feedback and poll through social media for quick results and continue to move forward and improve.
  5. You Can See the Data – The beauty of digital marketing (aside from cheap pricing and high ROI, of course) is that it’s so easy to collect and learn from the corresponding data. You can see in a glance how your Email campaign is being received, and how many people are reached with your Facebook posts. Many large businesses still spend their budgets on traditional forms of marketing, which don’t hold up nearly as well as far as ROI versus digital marketing. You can much more easily keep your small business ahead of the curb.

Sometimes it may be easy to get bogged down or stressed while competing with the bigger brands of the world, but remember that small can be very powerful. As long as you listen to your audience’s wants and needs, and offer real and honest solutions, you can gain a much stronger brand loyalty.