7 Easy Strategies for Competing with a Tech Giant — Pressfarm
When the tech industry was nascent, some clever startups started their journeys and in a short span of time, accumulated million. We are talking about the ‘four horsemen of the tech’: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.
Being wary of their place one should never underestimate their own ideas. There is still a hope of finding yourself some space in the market.
The following 5 strategies should help you in many ways in competing with tech giants.
1) They have advantages of their own
The likes of Amazon and Apple can:
- Defeat any competition when it comes to marketing
- Use their large resources in achieving anything
- Buy any technology
- Use their customer loyalty to their advantage
- Use tactics to beat others on pricing
While a startup may not enjoy these benefits, it still can:
- Be more customer oriented because their small extent
- Not be affected by bureaucracy as much as giants
- Develop unflinching relationships with their customers
- Stay on the edge of the market with no problem
- Adjust to the drastic changes brought up in the market
You can grow in many ways considering these advantages over the bigger companies.
2. Create your own signature
In Blue Ocean Strategy, author Renee Mauborgne gives a clear-cut advice of not diving into the “blood-red section of water” where firms are “ripping each other apart”. Instead, what a new startup should do is sidestep from that war, should “look for opportunities” and “create your own clear space in the market.”
The simple meaning of this is that if you are a new startup and suddenly you find a giant stepping in your niche and finding comfort, then look for something its away from — a sub-niche. It wouldn’t be a massive damage for your startup to steer clear of your main niche just a little. For example, according to Bob Adam who speaks to the Business Town, “a local ski shop faced with competition from a national chain might decide to focus its primary effort on racing skis while retaining some selection for all levels of skiers.”
The efforts of trying hard to stay on a single niche, despite the fact that the giant is ripping local market off in that sector, are going to go in vain.
Finding a small space to grasp your breath in the market and your niche is called “pivoting”. This should help you understand the ‘pivoting’ point of the benefits.
3) Outpace them with your unparalleled customer services
What is it in for you?
1- The shopkeeper’s advantage.
The opportunity to increase your customer services that are unparalleled even by the giant. As Henry Elkus says in the Wall Street Journal:
A well-tuned small business can easily outperform its larger counterparts in customer service.
2- Building customer trust.
Josiah Humphrey states this well:
…Moreover, effective customer service is crucial to acquiring and retaining customers over the long haul.
Furthermore, at Appster, the recommendations for founders in order to improve their customer service is concluded as:
- Respond quickly;
- Act politely;
- Reward customers for their loyalty;
- Heed feedbacks;
- Provide free info.
Apart from these recommendations, you can use one of the most powerful tools for retaining valuable customers: The Rewards. This should be well incorporated into your frequent-buyer program which can focus on encouraging brand loyalties. As we have learned from the psychology of the customers when it comes to brands, the brand loyalties can help you establish yourself as an undying player.
There is a good case of increasing these loyalties. That can be done by offering anything from a valuable discount to gifts or any long-term membership to the frequent customers.
As the giant focuses on creating customer bases, you can focus on entrenching yourself in the hearts of your present customers.
4) Grow your backend facilities
Inessential owner Brent Simmons states the indispensable need for every starter to have cloud-based services that maintained well can outperform the tech giants. It is better for a customer to explore more and see increased services than just a mobile app or a product.
Backend services can be any service including messaging, cloud storage service, etc. Giving equal attention to such services as is given to the main service can be ample in bringing customers literally in flocks.
5) Compete with them by decreasing your price
One way to outpace the giants at their own game is to offer prices that are lesser than the ones offered by any thriving business that has attacked your market space. This doesn’t mean that you’d have to reduce the prices to the point where companies sacrifice their profits. Of course, there should be room for your own profit.
Also, in reducing the prices, you should never pay any attention to the idea that the giant you are competing with sells goods at a price lesser than your purchase price. Even if that is true, your main focus should be on reducing prices even one-quarter as compared to the prices of the flourished businesses.
According to Business Town, we can learn this strategy well from the Building #19 in Boston. The invading giants of the likes of Walmart could not take over the place of it despite offering prices that are very low. The reason of this was the strategy that we have defined in this section. They offered prices lower than the invaders. What we see now is that Building #19 is still thriving and has a large customer base.
6) Co-Work with the giants
If your startup has something to offer to a tech giant and in return receive something, it can be a massive turnout for your company.
Sharon Hadary has emphasized this in his post on WSJ where he stresses on “…identifying what your company can bring to the relationship that increases the success of both entities.”
It could be felt that since you are a beginner, you wouldn’t have anything to offer the giants. But this is a wrong notion. Everyone in this world can offer something to someone. Elaborating the saying of Hadary, looking scrupulously into your strengths can help you surface. For example, if you are a local company, and you have a deeper relationship with the local customers, or, contractors, you can use that to help the newly entered national or international company in establishing itself. In doing so, you can also reap fruits of working for your own betterment by choosing the legal terms carefully with the giant.
7) Study their moves
As a startup, anything that can provide you with valuable insights into the growth strategies could be of importance to you. In this respect, choosing to work alongside your competitor can enable you to get a peek into its book of strategies. By studying them profoundly, you can have answers for questions like what are the key points they are focusing on for growth? What can you learn from it? And considering your own business model, how can you benefit from their business model?
Competing with a giant can be drastic as well as lucrative. Lucrative only when there are very good PR with your clientele or customers. Press Farm is the only destination that can provide you with quality connections with journalists to pitch for in order to cover your press release in a compelling storytelling manner.
Originally published at press.farm on January 29, 2018.
