In our ‘Independent Food Businesses Fighting Back’ series, we see how many independent food business share common ‘success’ traits. Previously we saw how they are more ‘tuned in’ to their customers.
Another trait they share:
They OUT-WORK instead of OUT-SPEND
No surprise here, given the amount of time independent business owners spend working in their business.
The big brands will always have much bigger advertising and marketing budgets, driven by a corporate head office. This also means that they struggle to focus on particular market segments, and understand the nuances particular to local market segments. Out-spending them will quickly put the independent operator out of business, it’s simply not a battle that can be won.
Successful independent food business owners pick battles that play to their strengths and thus greatly improve the chance of winning.
They accept the fact that not everyone is their customer, they cannot be all things to all people. They work to focus in on who their core customers are and the problems they can uniquely help solve for them.
Spending time in their business to understand what their particular strengths are, what their customers particularly value about their food and service, how their customer’s tastes and preferences are changing, and where the big competitors have weaknesses, gives the basics for focusing their limited marketing resources on segmented market opportunities more specific to them.
