Marketing the Small Business......

Marketing the Entrepreneurship



By Harish Bijoor





Most entrepreneurships that aim to be big, aim to be different. Entrepreneurships start small. Think big but start small. And that is the fact of an entrepreneurship at large.

This is the niche. The niche is always small. The niche is different. The niche is unique. The niche is boutique. The niche is all about that one salmon that swims against the tide. It is about that one offering in the market that is so unique that people will pay a good price for the offering, but there won’t be too many people partaking of the offer.

The niche is therefore that narrow wedge of marketing space that brands aspire to occupy not for the sake of volume, but for the sake of image and continued brand sustenance basis just that.

How does one market the niche then? What are the primary challenges? And what’s so different in approach from marketing a mass soap, a mass focused travel agency and a mass focused consulting practice for that matter like what the Big Four(or is the Big Two and a half now?) do.


Marketing the niche brand is firstly a labor of love. Niche brands emanate from small little gaps in the market. At times they are non-gaps even. These are small little gaps and non-gaps seen by evangelists. Evangelists who are reasonably tired of mass market offerings. Evangelists, who at times have themselves experienced lack of service, frustration and a complete lack of fulfillment. The consultancy practice that looks at a zero-solicit model of business, where there is no advertising, no touting of business formats, no participation in market pitches for accounts and no brochure and no detailed website is one such example.

The challenges then are three mainly.


1. There is no money to advertise. Might as well make a virtue of that. A non-advertised brand must be good, na?

2. Niche brands slip between the slats of public recognition. At times too much recognition can be the bane of a brand in public space. Niche is boutique.

3. Niche brands forever look maverick and small. And that’s an advantage in today’s world where everything big is considered that much less optimal in its service and delight delivery standards.

Two do’s and two don’ts:

Do’s:
1. Spruce up your brand image and be totally cutting-edge in what you offer. You need to be one step ahead of big competition. Remember, bigger organisaitons take much longer to change with their clients. Clients change faster than those who service them do!
2. Don’t open up those offices all over. Follow a policy of the small office home office in every location till you have a minimum 5 clients in the kitty. It is better not to open a new office at all than close all of them one by one!


Don’t:
1. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. Clients and consumers are tired of this.
2. Don’t be glib and slick at all. Don’t follow the big guys in this game. Be real. Be genuine. Be sincere. You will stand out like a loved sore thumb!

Wait! Even as I tap this onto my laptop, it strikes me that I operate in a niche myself.

Here is some niche-'gyaan' then from what I painted for my business practice eight years ago as a private label consulting firm with no MNC-consulting tag to it. Best way to talk the language of the niche. Best way to explore the challenge of the niche. My personal one.








Consulting! Possibly the world’s oldest profession. Rivals the other one for sure! A name that used to bring a smile on my face before I actually jumped into it. I had dealt with the big names in the Consulting business for a while now during my previous stints with Levers, Tata Coffee and finally Zip Telecom. I knew many an Anderson, a McKinsey and an E&Y! I knew many of the smaller names as well. Many a salivating consultant who would network at the parties I attended wearing the corporate hat.

The term Consulting has both a positive and a negative feel about it. The positive is that which talks of stellar strategy that creates many an alliance, many a turnaround and a domain that has been responsible for creating a wealth of wealth!

The negative connotation is best typified in the joke doing the cocktail rounds of a consultant being an entity that gets into your organization, wants to meet the folks who work there, asks for your watch, looks at it keenly and tells you the time!

I have never wanted to be one of that kind. And blissfully I am not! The first thing I did as the bug to get into bed with consultancy got to me was that I did a thorough analysis of the turf at hand. Being a Market Research enthusiast all my life, I could do nothing better. I looked keenly at the inadequacies in the profession, and said I would never trample on the terrain in the same manner as many others have.

I defined for myself a USP. Two actually.

One: My consultancy will never solicit business. No presentations to clients, no networking at parties, no presentations, no pitches and no brochures and direct mailers at all! I have had enough of that staring back at me from the other side of the fence when I was a Corporate for 18 long years!

Two: My practice would focus on walking the talk. Talking the talk is just not enough. The consultant must tread the path of his strategy and see it to fruition. I therefore adopted the Build-Operate-Transfer basis of business many a super-highway contractor adopts in his trade. I will build strategy; I will operate it for the client as if I am his own resource for a year. At point of satisfaction, I will transfer the business to the client CEO! Gives the profession a great deal of credibility!

This seems to work. It has kept me busy. My four offices are busy as well.


As big consultancies break up with corporates suspecting value-propositions, niche boutique consultancies that focus on individual specialty domains will become the order of the day! Private-label consultancy is here! The terrain is ripe for many a new entrant. More the merrier.

Being a niche player is really an advantage today. If this is a David versus Goliath play, the consumer of the future is poised to look keenly at David. David is small. David is nifty. David is value-for money (most of the time). David is like me. Small, real and vulnerable. The consumer emotes with small. B2B, B2C or to B2M (Business to machine) marketing, small is still beautiful. Schumacher was right!


The author is a brand and business-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., a private label-consulting practice with a presence in the markets of Hong Kong, UK, Dubai and the Indian sub-continent. Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com
Follow me on Twitter.com/harishbijoor