Every business, no matter how small your town is, has to compete with someone. What advantage will you play up to your customers?
Red’s, a barbecue place in my hometown, is promoting its location. See, 14 miles away in another tiny town is a terrific barbecue place. So Red’s is basically saying, “don’t make the drive.”
It’s not a very sustainable advantage. Given the choice to up their game to be terrific, they’ve chosen to go with “we’re closer.”
If you want to build a long-term sustainable business, start by improving your quality.
Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Great post – a key question that so many businesses fail to ask/answer. But for those that have a unique, competitively defensible point of differentiation…they can easily attract and retain profitable customers.
Pat, I’m not sure I’d say that differentiation makes it easy, but it definitely makes it easier!
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Becky
Great post – a key question that so many businesses fail to ask/answer. But for those that have a unique, competitively defensible point of differentiation…they can easily attract and retain profitable customers.
Pat, I’m not sure I’d say that differentiation makes it easy, but it definitely makes it easier!