Most likely, if you are reading this article, your company is not Coca-Cola, nor is it Amazon.
If, on the other hand, you are Quincey or Bezos and you are reading this article: contact me!
As we were saying: if you are reading this article, your company is probably not a multinational corporation with billions of pounds in revenue. And you know what? That’s perfectly fine.
The problem is that many SMEs behave as if they were. They try to copy the strategies of big brands, thinking that “if it works for them, it will work for us too”. And they screw up.
- You don’t have their budgets.
- You don’t have their assets.
- You don’t have their brand
- You don’t even have their 40-person marketing department and three external agencies.
And above all: you don’t have their goals.
The market giants play a different game. They can afford to spend millions just to stay in the customer’s mind, work on brand awareness even if conversion is a long way off, and invest in ‘positioning’ campaigns that do not bring immediate sales.
And often, their strategy is entirely based on how much they can lower costs because they can achieve economies of scale, they control the entire internal supply chain, and they work with huge production and sales volumes. You don’t.
If you try to do the same, you’ll get burned.
Because you’re not built to play that game.
So what do we do? Give up? Of course not.
Small ≠ weak. Small = agile.
Of course, mega-companies have their strengths, but so do small and medium-sized companies! Unlike them, you can:
- Make decisions quickly.
- Really get to know your customer, not through reports.
- Customise products, services and experiences.
- Change course if something isn’t working, without having to call a board meeting.
But small does not mean improvised
And here lies the other mistake. After copying the big players, there is the opposite mistake: thinking that ‘we are small, so certain things are not for us’.
This is also incorrect.
- You don’t have to be Apple to use project management tools.
- You don’t need to be Nike to sell online with e-commerce.
- You don’t need to be Amazon to use a CRM.
- And you don’t need to be McDonald’s to run campaigns on Google Ads or Facebook.
The truth is that technology today is democratic.
You have powerful tools at your fingertips, often at ridiculous prices.
But if you continue to think that certain things are “too big for you”, you will continue to work as you did 15 years ago. Off the cuff. On instinct. On feeling.
And you can’t afford to do that. Also because your main competitor may not be making the same mistake you are.
So, should I copy or not?
Yes, you should copy! But don’t copy the strategies. Copy the method. Copy what allows you to
- Be structured.
- Working with clear processes.
- Have measurable objectives.
- Knowing how to read numbers.
- Learning from data.
You don’t need an MBA, you need the mindset to do things well. The point, therefore, is not whether to copy or not to copy, but to understand WHAT to copy.
Don’t try to become a giant. Try to become the best small one possible.
And maybe, if you do things right, one day it will be the grown-ups who study you.
