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Take a look at the automobile industry today.

Everybody knows that Honda Passport is more expensive than Isuzu Rodeo but they are the same two vehicles.

Everybody knows that Geo Prism is a clone of Toyota Corolla, but it feels cooler driving Corolla than it does with Geo Prism.

How do Honda and Toyota get away with charging you much higher prices for the same product?

Is it because they became the first to introduce the products to the market?

Not necessarily, as a matter of fact, Japanese automobile makers are known for re-developing someone else’s work … often the American model engineering and Japanese automakers were the second or even third entities (after Europeans) to introduce their vehicles to America.

While the Americans only bought cars from GMC, Ford, Chrysler, Chevy and Dodge, and these automakers believed that the American people always only buy vehicles from these brands, and they took the market for granted.

But the 1973 Oil Crisis changed everything. The Americans began buying European and Japanese vehicles. It was no longer “the best choice” to drive big American vehicles while having to give up so much money for gas.

This market shift occurs when someone ignores and continues to take the market for granted while their competitors provide innovative changes and pass them on.

But look what is happening today. As if these automakers never learned a lesson during the first Oil Crisis, they continued to produce larger vehicles called SUVs.

Today, the market for SUVs suffers while the Hybrids continue to sell. It would be a “no-brainer” to assume that a hybrid becomes “the best choice” for the Americans in the near future and now the automakers in America are doing everything they can to re-develop the Japanese hybrid engineering.

The role changed, now American automakers became the second or the third entity to introduce more popular and smaller vehicles.

Let’s talk about the airline industry in America.

* Southwest Airline — $49 internet special, same airplanes, short flights.

* World Airways — though small, catering big to military personnel.

Southwest and World Airways both stayed in profit post 9/11 while they saw their big competitors filing bankrupt.

As you saw in the examples of airline companies, just catering to the big market will not make you rich. But focusing on the smaller niche does.

For example, Xerox should always provide copy machines and try not to focus on printers in the future. Burger King should stop trying to compete for the children’s market and leave it to McDonald’s and develop a different niche.

Your priority as a small business owner is not trying to change the world by catering to everybody. But rather, how you grow your business from one level to another level of expansion while staying in profit. And by continuing to focus on a small niche while expanding, you can take the time necessary educating your prospects and customers about the advantages you bring to the market.

You can ask your business the following two questions.

1. What advantages do you bring to your prospects compared to everybody else?

2. Why should people do business with you?

Once you develop your messages, continue to develop them and redefine them until everybody recognizes you to be the obvious leader in your small niche.

It’s possible; you can do make yourself the local expert in your niche because you are a small business owner. And by doing the right, but small things, you can expand your business big.

Takuya Hikichi Writes Small Business Marketing Tips. Subscribe to His Blog at www.AskTak.com

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