Let's face it, marketing can be expensive.

It especially is expensive for a small company with little in the way of resources that competes against well-funded, large companies.

The "household name" companies have the cash to spend to retain and grow their market shares while the small company has to scrape up the funds to market. Yet small, undercapitalized, entrepreneurial companies can compete effectively in the marketplace if they pick their targeted prospects carefully and work at stretching their marketing budgets. Instead of investing cash that they don't have, they invest the assets they do have namely energy, creativity, hard work, and the ability to be audacious.

I can cite dozens of instances where small, unknown companies have won business from established competitors by becoming audacious, creative marketers. The common denominator for their strategy is knowing what the prospect wants or needs, using creativity to capture the attention of the targeted prospects, effective presentation, and the follow-through of a pit bull.

It's the creativity component that often is missing. Most marketers use the same tactics that everyone else in their industry uses, so winning is determined by who has the most money to spend, which means the small company loses every time. In order to get noticed in a crowd, you have to do something different to stand out.

Instead of offering the same old thing in the same old way, you have to use different media, different graphics, different branding and different methods of delivering the story in order to become outstanding.

There probably is nothing as "plain old vanilla" as vanilla ice cream. It's everywhere. All ice cream brands sell it. There isn't much to say about vanilla ice cream that hasn't been said, yet Ben and Jerry's uses 65 words to tell us why their vanilla ice cream is worth buying, starting with: "There's more to our vanilla ice cream than its incredible beyond-homemade taste." That's the creativity that got them started and it continues today.

I think I'll stop typing and have some of that ice cream right now.

Opinions expressed solely are those of the writer. Larry Galler, of Larry Galler & Associates, is a marketing and management consultant for small and mid-size companies. For more information or to get his free report, "Tolerations driving you nuts? Eliminate them now!" contact larry@larrygaller.com or call (219) 464-9463.