Organic competition

You shouldn’t worry too much about competitors capturing your audience’s attention with million-dollar budgets. Your real competition is organic. Pizzahut.com, when people are googling for pizza. Or your niece’s new little kitty in Facebook’s newsfeed. Channels like Facebook or Google spend a lot of money and time figuring it out what to show to their users, and the budget you are spending on their ad platforms is just another variable in the mix. What can you do then? You can realize that the Internet is not a mass media. That the more personalized, more specific, more unique (or extreme) your message is, the more engaged users will be (a few of them.) If you are selling pizza, and you want to compete with Pizzahut.com, your chances to win are below zero. Instead, if you are offering a unique pixelated pizza for retro games lovers, then your problem is not your budget, is how to target the smallest possible group of retro gamers that are ready to spread the word about your pixelated pizza.