The phrase "a small foothold" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a minor position or advantage gained in a situation, often in a competitive or challenging context.
Example: "After months of hard work, the startup finally secured a small foothold in the market, allowing them to expand their operations."
Alternatives: "a slight advantage" or "a minor position".
But as he enters his last weeks in office, he seems to have gained a small foothold of appreciation here.
But although the New Democratic Party established a small foothold in the late 20th century, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives continued their dominance into the 21st century.
Mr. Lee decided to establish a small foothold in Asia because his business in Britain was seeing increased interest from Asian buyers.
But sites dedicated to news have found only a small foothold, and most of those are run by major news organizations, which often treat them as sideshows.
In a lyrical patchwork of fine-grained nature writing, conversations with villagers and rapturous rambles, Thin Paths recounts not only the couple's slow, tentative acclimatisation to this ancient landscape and its surviving people as she finds "a small foothold of belonging".
And what's going to happen in this country, where CDMA has gained a small foothold but is lagging the worldwide GSM customer base by some 98 million people?
As you see from the progression above, Trump supporters, including many Evangelicals, have slowly accepted a little bigotry, a little lack of compassion, giving the Devil of hate just one small foothold at a time.
They already have a small, unofficial foothold to build upon.
With just less than 50 hp (remember that Volkswagen Beetles of this era had even less oomph), the 1200cc Datsun pickup never set sales records, but it did establish a small Japanese foothold in the U.S. car market, and at the same time created a small-truck niche that would later boom for both Nissan and Toyota by the 1980s.
The trail occasionally deteriorated into crude stairs – small footholds that tilted vertiginously toward a precipitous slope.
