What Makes You Unique?
You have to wonder why some businesses are announcing strong third quarter earnings and others are barely hanging on. If you research this phenomenon, you’ll discover that the most successful businesses formulate an action plan and then stick to it regardless of whether or not they experience bumps in the road. I liken it to investing in the stock market in that, historically, those who invest with a well thought out strategy and keep their money in for the long run unquestionably fare better than those who buy in and sell out as the market fluctuates up and down.
So what should be part of that action plan?
Here are some ideas worth considering:
- Sell your product before you offer the sale. Regardless of what you are selling, you have to make customers crave what you have at any price. This goes for both goods and services. Even if your business rents dumpsters, your customers will want the best product and service.
- A picture is worth a thousand words. Trite but always true. You can’t make someone want what you sell if they can’t see what you sell. With stock images and manufacturers’ online photo galleries, there is no excuse for not having anything but the best images to work with in your advertising.
- Once you create the inspiration, give your customers easy access to your products or services. Today this means a marketing driven, easy to navigate website. If you don’t know exactly what that means in practical terms, you should find out ASAP because more than 80% of all customers do their preliminary research online. Making it your most important advertising investment is critical. Often, it requires a greater investment in time than money, but the the effort will be well worth it.
- Determine what your “Unique Selling Proposition” is and then use that as the basis for your entire advertising campaign.
Case Study
When I started an advertising agency in 1987, I came up with the idea to create circulars for a large Philadelphia newspaper. We reserved eight to twelve pages for a given shopping area, combined editorial information for the region and then sold quarter page advertorials to local businesses. When a business signed on to the project, we sent them a detailed questionnaire so they could describe all aspects of their business to me. Essentially, they were all the same: great product, great prices, and great services. And by the way, they didn’t have any photography and they were too busy to call the manufacturer to get it so could I do it for them. Basically, everybody had the same “unique” selling proposition. No one gave any thought to what separates them from the competition. If you don’t have something to shout from the rooftops, you have more thinking to do.
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