AMiable Solution #200: The Right Tool

You have a highly creative marketing team.  Reliable products or services.  Modern marketing and customer service tools at your fingertips.  That’s all you need to create a strong brand and responsive marketing, right?

You’ll probably do well, yes, but unless you also have a strong unique selling proposition (USP), you could do even better.

Unfortunately, if you have competition, you can’t just count on being the best.  Best is relative.  Best is the same as all your other worthy competitors.  To stand out in your industry and to be remembered by consumers, you need to be different.  You need to highlight what it is that you do that no one else does. 

If you’re not doing that now, get started.

How?  First, identify what makes your company unique.  This can be tough.  After all, you likely offer the same things as just about every other company or organization in your market.  Think about your four “Ps”: your product characteristics, price structure, placement strategy (location and distribution), and promotional strategy. 

Still stuck?  Joy Gendusa, founder & CEO of PostcardMania, suggests in her article, “The One Marketing Tool You Can’t Afford to Ignore,” DMNews.com, June 2, 2014, asking yourself these questions:

• What void in the marketplace can you fulfill?
• What can you guarantee about your product or service?
• What do people hate about your industry that you can fix?
• What niche do you or can you service that will differentiate you from others in your industry?

Consider also what you do--or could do--that your competitors don’t.  It may have more to do with an experience than a product itself.  Consider the company Man Crates.  It sells gifts for men and ships them in wooden box crates that need to be opened by a crowbar! 

Whatever it is that makes your company different from your competitors, embrace it and share it with the world.  Reference that uniqueness on every marketing effort.  Live it and enforce it with enough frequency that people--customers and prospects alike--automatically associate your company with that particular benefit. 

Don’t just be good.  Be different.