Dare to Be Different In Your Marketing

Do you want to attract the attention of more potential clients and customer? Then it's time to dare to be different. Over the last five years our marketing departments have become complacent. Rather than come up with new concepts, ideas, and marketing plans way to often we only revisit someone elses idea, change a few things and call it our own.

Do you want to create buzz about your products and services? Would you like people to take a look at what it is that you have to offer over your competitor? If you answered yes to either of these questions then this year I dare you to be different.

Develop new ideas, actually spend time brainstorming to firm up your own company's marketing message. Stop looking at what everyone else is doing. Quit comparing your creative ideas with others.

It's time we learn that adopting the tactics and strategies of another company is just simply not enough. It's still important to do your research regarding your competitors. However, it's more important to listen to the needs of prospects and current clients. Truth be known most marketing companies have stopped listening. When did it become ok to quit paying attention to our markets? We want a quick fix, a fast campaign, an instaneous idea. We've stopped putting in the time necessary to be effective.

Daring to be different doesn't have to be difficult, often enough it's as simple as getting back to the basics. You can do it in four easy steps. To get started consider the following:

• Define your products and/or services.
• Define the needs that these products or services fulfill.
• Survey and listen to your current clients and customers and figure out what it is that they like or don't like about your product. ask them how you can make them better. Ask them how they found out about you and what it was that brought them your way.
• Develop a marketing plan for the next 6 months using the three steps above.

I've seen way too many marketing professionals burn out and stray away from the basics. When this happens it just becomes "easier" to begin to do what everyone else is doing. Realize that I said easier not more effective. I've also seen marketing professionals turn their careers and their marketing departments around by adopting the basic principles that they abandoned. I challenge you to revisit your marketing campaigns, apply the basic principles, and dare to be different. I think you'll be surprised at the difference that it will make in the effectiveness and the excitement of your own marketing campaigns.

4 Ways to Overcome Marketing Challenges Forever

For most small business owners, marketing is an overwhelming concept. They need marketing solutions that ensure a smooth-running, profitable business yet most don't know where to begin or how to focus their efforts.

90% of small businesses don't even have a marketing plan. It's difficult to reach your destination if you don't know where you're going!

If you're a small business owner looking for ease, focus and marketing success, we recommend that you focus on just 4 tactics:

1. Establish a memorable and unmistakeable brand identity:

   The secret to business success is determined by your ability to powerfully communicate your business with laser precision and your ability to deliver a clearly-defined and consistent experience.

   In a nutshell... it's called branding, and, when done right, it ensures a thriving business with all the customers and profits you need. The secret is to establish a powerful brand identity that sings distinction. And establish that identity before you launch any marketing activities.

2. Create a deep connection with your core target audience - your potential raving fans!

   Who wants and needs what you have to offer? The only wrong answer is "everyone." If you're a pediatrician, you may see infants and children. Are they your target audience? No! They are your patients, but it's the parents you need to connect with to get the kids in your door. And it's not just any parents - it's a definite group of parents.

   In marketing, you get a lot more "bang for your buck" if you focus your spending on a well-defined group of people that you enjoy working with. The better you define this group, the more effective your marketing can be.

3. Design compelling offerings that pull customers in like a magnet.

   80% of all purchase decisions are based on emotion. It's your job as a marketer to know how your customers want to feel and to get them to visualize how your services can meet their needs. People want to know, "What's in it for me?" Tap into the emotion and create offerings that touch your customers.

4. Craft A Personal, Workable Marketing Plan

   Marketing is everything you do to make your product or service more visible, more desirable and more profitable. Your marketing plan will clearly define the big picture and provide focus and direction based on the 4 'P's of Marketing - product, price, place/distribution and promotion.

   Since 90% of small business owners do not have a plan, you'll have a leg up on your competition by crafting your personal, workable marketing plan to ensure that you reach your business goals.

Following these 4 criteria will transform any small business into a money-making machine guaranteed to grow your client list, sales and profits. The upfront work is the secret to a million-dollar business, literally and figuratively.

Being Unique is a Good Thing... Isn't It?

New entrepreneurs frequently hear the advice to "be unique" in their marketing. The basic idea is a valuable one -- to get attention in a crowded marketplace, you must stand out in some way. Distinguishing your product or service from the competition can make your marketing more effective. Crafting a novel marketing message can attract the notice of more potential customers.

There's no question that an element of uniqueness in your marketing can make your business more memorable, competitive, and special to your target audience. These are all reasons why being different can be good. But how different should you be?

A student in one of my classes had noticed there were no display ads for management consultants in his local Yellow Pages. "What a great opportunity," he thought, "to make my business stand out to prospective clients." He spent over $200 per month on a large ad for a full year. The result was not a single phone call, unless you count the ones from vendors trying to sell him photocopiers and phone systems.

He had neglected to ask his consulting colleagues WHY none of them had ads in the Yellow Pages. It seemed like a good idea to him, and no one else was doing it, so he pulled out his checkbook. What never occurred to him -- and what any experienced colleague could have told him -- was that companies don't choose management consultants from ads in the phone book.

Sometimes you can be too unique for your own good. There's a lot in sales and marketing that is tried and true. If you decide to forge a completely new trail, you may be attempting an experiment that many others in your field have already tried with no success.

It's not always just your marketing techniques that are a little too different. The same problem can afflict the product or service you are marketing.

I met a fellow while networking who had a "unique process" for helping companies resolve conflicts between employee groups. When I asked him to explain his process, he said I would have to experience it to understand it. I inquired how it compared to solutions like mediation or team building, and he told me it was a totally different approach that defied comparison.

Since I knew a company that needed help with a problem like the one he described, I would have liked to refer him. But I couldn't picture myself calling my friend at the company to say, "Hi, I know someone who says he can fix your problem, but he can't explain how. You'll just have to hire him and see."

Being noticeably different from the competition can help you attract customers and close sales. But claiming that you have no competition is naive. Comparisons to a known quantity can help prospective customers understand where your product or service fits in the range of solutions they are considering. If they can't compare it to anything, it's doubtful that they will be able to see how your offering could work.

Your market, too, needs to be a group of people who already exist and can be readily identified. A reader once wrote to ask me for some advice on getting her new book published. I asked what market category it fell into, and she replied that she hadn't really thought about it.

I pressed her bit, explaining that her book needed to be categorized in order to be marketed and sold. Even something as simple as where to shelve it in a bookstore depended on having a category to print on the back cover. Was it self-help, spirituality, careers, business? Who did she see as the audience for her book?

She asserted that she was creating a new paradigm, and if I was going to help her, I needed to think more creatively. My reply was to tell her I couldn't help her at all. Her idea may have been brilliant, but no publisher was going to touch her project.

Creating the perception that your product or service is one of a kind can help you capture people's attention and make them remember you. But you have to be able to identify the people you want to reach and communicate how you can be of service in words they can understand.

You know those car commercials that go, "Zoom, zoom, zoom?" I had to see those ads dozens of times before I could remember that the car being advertised was a Mazda. "Zoom" was unique alright, but what did it have to do with Mazda? Or with the benefits of owning one? A catchy slogan like "Inspiration Beats Perspiration" may be clever and unusual, but what the heck is it marketing?

Definitely look for a unique way to express the benefits you offer to your clients, but make sure it still communicates what you actually do. It's okay to get creative with your marketing, but don't bet the rent money on untried techniques.

If you really want to make your marketing more effective, cheaper and less stressful, stop re-inventing the wheel. Find models that work and replicate them. I'm not suggesting that you plagiarize your competitors' marketing copy, but when you see someone successful in your field, find out what they are doing right, and follow their lead.

Don't let your business be a victim of "terminal uniqueness" -- the belief that you are so different from anyone else that none of the rules apply to you. Being distinctive is good; being eccentric can be unwise.