Consider the following.
“we are a leading supplier of…”
“we love to help our clients…”
“we only hire the smartest..”
To distinguish us from ‘the rest’ we use terms of grandeur. The best. The quickest. The sharpest. The leading.
It’s about image. A simple way to elevate our businesses above the competition.
It’s not about purpose. And that’s wrong.
“You can’t position yourself as an honest politician” Al Ries and Jack Trout advised us in ’22 Immutable Laws of Marketing’. Think about it for a moment. “Nobody is willing to take the opposite position” they go on to explain.
It now seems obvious. You’ll sense the irony here, but you won’t get far as a dishonest politician, will you?
This is the problem with marketing. The tendency to present the obvious. Who wouldn’t say that they don’t love helping their clients or that they only hire the smartest people?
We all end up saying the same old thing. Because you can’t present the opposite.
The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.
This is Ries & Trout’s law of focus. It was written 30 years ago. Before we were anxious about making the right impression through our website. The aim is to drill down to the word that represents your unique focus, your niche. It immediately differentiates you as the ‘first’ rather than fixating on ‘better’.
Leading suppliers… the smartest staff… quickest response…. all terms that present your business as ‘better’. What if you concentrated your efforts on being ‘first’?
This involves market-crunching down to a niche that you own. A selective process where your first thoughts will relate to the market you’re losing rather than the marketplace you’re gaining. Of course, you don’t want to leave money on the table and lose the interest of everybody. Focusing down upon somebody? It’s a difficult task.
This approach will directly assist you as you develop the foundations for your company’s own mission. A mission-driven marketing message is far easier to reach your target customers through.
Again, make sure that you can demonstrate the opposite of your label exists. If it’s nonsense? Don’t use it.
I’ve learned to understand that there is an ordinary approach to marketing. The pursuit of best-practice is a desire to understand what has worked for everybody else. This is why I fly the ‘brand less ordinary’ flag. To reach out to those bolder marketers that are ready to do something a little more purposeful than follow in the steps of others. I use the ‘ordinary’ to demonstrate why I believe we need to be ‘less ordinary’. I’m reaching out to the minority and I’m okay with that. They’re my kind of people. The people I want to work alongside.
Do the same with your own tagline or maybe the opening sentence of your homepage proposition. Heinz embraced their ketchup as the ‘slowest ketchup in the west’. In the world of fast food Heinz presented the brand paradox of ‘the slowest’. In one word we reconsidered the alternative based upon the thickness of ingredient. Thin and runny ketchup versus the thickness of the fresh tomato sauce? Heinz taught their consumer patience. The wait will be worth it…
The task of your marketing is to position your craft in a way that is unique to your ideal consumer. To be the obvious choice. The craft of marketing is to make that positioning happen. How you describe what you do, even if it’s in one word, gives you a great opportunity to build upon. Start simple.
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