Quality, Solution, Leading & Experience: It's all too Predictable By Malcolm A. Teasdale |
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Once you’ve decided that your marketing is serious business, you’ll need to move forward with a detailed game plan. Many of you are finding out that marketing is the key ingredient to gaining market share and keeping it. I still see so many companies that just wing-it. If it feels good or it’s a good deal, then they’ll do it. No strategy involved; they make up their minds as they go. If your marketing and advertising are not a line item on your budget, then do it at once! If you haven’t properly researched your prospects and customers - and I don’t mean a customer satisfaction survey that makes you feel good about the job you are doing - then you need to dig down and find out what makes your customers tick. What are they looking for? Their preferences and differences are key in creating the right messaging. In just about all areas of life, we want to be like someone else. When we see someone that is successful, we want what they have. We want to act like them, talk like them, make decisions like them, and even look like them. I think it may be a comfort zone for most people; we are taught at a very young age to act and think like others. You remember hearing remarks like “Why can’t you be like your brother?”, “You act just like your father”, or “Why don’t you study law like your buddies?” Sometimes people want to be like others and not stand out from the crowd. How many times do you compare your company to the competitors? Do you lose out on new business to the competition and then wonder how you can emulate them? It’s not always that people don’t want to stand out; it’s just easier to copy what everyone else is doing. In fact, being different may be a bit uncomfortable; when you’re different, you stand out. This is the premise that marketing is based on: standing out. Think about it, you invest in marketing so that people will notice your organization, and then you give them nothing to notice! You cannot expect results just because you purchased media space or advanced some publicity initiative; you have to stick out! The only way to stick out is to not copy everyone else in your industry. I have always said: “If everyone else is doing it, don’t!” If everyone claims to be the LEADER and have the best QUALITY, provide the best SOLUTION and have the most EXPERIENCE, then someone is lying. If so many firms are saying these things, who can your prospects believe? There are millions of words in the English language, yet everyone insists on copying each other with such profound words as Quality, Solution, Leading or Experience. How can anyone tell the difference between one company and its capabilities and another when everyone is using the same rhetoric? You’ll be amazed when you take a peek at these claims from industry “leaders”. They are actual statements that companies are making.
Everyone claims to have some type of creative solution, yet I am sure most people have no idea of what that solution even is. In another unrelated industry, everyone ia claiming to be the leader. Just take a look at these claims, it’s unbelievable!
Is a leading provider of fully…
I am on a lifelong quest to get people to see the extreme value that only innovation can bring to an organization. Innovation is the key factor in the success of many organizations that we all envy today. It’s those companies that are willing to go there, that will greatly benefit in leading their industries and reaping the rewards of such bold thinking.
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