Positioning: Setting Your Business Apart

 

This article was excerpted from MadScam. Buy it today from EntrepreneurPress.com.

What you have to impress on prospective customers is the added value they can expect when they establish a relationship with you. It may be a single specific feature so unique to your company that it can stand alone as a persuasive reason to deal with you. But the odds on finding and isolating that single 24-­carat nugget of information that makes you so special are pretty small. More than likely it’s a com­bination of less spectacular reasons that when added up give you a definite per­ceived advantage over your competition.

This single feature, or combination of distinguishing features, has been given many names over the years by various marketing pundits, but the most commonly accepted and longest lived is the unique selling proposition (USP), a term coined by Rosser Reeves, the CEO of Bates Advertising back in the 1950s. The interesting thing about a USP is that this unique attribute or feature doesn’t necessarily have to be unique to you, your product, or your services; you only have to create the per­ception that it is unique in the mind of the audience you are addressing. And if by so doing, you become the only one in your business category talking about your product’s special attribute, you end up owning its uniqueness.

Rosser Reeves did this with Gleam toothpaste. At the time, toothpaste was seen as merely a cleaning and whitening aid. (In those days most people smoked three packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes and drank gallons of diesel-strength coffee, so less­-than-­pearly-­white teeth and paint-­stripper breath was a fairly common problem.)

After talking to the people who made the stuff, Rosser discovered Gleam had chlorophyll in it, which was primarily a breath freshener. Rosser immediately renamed and advertised the product as “Gleam Toothpaste with miracle ingredi­ent GL70.” This so-­called miracle ingredient was vigorously hyped as the answer to effective oral hygiene for people who couldn’t brush after every meal because it helped fight both tooth decay and bad breath. If you didn’t want to put up with the operating­-room taste of things like Listerine, this was seen as the answer to your problems. Within months, the product was selling like gangbusters to hordes of Camel-­smoking, high-­test coffee drinking, hamburger-­munching Americans.

But the most interesting part of the story is that just about every other brand of toothpaste on the market had chlorophyll in it. It was only because Rosser took the time to find out about every single product ingredient and its attributes, rec­ognize that one of them presented an opportunity to create a USP, develop a com­pletely new way to position Gleam than the way toothpaste had always been marketed to the public, and then be the only one in the marketplace to talk about it (making it the core element of all the advertising), that he was able to turn a me­-too toothpaste into a huge brand.

This concept of a USP is an important lesson to consider when putting together a marketing strategy. Do not doubt for one minute that there will be some particular facet of your business you can promote as being unique, whether it’s in the products or services you create, the way you sell them or the second-­to­-none after­-sales services you develop that keep customers com­ing back. Believe me, somewhere in that mix there will be something you can transform into a USP. All you have to do is find it, then communicate it to your potential market.

But a word of caution here, virtually all the ads that Rosser Reeves created were appalling. Yes, they worked like gangbusters and sold a lot of products, in spite of the fact that virtually everyone hated them. He was responsible for flaming stom­achs, anvils in heads, and lots and lots of charts and diagrams with unremitting supers (on­screen titles) flashing product benefits over and over. He also had a fetish about dressing every actor in every commercial in a white coat to give the impression they were doctors.

Under no circumstances should you model your efforts on the Rosser Reeves school of hard sell when it comes to executing your advertising. But by all means rely on that fundamental principle of the unique selling proposition when it comes to doing the spadework necessary to develop your communications plan.

Nailing Your USP
Whether you’re a startup or reinventing yourself, identifying the essential core elements that can help build your company’s name and reputation will get you started on the road to fame, fortune and fast cars.

As you develop a marketing strategy you can use as the foundation of your communications plan, some questions you should consider, and hopefully come up with solid answers to are:

• Are you unique?
• If so, in what way?
• Can you definitely prove it?
• If you’re not unique, are you better at what you do than the competition? And if so, what exactly is it that makes you better?
• Can you demonstrate in easily understandable language (not BS) what it is that makes you better or different?
• Do you provide quality–either at a price or irrespective of price?
• Do you provide value? And that doesn’t necessarily mean offering the cheapest prices or matching those of some fly-by-night outfit that could very well not be around tomorrow.
• If you believe you provide value, can you express it in 20 words or less, spelling out what is the unquestionable benefit you provide at a fair price to satisfied customers?
• Do you back up your quality products or services with rock-solid, no-questions-asked guarantees and unmatched customer relationships?
• Are you totally reliable? This goes beyond the above two points and is the reason why some companies have been in business for years, while seemingly not being different than other companies with similar products and services. Perhaps a better way of posing the question would be, Does your company have integrity?
• Do you give the impression that you’ve been around for a while and intend to be around for a good deal longer? That anyone dealing with you, (particularly in a B2B relationship), should be assured that you will unhesitatingly solve to their complete satisfaction any and all problems that might occur in your business relationship?
• Even though it may not necessarily be seen as an obvious bottom-line revenue generator, are you prepared to spend time helping solve customers’ problems, irrespective of whether this is part of the service you normally provide?
• If you’ve been in business for a while, do you have solid and reference-proof case studies, particularly with locally recognizable satisfied customers, that you can talk about in your advertising? Can potential customers call your existing customers to verify their experiences with you?
• If you went out of business tomorrow, would anyone, apart from you, your mother, your dog and your investors give a damn?

So let’s assume you can answer yes to at least one of the above items. (Perhaps, even more than one.) If so, congratulations, you have a USP. Put it down on paper.

To read more about creating great advertising at a low cost, buy MadScam today.

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By George Parker

15 Sites for Promoting Your Local Business

The advertising of the future is going online–and going local. This hot trend is growing rapidly and shows no signs of letting up. In fact, according to a report by Borrell Associates, local online advertising is expected to grow by 31 percent this year, hitting $7.7 billion. The report also predicts local paid search will skyrocket by 86 percent this year, up to $1.8 billion. Local e-mail marketing will experience growth of about 54 percent, reaching $233 million.

There’s no question that consumers are using the internet to navigate their way to local brick-and-mortar retailers. A recent study by ROI Research Inc. and Performics shows that online searches influence 20 to 30 percent of purchases made at retail locations–and that number is only increasing. More and more sites, like Local.com, are making their presence known by competing against major search engines like Google and Yahoo!. So study up, plan your budget and get in on the online advertising game.

1. Website: Google AdWords
How It Will Help You: AdWords helps you target local online customers by setting your pay-per-click ads to appear only when people search a particular city, state or region. There’s no minimum spending requirement–your daily budget is up to you.

2. Website: Yahoo! Local Listings
How It Will Help You: Local Listings will promote your business to customers looking for information in Yahoo! Local. Choose from three different plans (one is free) to meet your company’s needs.

3. Website: CitySearch
How It Will Help You: CitySearch offers online advertising tools to easily open your account, manage your daily results and receive ad placement on MSN, Yahoo!, Google and Ask.com. Similar to the idea of pay-per-click advertising, CitySearch offers two paid plans, “Web Connect” and “Call Connect.”

4. Website: Ask.com’s AskCity
How It Will Help You: Ask.com recently launched AskCity, a new local search application that’s a one-stop destination for making plans. In one screen, consumers can map a route, make dinner reservations, purchase movie tickets and e-mail plans to others. Pricing for advertising on Ask.com varies.

5. Website: AOL’s CityGuide
How It Will Help You: AOL’s CityGuide specializes in providing local entertainment information to AOL service members. Advertising with AOL allows marketers to target consumers specifically by lifestyle and market.

6. Website: Craigslist
How It Will Help You: Craigslist gets an estimated 10 million unique visitors per day. With an online classified ad format organized by region or city, Craigslist connects buyers and sellers in more than 300 communities; for the most part, posting on the site is free.

7. Website: MerchantCircle.com
How It Will Help You: This free site offers a local business listing service that allows you to better manage your online reputation and become more visible in search engine results.

8. Website: Dotster
How It Will Help You: Dotster is a web domain registration and hosting company offering a local web advertising package called “Local Site Promotion.” You set your monthly budget and Dotster will make your ad visible on all the major search engines.

9. Website: Local.com
How It Will Help You: Advertising on Local.com will give you access to their 10 million-plus monthly customers. Choose from a free basic listing or pay-per-click options.

10. Website: Froogle Local
How It Will Help You: Google’s shopping search engine allows users to search for specific products by location. It’s a great way for users to find retail stores regardless of whether you use e-commerce.

11. Website:ReachLocal
How It Will Help You: This site provides a central location for businesses to set-up, maintain and track local search advertising campaigns. Pricing varies.

12. Website: RegisterLocal
How It Will Help You: RegisterLocal is a service, costing $199.95 per year, that allows you to create a master profile they submit to search engines and directories on your behalf.

13. Website: TrueLocal
How It Will Help You: This local search engine features full-text searching and offers advertising opportunities for businesses. Currently indexing more than 13 million local businesses, TrueLocal starts at just $1 per month.

14. Website: YellowPages.com
How It Will Help You: YellowPages.com is a large online local directory site featuring city guides and advertising solutions. Basic listings are free.

15. Website: Web.com’s MyEzClicks program
How It Will Help You: MyEzClicks lists your business on more than 30 major search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and MSN for a monthly fee.

Audacious Advertising

 

You’re brave enough to start a business, but are you bold enough to shout about it? Entrepreneur Howard Brauner definitely knows how to boldly market his Bald Guyz line of grooming products. Specifically designed for bald men, Brauner’s product line was created to help them embrace, not hide, their baldness. A former comb-over devotee himself, Brauner, 49, knew his target market would respond to his in-your-face initiative, including “Bald is Beautiful Day” in New York City, a six-mile walk for proud bald men with the Bald Beauty street team of attractive women who pass out the product to potential customers. “We were saluting the bald guys along the way,” Brauner says.

Knowing your target market is key to any successful bold initiative, say Dan Gershenson, Tom Olivieri and Joe Paul, partners and experts at The Creative Underground, an advertising company in Boca Raton, Florida. “The level of crazy really depends on your target audience,” says Olivieri. In-your-face, bold moves might work well with teenagers, but not so much with seniors, he points out.

Still, don’t think ultra-hip products are the only ones ripe for boldness–even more traditional industries like finance can sometimes benefit from daring marketing plans. Use humor to appeal to your customers’ emotions, suggests Gershenson. And instead of spending your cash on a huge direct-mail campaign, a bold move might be to print your message directly onto dollar bills and blanket them in prime areas where your customers congregate, says Olivieri.

Knowing that his customers congregate at the NBA All-Star Game and the Super Bowl, Brauner plans to take his Bald Guyz street team to those cities during the craziness. Whether it’s passing out bright blue and orange shirts that say “Bald Guys Are Sexy” or encouraging customers to send in their photos to be the Bald Guy of the Week at www.baldguyz.com, Brauner is boldly getting his brand name to consumers and his products onto the shelves of drugstores and supermarkets nationwide like Albertsons and Walgreens. He expects 2007 sales to reach seven figures.

Remember, there is no limit to where and how you broadcast your bold message, says Paul. Think everything from T-shirts and street teams to YouTube.com and podcasts.

Adds Olivieri, “It’s always better to be brave and bold than to be safe.”

The Lowdown on Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising can bring a stampede of shoppers to your site, but make sure your keyword performance is profitable.
By Catherine Seda

 

Pay-per-click delivers serious shoppers to your site instantly, and it’s cost-effective if done right. Play smart with the three leading search engines–Google, MSN and Yahoo!–to drive in new customers without blowing your budget.

Why advertise on all three? Not only do they get the lion’s share of search engine traffic, but they also feed their PPC ads to different sites. For example, Google feeds AOL, and Yahoo! feeds CNN.com. (MSN has not yet announced its distribution partners.) With different audiences and advertisers, your ad’s performance can vary on each engine.

The minimum bid on Google AdWordsis 1 cent per click. MSN Keywordsis 5 cents per click, and Yahoo! Sponsored Searchis 10 cents per click. All have a $5 account activation fee. The highest bid gets the highest position on Yahoo!, whereas Google and MSN give the highest position to the advertiser with the highest bid and the highest click-through rate.

To truly profit from PPC, don’t count clicks, count conversions. Use the search engines’ free conversion tools, or a third-party tracking tool, to see how much each keyword makes–or loses.

One keyword can be wildly profitable on one PPC engine, yet bomb on another. You also need to know at which bids and positions your keywords perform best on each engine. If you’ve tried PPC and lost money, consider: Did you test more than one search engine? Did you use conversion tracking for your keyword performance?

If you didn’t do both, you lacked the critical information necessary to make good decisions. Competition in the PPC space is tough, so it’s essential to track your campaign at the keyword level. If lowering your bids and changing your ad copy can’t make certain key-words profitable, cut them. But don’t carelessly kill the entire campaign or neglect to try another search engine.

By trying all three search engines and tracking your keywords, you can make sure your clicks convert to sales.

Speaker and freelance writer Catherine Sedaowns an internet marketing agency and is author of Search Engine Advertising.