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Read before Burning – Ten Tidbits to Turnarounds

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

I’m not sure about you, but in the deluge of emails that comes my way each and every day, it’s real easy start deleting them without even thinking about whether there’s content that might make my life and that of my clients easier and better. So, I stopped doing that about 6 months ago and now take the time to open each one and at the very least scan for interesting info. Maybe I’ll see something about trends, or research data, facts, or a tidbit about helpful hints. Without doing so, I’d miss out on stuff I should know about and, respectfully said, that’s probably the case with you as well.

Well, with your indulgence, I wanted to share with you 10 pieces of information that you may not be aware of which in turn will help you grow your business by seizing on untapped revenue-producing opportunities. So, here goes:

  • Recent stats released by Google show that 1 in 7 searches originate on a mobile device and of those, 1 in 3 are looking for a local business.  A report from IDC last spring forecasts that search traffic from mobile will surpass desktop and laptop based search in the next 2½ years.  With search and traffic trending toward mobile, what are you doing to ensure your online properties are constructed to support and look good on mobile devices? Opportunities could be lost otherwise.
  • Are you having trouble finding content for your blog and newsletters? Luckily, there is a host of free tools that can make finding content for your blog or email newsletter easier, regardless of the topic. But before you start using these tools, you’ll need a list of keywords related to your hot topics. The five free content sources that can inspire ideas for your email newsletters, blog posts, articles and other marketing materials are: 1) Google Alerts 2) Scoop.it 3) Alltop 4) Digg and 5) Delicious.
  •  Strategy = social media success. Research shows that organizations achieving the most success with social media are ones who select channels LAST. Instead, they formulate and follow a strategic plan, complete with objectives, target audiences, success metrics and more. Being everywhere is not the goal. Being effective at what you do is.
  • YouTube delivers more than entertainment. A well-executed YouTube strategy can actually drive business to your company and boost search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. As the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube is a smart option for extending your reach through a branded channel or sponsored advertisements (the ones that precede videos).
  • Email is the dominant digital communication channel of our day. According to ExactTarget’s 2012 Channel Preference Survey, email today is the channel they prefer for permission-based marketing messages. In fact, an overwhelming 77% of all consumers surveyed prefer to receive promotional messages from companies via email compared to 5% who prefer text messages and 4% who prefer Facebook. Today, if you want to drive retention and repeat usage, there isn’t a better way to do it than email.
  • Although affluent Americans are spending more time online and adopting mobile devices at an exponentially increasing rate, traditional media channels still have great reach among these estimated 59 million US adults with $100,000 in annual household income, according to an Ipsos MediaCT survey released in September 2012. And when it comes to ad receptiveness, the largest proportion of affluents surveyed said they were most receptive to ads on TV, followed by magazines and newspapers.
  • According to  eMarketer, tablet penetration will reach 29.1 percent of Internet users by the end of 2012. And according to another research study, tablets’ share of website traffic is on track to exceed the traffic of smartphones by early next year. Importantly for marketers, tablet consumers over-index among affluents: 60% of tablet users live in households with annual incomes of $75,000 or more.
  • The rise of mobile shopping has been a bit of a double-edged sword for some marketers, especially retailers. With shoppers able to comparison-shop on their smartphones while standing in the aisles, there’s been a troubling rise in “showrooming,” the consumer practice of checking out products in store, then buying the cheapest one online. The two biggest challenges brick-and-mortar retailers face are getting traffic and then converting the traffic into a sale. Customer loyalty programs and manufacturer supported/paid-for in-store merchandising are on the rise. Due to the competitive environment, retailers are likely to lean harder on manufacturers.
  • Baby Boomers make up approximately 40% of consumer demand and companies who see this audience as a big source of revenue are still relying on — and growing media budgets for — “old school” channels like newspapers, television and outdoor.  Online usage with the group is growing but “old” is still king.
  • Based on the results of Exhibit Surveys, Inc. Annual Trade Show Trends report,  81% of trade show attendees in 2011 had the power to make a purchasing decision or influence the purchasing decision and 35% of attendees reported that their intent to buy was more favorable after visiting an impactful company’s exhibit.  This means that for businesses that exhibit, the value of attending trade shows lies not only in meeting decision makers or influencers in the buying process but also in building brand loyalty and brand awareness.

As I said, it’s easy to delete a bunch of good information that comes your way because of time constraints, being short staffed or being overwhelmed with email after email.  But this is all good information that I received and looked over before I hit the delete key.  If you’ve read this far, you’ve made the same thoughtful decision as well.

Stand out, or don’t bother!

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

We grew up with the belief that the best idea always wins. The best person always wins. If you build a better mousetrap people will beat a path to your door. That might have been true when the world wasn’t inundated with one sales and marketing message after another. But the fact is, today the best idea does not win. The best idea does not get credit and the best product does not win if nobody pays attention in the first place. (Take 5 more seconds and reread that last sentence and let it wash over you.)

It doesn’t matter how great your blog is if nobody reads it. It doesn’t matter how creative your ad is if you don’t have money to run it. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best food manufacturer, if nobody buys your products. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best hospital if people in need go elsewhere. It’s not about being the best. It’s about finding a way that you can take who you are, what you make, and what you offer and create a relationship with prospects and current customers that is instantly captivating.

Think of it like this. Imagine that on the other side of the door from where you are is where relationships happen, loyalty happens, sales happen, profits happen.  On the other side of the door, success awaits.  But to get there, we have to get through the door. And before we do that, we have to knock.  And if we can knock in a compelling, persuasive and interesting way and introduce ourselves, and if we provide people/customers with messaging and content that is instantly captivating, and if we knock in the right way, then the door opens and we get to go through to the side where all the good stuff lives. But to ignore the door that you have to go through is setting yourself up for failure.

The reason is that we live in a world with ADD due in large part to the addictive nature of the Internet. The average attention span used to be 5, 10, 15 minutes, but now, the average attention span today is roughly 9 seconds. Nine seconds! Your brand might only get 9 seconds to communicate a message, earn a little bit of loyalty, build a little bit of trust so you can continue the conversation before your customer starts getting distracted!  Nine seconds isn’t a lot of time, so what could you possibly say in that time or less to get someone’s attention? I think it starts with presenting your message in a way that’s captivating in clever and unexpected ways. It grabs people’s attention and has them focusing on the message and not thinking about the other stuff that could come into their mind. They’re engaged…captivated. In doing so, you start connecting with them, which allow you to persuade them.  Get them to trust you.  Get them to believe you. Get them to want to connect with you. So when your competitor tries to pull them away, they stay loyal.

Having been in the advertising/marketing business for quite a number of years, working on Fortune 100 accounts and mom-and-pops, and everything in between, I’ve seen and learned a few things I want to pass along:  As a company, you have a choice. You must either have an enormous budget to make sure no one in your category can compete with you OR you have to captivate people’s attention. With a big budget you can drive awareness through exposure over and over again to make sure you get your message out in front of your customer – even if you have a boring message.  The other choice is if you don’t have the biggest budget (raise of hands please), in which case you have to have a captivating message so customers will pay attention, listen, remember and act upon it. What you can’t do is NOT have the biggest budget and NOT have a compelling, fascinating, attention-getting message at the same time. Then you fail and go out of business. That’s just the fact! My guess is that you could name a few companies in your business category that are no longer around because they were ho-hum..right?

Forgettable and boring marketing materials, tiresome page-turning ads  or lackluster customer service will not get it done. People forget stuff in under 9 seconds if it’s anything less than captivating, enamoring or entrancing. Ask yourself why it is that you remember some ads or marketing messages.  It’s not because they look or sound like every other company or ad or they use business babble that says nothing. Not a chance. You remember them because they had a strong, unexpected point of view and a distinctive message. They were captivating.

So, as you begin planning for 2013 and thinking about how to make it the best year yet, I’d ask that you reread the title of this blog and use it as the mantra for your future marketing initiatives. It’s that significant.

Is the best-kept secret in marketing YOU?

In my day-to-day work, I speak and meet with a number of companies that are really good at what they do.  In fact, some are just outstanding at their specialty or niche. The problem is that too few people know about them. You practically need to trip over them to know that they exist.

Almost invariably, the VPs of Sales & Marketing for these companies voice their frustrations over the fact that while the company is good at doing what they do, they’ve not grown sales, nor increased their customer bases or product volumes, nor enhanced their brand visibility as their executive management team would have liked. In many ways, their companies end up becoming their respective industries’ dreaded “best kept secrets.” If this sounds painfully familiar, let me offer up a reason why this has happened and how to avoid this trap.

First, one needs to remember that there are two different sides to your business.  One is what I call “inside reality” and the other is “outside perception.” The “inside reality” are all the things your business does that makes it valuable to customers and gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s all your skills, people, expertise, service, commitment to excellence, passion, and the way you conduct your business.

I’m sure that if you asked your customers why they bought from you, they could tell you something quantifiable, specific, and instantly obvious. They might point to specific benefits for doing business with you and say,  “That’s why I do business with you, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, that’s why I’m a loyal customer, that’s why I don’t mind paying a bit more for your products, that’s why I keep coming back.”

The problem then isn’t your “inside reality” but the “outside perception,” which is how prospects PERCEIVE your company, if they perceive it at all. Very commonly, there’s a fundamental disconnect between your inside reality and outside perception.

See, regardless of how good you are, or how good your “inside reality” is, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure it out based on marketing that doesn’t address their outside perception.  Take, for example, a bank that offers personal service.  Their inside reality is they greet every customer by name, open the doors as each customer enters and leaves, and offer individual financial advice based on the customers’ specific banking needs.  We’ll also assume their current customers are genuinely impressed.  But the outside perception of non-customer prospects is that all banks are pretty much the same and all talk about personal service while most don’t deliver on the promise – and it’s not really that important to them anyway.  Once a bank starts from that outside perception as the basis of their marketing, the solutions become entirely different.  And so do the results.  But the bank that continues to market based on such inside realities, especially in a non-creative or expected manner, will remain invisible to prospects because they’ve seen it all before.

You have to start by seeing your marketing through the eyes of a jaded, disinterested prospect who thinks they know all there is to know about you, or at least about the business you’re in.

So while “best kept secrets” might be seen as good for restaurants, traffic shortcuts and travel destinations, they’re NOT great for business.  Don’t get lost in the noise.  Whether it’s online, offline or thru social media channels, wave your ‘marketing arms’ and let people know you’re there.  Because being in business and not promoting your value as you should is like winking at a cute girl (or guy) in the dark. You may know what you’re doing but she or he sure doesn’t.

The Art of the Story

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. — Indian Proverb

Ever wonder the best way to represent your product or service to prospective clients or customers? Here’s something to think about. Stop talking about the features of what you offer. Don’t even focus on the benefits. Don’t tell me how good you are or why you’re better than the competition.  Instead, tell me about a situation your customers typically find themselves in. Paint me a picture of how that situation is improved by the use of your product or service. Show me what success looks like. Capture my interest with people or places that resonate with me. Don’t focus on you, your company or your products. Instead, tell me a good story!

Since the beginning of language, stories have continued to teach, inspire, entertain, motivate and engage us like no other form of communication.  From bedtime stories when we were young to story time in elementary school to the sharing of family stories around the dinner table, they connect us on a much deeper level than any list of advertising bullet points could ever do. For those not convinced, try telling any favorite story using only bullet points and then decide which format people find more memorable and meaningful.

Recently, my business partner, Dan, and I met with a mid-sized “challenger brand” company to talk about their business goals and how we could help them grow their business in the face of a number of competitors. Tom, the company president, talked about his products and their features.  It was the same stuff we’ve heard time and time again from other companies in his industry. It was only when he got away from the rattling off of bullet points and suddenly spoke emotionally and passionately about how one of his customers was saved from the brink of bankruptcy because of his company’s tailored services did we immediately feel more connected with his business.

So what’s the secret to good storytelling?

Well, there is a right way and wrong way to tell stories. The secret lies in making an emotional connection with buyers because emotions play the dominant role in most decision-making processes. We need to tell our stories with authenticity and real passion in order to cut through the information overload that buyers experience and the BS shields they put up. On that note, talk like a human. Enough with the business babble. Don’t worry about sounding smart. It’s alienating and condescending, and your story will be quickly lost on your audience. Talk like a human being that cares about making meaningful relationships with people.

So how do you relate your story to the reader so that it resonates and motivates them to take action in the form of purchase or even just their wanting to retell your story and spread the word?  Here are few things to think about:

  • How are your products or services used? What stories might your current customers tell? For example, Avis uses real letters from grateful customers to tell stories about the company’s commitment to customer service.
  • Who are your customers? What type of character is your customer? Use real-life case studies to showcase customers as themselves or create similar characters prospects can relate to.
  • What emotions do people feel when they use your products or services? Do your customers feel confident, safe, happy, relieved, excited, satisfied, proud? Capture these emotions in the stories you tell.
  • What’s your product’s role? How does your product help your customers achieve success? Build your stories around the benefits of what you sell. Think about the story Tom told me as noted above.

So that’s my story for today and I’m sticking to it. What’s yours? Go out and create your own stories and “live happily ever after.”

The “Truth” about your company isn’t the Truth

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

I had a phone conversation with a prospective new client (I’ll name her Amelia) last week and during our talk, I mentioned having seen a cable TV ad that her company had run recently and was wondering if it had produced growth in sales inquiries or better yet, generated more sales.  Her response is something that I’ve heard more times than “Doan’s has pills.”

Amelia reported less-than-stellar performance, which didn’t really surprise me. But she fingered the blame on the media type…and not the marketing process or the message. The spot was flat-out boring and crammed with too many feature points. The message itself had no spark; the ad employed uninspiring, overused stock images that everyone has seen on other companies’ commercials; and while it had a lot of words attached to it, it said nothing.  I know you know the kind of ad. You see them every day in trade publications, direct mail, online and yes, even on TV.

When I politely asked her if maybe it wasn’t the media but the message, my suggestion was immediately dismissed as “no, no. that’s not it. Cable just doesn’t work.”  In this case it was TV but I’ve heard it for most every B2B and B2C media type there is. So I quoted to her legendary adman Bill Bernbach’s “golden rule”:  “The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.”

Now before I move on, please take another 15 seconds and read the above quote again and let it wash over you…it’s that important.

You see, what this timeless observation says applies to everything a marketing executive does in communicating a brand’s promise or a product’s sales message, and then needs to shine through like a huge Klieg light within your ads, your sales support material, your promotional initiatives, your tradeshow booth, your collateral and your website.

Taking the uninspired or predictable way out leads to self-inflicted mediocrity which we all know is like a communicable disease.  It starts with a so-so idea and coupled with a lack of interestingness and imagination, it infects every aspect of your marketing to the point that regardless of how and where you present the message, your current and prospective customers will not give it two seconds of thought as it passes by, only to become part of the background noise and clutter.

I’m not sure about you but one of the main reasons I decided that advertising and marketing was what I wanted to pursue as a profession was because I loved coming up with marketing ideas that would make people sit up and take notice in a sea of indifference.

If you want your marketing to actually change the trajectory of sales, if you want yourself to be seen as an idea person rather than a “fulfiller” of marketing stuff, then the status quo is not an option. You need to create new truths for your company that people believe in because you say things “imaginatively, originally, freshly.”  To do otherwise, especially in today’s economy, is unacceptable.

WHY AREN’T YOUR CUSTOMERS DRINKING YOUR KOOL-AID?

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s going to describe today’s economic marketplace as anything but temperamental.  The natural inclination is to take a defensive hunker-down mentality, downsize, and play it safe. The truth is, however, you should be looking at things (especially your customers) quite differently.

Most businesses look at their customers from the inside-out based on what they want to deliver. (In other words, you’ve created your own Kool-Aid and you’re drinking it, so your customers should too, right?)  But customers see any business from the opposite perspective, from the outside-in.

Let’s take these two views apart for a moment.

Inside-Out thinking begins by asking, “What are we good at? What are our capabilities and products? How can we use our resources more efficiently?” This thinking limits the company’s business opportunities because it means the company is less sensitive to how the customer is interfacing with the market. They’ve slipped into thinking it’s “all about us and what we sell.” Inside-Out companies are surprised by poor sales results.  They don’t feel threatened when a new competitor enters the market. They’re out of touch with what value they really bring – or don’t bring – to their customers, or what their customers think of them compared to competitors.  In short, their mindset is “Here are our products and services and this is how we help you.” The problem with this approach is that it relies on your customers having to work to find a place for your solutions in their lives.

Alternatively, companies that think Outside-In focus on the customers’ point-of-view.  They stand in the customer’s shoes and view everything the company does through the customer’s eyes. They depend on marketing to increase the conversation they have with their customers which in turn allows them to seize on business-building opportunities. They ask their customers what their upcoming needs are and then figure out how to give it to them. By shifting the focus so significantly, they open up a much broader set of opportunities. These companies don’t wait around for change to happen but rather they create change by seeing their world through their customers’ eyes, allowing them to more quickly meet the customers’ needs.

The first tablet PC's were designed based on the manufacturer's point-of-view; Apple's iPad was designed from the consumers'.

A perfect demonstration of the difference is tablet computing.  Tablets have been around for years, fundamentally as flat computers…in search of markets who need them.  Apple, on the other hand, looked at how consumers use the Internet, music, photos and video content, and came up with a convenient form factor that is, in essence, an Internet devise, not a computer.  The rest, as they say, is history.  That’s Outside-In thinking at its best.

So what’s this all mean? Well, fundamentally, if you’re not stepping out of your comfort zone and taking a hard, honest look at your business and its products through your customers’ (and non-customers’) eyes, you’re putting a lid on your growth.  If you’re not communicating to your customers on their terms, they simply won’t care. Having an Outside-In attitude ensures that your company delivers the value buyers actually understand and appreciate. Conversely, the old phrase “if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve been getting” has never been more true.

The only thing we have to fear…

Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be – John Wooden

Somehow, somewhere, our basic programming got all screwed up.  While throughout life, change is inevitable — in business, in our economy, in our relationships with others  —  we are fundamentally hard-wired by human nature to resist it.

For example, last week I spoke with the president and founder of a successful food manufacturer in Southern California. He told me about how his company was losing business for the past two years and that he was seeing the dark clouds building up on the horizon for his company and the employees he felt responsible for.  B2B and B2C sales were being eaten away by competitors.  And some key buyers insisted on margins he could not sustain. In short, his business was coming to a critical juncture and he knew that one primary reason was his lackluster, forgettable marketing efforts.  He then said something that still bothers me today: “I know of your company’s reputation and that making a change to your firm would probably be the right thing to do, but for too many reasons, I just can’t switch agencies or strategies at this time.”

While I’m not a psychologist, 25+ years in marketing has taught me that there are some primary causes for why business executives struggle with change. You can probably add another 10 causes yourself but here are my 5 “issue buckets” for resisting change.  See how many sound way too familiar.

5. The status quo is good enough…or “We’ve always done it this way and there’s no reason to change.” That’s not what one would call a rallying cry for success, yet it’s said day in and day out. Couple that with a poison called “being comfortable,” and you’ll unfortunately arrive at the intersection of “Irrelevance Blvd.” and “Vulnerable Ave.”  Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’. – Ronald Reagan

4. Not seeing the Marketplace as it really is. Without any real-world customer and competitive research, the marketplace can be seen in a very skewed manner;  in essence, believing one’s own BS!  Any recommended, alternative approach to what is taking place is ridiculed and discounted.

3. Change costs money.   In a bad economy, logic might suggest that the best thing to do is hunker down, put your arms around the money you’ve got, hold tight and wait it out.  Only here’s the truth: more companies have saved themselves into bankruptcy than spent themselves there.

2. It worked before.  Past success often drives and validates current behaviors. Unfortunately, though, what got you here won’t necessarily get you there because too many other things have changed, so those old formulas will no longer work.

1. Fear.  Since it’s never known for sure what will happen when one makes changes, the fear of change merely leads to inertia. But the truth is, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, one is sure to encounter untold damage unless there’s movement. (I supposed I could have said that a shark that doesn’t continue to move forward drowns, but that’s just too many animal metaphors!)

One needs to trust that through taking action and moving out of one’s own comfort zone, there’s an opportunity to grow, evolve, and possibly transform into something much greater.  My vote is to do something. Anything.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.   – Wayne Dyer

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. – Jim Rohn

— by Rolf Gutknecht,  Agent of Change

The two-second litmus test

Here’s an interesting way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing.  And you can do it in two seconds.  Simply ask this question: Does our advertising & marketing program make our competition nervous?  Or are they thinking, “this isn’t a problem for us!”?

I’ll cut right to the chase.  If they’re not nervous, you’re losing important ground.

Your single most important job as a marketer is to strike a chord in the marketplace and make people react…reshuffle their brain cells, if you will.  If you’re successful, it will certainly raise eyebrows at the competitors’ offices.  You know you’re winning when people at “the other guys” run around the office waiving your ad yelling “Did you see THIS!”

Watching the commercials during the Super Bowl, I can’t help but wonder how few competitors feel really threatened by what other advertisers spent millions to run. If you think about the four or five spots you actually remember (let alone the one or two whose products raised your interest), then imagine how much money was spent that changed nothing at all.

One of my favorite experiences came out of a campaign we created for Vivitar.  We boldly compared our client’s digital camera quality with four major competing brands, visually demonstrating the quality of each camera using the same subject.  Shortly after the campaign began, a letter arrived from the attorney of one of the other brands we featured demanding details on how we set up the shots.  Gladly, we sent them the documentation and that was the last we heard from them.  On the other hand, not surprisingly, sales of Vivitar cameras shot up.

More than once, I’ve had the joyous experience of actually listening to our clients’ competitors complaining about our clients’ campaigns (their not realizing that we created them in the first place).  It’s a lovely sound.

If your marketing  is really doing the job, your competition is saying things like “that’s not fair,” “this is making us look bad,” “we need to ramp up our own campaign,” and “why don’t WE do stuff like that!”

What kills a good marketing program is expectedness, complacency, just being good enough.  But if you think the competition is taking notice of your marketing efforts and they don’t like it, you’re on the right path and you dare not stray at your peril.

Take the two-second test and decide if those who covet your customers are saying bad things about you in their hallways, or are high-fiving themselves all the way to the bank at your expense.

Mad Libs Marketing. Or, “That’s your message? Really!?!?”

I’m sure you remember those wonderful fill-in-the-blanks books, “Mad Libs.”  You know, you just insert your own verb, noun or adjective in the blanks and see how silly the sentences come out.  Mad Libs are great for kids and fun at parties, but they have no place in expressing your marketing message.  Yet, as I look through the pages of ads in magazines, or surf companies on the web, I see all kinds of Mad Lib slogans and taglines, which are in effect condensed marketing messages:

  • A Global Leader in [ activity ].
  • Building tomorrow’s [ product ] today.
  • Putting [ people, needs or ideas ] first.
  • [ kind of people ] helping [ other kind or same kind of people ]

At the very least, many marketing messages are so generic, any competitor in the same industry could put their name in the space:

  • For funeral homes:  A tradition of caring since 1911. [ funeral home name goes here ]
  • For hospitals:  Compassionate healthcare. [ hospital name goes here ]
  • For banks:  We’re here to help.  [ bank name goes here ]

They don’t communicate anything unique about the marketer other than the category in which they operate, putting them at the same level as everyone else who provides a similar product or service.

By comparison, here are a few examples of taglines past and present that are truly distinctive and demonstrate a unique selling proposition:

  • The Ultimate Driving Machine
  • Think Different
  • The Uncola
  • It’s everywhere you want to be

If you’re in the former camp instead of the latter, it’s a perfect time to re-think what you have to say to prospective customers that gives your firm the edge.

As you begin looking forward to the new year, it’s worthwhile to look backwards to some of the strategies and tactics you’re bringing into 2012…starting with your basic marketing message.  Ask yourself, is our message so familiar, expected or generic that it could apply to any of our competitors?  Does it fully express our unique point of difference?  Is it fresh and “sticky”?

Without having a strong point of view and a distinctive message risks your customers seeing your products or service as a commodity, and they’ll be happy to shop your competitors when they think price is the only difference.

This may require a bit of corporate soul-searching, but it belongs on your marketing must-do list for 2012.  Otherwise, you’re just [ verb ]-ing your precious marketing dollars  [ preposition and place ].

by Dan Katz © 2012

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