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Differentiate or Die!

By: J. Craig Mecham

You Need to Find Your Unique Selling Position (USP) in order to Reach Your Greatest Success. I'm sure you don't mean it, but you may be confusing customers with your advertising. Your customers have so many choices in almost every product classification. When they're shopping for a service or product its normal for them to have even thousands of alternatives.

Think I'm crazy? Just search the Internet for everyday products and look at the number of search results. It's possible to have alternatives in the millions.

That's a good thing right? Sure . . . if you're the consumer. What about all of us marketing professionals who come to work everyday and try to find better ways of selling? How do we survive in such a world?

Your Advertising Needs to Set You Apart or You've Failed. The number one job of your advertising is to show your customer that you're NOT the same as everyone else. While working with a small business client the other day, we looked in the yellow pages for her business and saw an excellent example of how advertising should never be done.

We found pages and pages of ads--all so much the same that you could literally substitute one company name for another and not have to change the ads at all!

My client was depressed over this, but I was energized! Why? This was a great opportunity for her to differentiate her business. Whoever differentiates wins the battle for business!

When there's no obvious difference, your customers will decide based on who has the best price. When customers are faced with hundreds of choices but dont see any difference between one business and another, what happens? The only thing they can compare is price, so that's how they make their choice. If your differences arent clear, price will be the deciding factor for your customers. That's not the ideal thing for you and your business. And it's not that good for your customer either--especially if the value of your business is best appreciated through a long-term relationship with your customer. Customers who come to you because you have the best price will go to your competitors as soon as they find one with a better price. What if you're the fastest gun in the West? But no matter how fast you are, there will always someone faster. That's not a long-term game. It's better and smarter to differentiate.

If you can differentiate yourself, you can charge higher prices. Companies who can communicate their important differences to their customers can justify charging higher prices. The cheapest product or service does not always win the business. Consider this. No one will buy the cheapest product or service every time. Even if you're a world class tightwad, you can differentiate between bruised and fresh produce. You'll pay a higher price for the non-bruised produce. Certainly!

Are your customers any different? No. Certainly, you must have a reasonable price, but if you have highlighted an important difference in your product or service, customers will pay extra to have that benefit.

One of the most important paths to increased sales, more satisfied customers and better profits is to find the important point which makes your business different from your competitors. Then be sure to make that obvious in your advertising.

Article Source: http://www.simplepetcare.com/pet-articles

The author, Craig Mecham, is the owner of The Mecham Company The Mecham Company, a marketing consulting firm. With 25 years experience in Business to Business Marketing and communications, Mr. Mecham counsels with national and international business.
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