Increasing the impact of your marketing, isn't all about marketing. Strange concept I know. But the truth is that your marketing impact comes through based upon what your selling more so than how you're selling it.
It starts before you even begin writing copy. Let me explain what I mean.
Let's talk about your "sweet spot."
Some of you might already know what I mean by "sweet spot" - it's the point where your strengths, your passions, your talents, your experiences all come together. It's the intersection that allows you to provide something of unique value to your market place. And that translates into competitive advantage.
I've always stressed operating from your "sweet spot" in my Business Growth System coaching program. But more often than not, the question comes up about whether that's the only approach to take.
The truth is that it's not the only approach. It is , however, the preferred approach, but not necessarily the only approach.
Let me explain.
Conceptual Marketing And Your Sweet Spot
When you are able to find your sweet spot, it makes marketing a much easier task.
You can break marketing up into several different levels. (We'll save that conversation for another time.) The highest level of marketing is what I call the conceptual level - helping your prospects believe that there is something special about what you offer that they cannot get from others.
That's a much easier task to accomplish when you actually offer something that is uniquely valuable. (Like operating from your "sweet spot.") It lowers the bar in terms of how good of a conceptual marketer you need to be.
But, let's say that you've tried to find your sweet spot - it's been months - and you just can't nail where you are wired to provide unique value. (Even though my belief and experience tells me that everyone has a place where they can provide unique value.)
If you can't, one option is to fall back on a passion.
Now the challenge with falling back on a passion is it raises the bar significantly on the need to be very good at conceptual marketing.
For example, let's say I believe that I could be successful in the self-help niche. It is a passion of mine. But let's say I didn't have something uniquely valuable to offer. I could still be successful because one of my strengths is being able to market concepts - like the difference between opportunity seeking and being a strategic entrepreneur; the difference between working on your constraints versus working on your potential.
However, if you're not great at that kind of marketing, it's much more difficult to build a successful business that will withstand the test of time on something that is not uniquely valuable.
So What's Your Choice?
Well, first choice is always to do enough personal reflection, introspection and discovery to see where that place is for you that you can provide unique value. If you can't nail that, then it's going to require you to master the concepts of selling an idea.
It's something that I do, but for me it's more instinctive. I don't believe it's something you get in most copywriting courses. Because while courses will teach you fundamentals like structure, offers and the like, I've ever come across one that teaches how to reframe, or "spin," the marketing discussion. That's really what makes the difference at the conceptual level.
Just a side note, this whole article came about from the next Founders Club report I'm just finishing up. It's covers a topic that is absolutely fundamental to your marketing. About understanding the very core of your market that will let you frame your message in just the right way.
But I wanted to mention that idea here in the newsletter to give you some clarity about understanding why something of unique value is so important.
The World Keeps Getting Smaller
It's really an important concept to understand. Why? Because today the internet gives you such tremendous reach - something that the biggest multi-national companies spent fortunes to acquire only a decade ago. And with that reach you have the potential to grow your business extremely fast and to grow it extremely big.
But it also creates a more competitive marketplace than ever before - one that's only getting bigger over time because entrepreneurs the world over going are after that same global audience.
That means to have a competitive advantage, it's not only useful, it's necessary to have some way to distinguish yourself from your competitors over the short-term and the long-term. You consistently have to provide value. If you don't, you'll only get the first sale and most money is made in future sales.
You have to be able to make yourself unique, distinctive, different. I wrote about that in my report the Attention Age Doctrine II. I've said different trumps being better because different is more obvious. Better is only valuable if you're able to market it better.
So I hope that gives you some clarity about competitive advantage as it relates to you; your journey to have a successful business; and your point of difference to create the business that you've always wanted.
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