What makes your product different?

Here's a question:   

"Why do I need what you sell?"

And another:

"Why should I buy it from you, and not someone else?"

When we start posing such questions about our own company we are starting the long journey that ends with a deeper understanding of exactly how others see us.  It is a journey that is utterly vital if we are to help you maximise your potential in terms of sales and marketing.

What we find is that most firms have got only hazy answers to such questions as those posed above, answers which often centre around the fact that the customer should buy because you are the best, that you are nice helpful people who are easy to deal with, you are cheaper than others, and that you give a better service than others etc.

Such answers may be true - but they are incredibly hard to put across in advertising because everyone else claims them as their own as well.  Of course they may well be lying, and you may well  be cheaper, easier to deal with, nicer people and so on.  But how is the customer going to know that?

So what we need to do is ask questions that will help everyone come up with some unique propositions that will become central to all your advertising and marketing.

And this leads to our simple experiment.

Firstly you need to answer those two questions above.   You can either do this, and the rest of the experiment on your own, or you can do it live with me on the phone.  Call 01536 399 000 and ask for Tony Attwood during normal office hours.  If I am unfortunately not in (for example when the Arsenal are playing, or there is a Bob Dylan concert in the neighbourhood) one of my esteemed colleagues will be pleased to take the call.

Then you need to look at your answer and ask yourself this:

Is it likely that other companies will give these answers too. 

Assuming that among your rivals there are one or two no-good charlatans who will tell any story if it helps get a sale - are they saying this sort of thing?

If you are not sure, get hold of their brochures and other literature.  Look on their website.  What is their main selling point?

In case this is getting a little unclear, I will give an example from Hamilton House Mailings plc.  Quite often people ask questions such as "why should I buy mailing services from you?".

Our answer is "you will get higher response rates from us".  Whereas  the answer of our rivals is that they are cheaper than we are.

Which is nice and neat - they can have the cheap side of the market and we have the higher response rate side.  Of course I don't mean that they will agree that we get higher response rates, but rather I mean that their opening line, on being asked why they are the best, is that they are cheap.  And for some firms who buy such services that is enough - all they ever look for is cheapness.  Find a company £100 cheaper than HHM and they are happy.   

But for others there is a second element. They know they could save £100 elsewhere, but they also suspect they will get £500 more sales by coming with us, so they don't save the money, they go for the higher response 

That then is our product analysis and our competitor analysis.  Now it is your turn.

But what if you really don't know about yourselves and how you are seen by potential customers.  If you wish you can work out a solution on your own - or you can engage Hamilton House to do it.  We can work with you to find your unique approaches and we can do the research to find out what your rivals are up to.  (We can even order some products from them to see if they really do turn up by return of post in excellent condition, to find out if their approach really is one of being thoroughly helpful and nice etc etc).

And then we can take you onto the final step of the journey.  Finding a unique approach to your advertising which has not been used by your rivals and which immediately marks you out as different. This is not the same as the message - this is all about how your customers and potential customers see you.  

For a free without obligation discussion on the whole area, please call 01536 399 000.