Market Differentiators: product = service

Here’s a new tip on market differentiators.

First, we’ve explained this before, but let’s review what a market differentiator is. It’s some specific action you take that sets you apart from the competition. Don’t imagine “corporate-like sales talk here”. We don’t mean you’re reliable, honest, fair, fast, affordable, or any number of other adjectives. Everyone says those things. Have you ever met a competitor who tells clients he’s unreliable, dishonest, unfair, slow, expensive, etc? All the adjectives are not differentiators. They make you sound like everyone else. They’re same-inators.  Sounding like someone else who marketed like that is some people’s idea of marketing, which is why we can all pop off with those things in our sleep – we’ve heard them a million times. Everyone says them. And no one’s listening anymore. Back when marketing was born, you just didn’t have to work that hard at it. If you said “I’m reliable” people went “wow, ok then”. But after everyone started saying it, from your insurance agent to your landscaper, it became marketing-ese, not marketing.  Market differentiators are verbs. They’re the things you *do* (verb, action, activity) that are tangibly different. If you say “we deliver reliable reports” (gong! thanks for playing anyway – you just sneaked in another adjective). No, you need to actually do something differently in a sea of sameness. If you aren’t doing anything differently, that’s your very first marketing task.

OK, now the tip. Service = Product, Product = Service. When you’re creating market differentiators (remember, these are verbs), turn a service into a product, and a product into a service:

• If you offer a service like report writing, or contract selling, or brokering a deal, bend it a little toward being a product, a tangible, a deliverable. You might include extra visual aids, you might offer a free course with your service, or you might deliver backup documents on a thumb drive, or offer free backups of related documentation for a period of time (that’s adding an additional unusual service to a normal service – that’s great, too). These are just some examples. The idea is to add value.
• If you offer a product like cosmetics, classic automobile body parts, or used books, include a service-oriented extra action or activity when people buy your products. Examples: ship free if you pay with direct bank draft instead of credit card (you save money and pass it on to your clients, and you set yourself apart). We won’t spend a lot of time here talking about monetary perks – there are lots of ways to do those, and that’s what consulting’s for (call us for an appointment). Something different: when you buy parts from us, we pre-etch them, before we ship, with the number of your choice, in case your ride is ever stolen. You see what we’re aiming at. Do things differently. Add value that the other guys won’t.

One more example – this is adding a product to a product, which is also nice: The local coffee shop I go to makes blueberry pie. So do a lot of people. So what? These guys make home-made blueberry pie. There’s an adjective for you – “home-made”. Again, so what? When Olive Garden can toss out that word “home-made” it doesn’t mean much anymore. Here’s what they do differently. Most “home-made” pies use a shortcut like canned pie filling or a pre-made crust. The pie filling is especially common. These guys don’t do it that way. They put fresh blueberries in a pressure cooker and they make the pie filling. Then they make the pie out of the pie filling. That’s a tangible, verb-based, “we *do* this differently” difference. It’s a market differentiator. Actually, for them it’s not, because they don’t tell anyone this. If they put it on their web site, NOW it’s a market differentiator. You get the drift.

Anyway, product=service, service=product…. or add a service to a service, add a product to a product. It’s a great way to think of adding value – by actually adding something. That’s it. That’s a tip that works for us, and we think it can work in your marketing.

More free advice from Market Moose internet marketing. We think about this stuff all the time, because someone needs to.

Decision

alamode Mortgage XSite

Niche site targeted at legislation change. Giveaway. 2-minute application. Sales sheet style/colors. Decision driven sales site. Linear and table layout.

Content

alamode Mortgage XSite

Content-driven theme. Linear layout. Lead capture on home page for instant response. Navigation follows logo semi-circle theme. Matching colors. Animated flash custom header. Lots of ancillary content (very high SEO value).

Zeka

Sleek, ultra-professional, black on glass style. Affiliate branding. Core marketing content on home page.

Utah

alamode Mortgage XSite

Multiple locations. Highly personalized by professional. Prominent market differentiators. Prominent buying information. Focus on content (SEO) and marketing.

Waterwood

alamode Mortgage XSite

Portal landing page – directs to two different content areas (e.g. commercial & residential). Flyout menus. Affliate logo. Content-driven (SEO).

Orange Blog

alamode Mortgage XSite

Arresting color (search visitor memory). Blog content.

RMS

alamode Mortgage XSite

Content-driven (SEO). Linear layout. Ring of navigation and tools around central content. Colors matched to logo.

Video: Web 2.0 Internet Marketing

In this video, Daniel DiGriz explains Web 2.0 internet marketing. Touching on social media, blogging, and how business sites remain competitive in a Web 2.0 environment, Daniel presents the information clearly and concisely.

Hi. My name is Daniel DiGriz. I’m president of Market Moose Internet Marketing. I’d like to talk for a minute about the new social marketing or the new Internet marketing versus the old-fashioned marketing that we’re all used to. I think it’s best that we talk a little bit about what has changed.

In the past, marketing and advertising were largely confused. Marketing was something that you did to try to bring people in to try to buy the product or the service that you were offering. Now, of course, we all want that. If we’re running a small business or a medium-sized business, that’s ultimately our bottom line or our goal. But the way that we go about it has really had to change.

Just take Twitter and Facebook, for instance. Twitter and Facebook are now burgeoning sources of business revenue for small and medium businesses, as is social media in general. But it doesn’t work by simply going in and spamming everyone. We’ve all been through the era when small businesses came out on the Web, and we started filling up our inboxes with spam. We have developed pretty sophisticated ways to ignore that stuff. Facebook and Twitter are much the same way. If you want to alienate Facebook and Twitter audiences, just keep posting over and over how much you’d like their business, what your prices are, and “please buy my services today.” That just doesn’t work.

So, what’s effective in social media and in Internet marketing? In social media, what’s effective is giving away value or adding value at no charge. Believe it or not, it’s counter-intuitive. Instead of charging for your information, your insight, your analysis, your understanding, and your expertise, you give it away. The difference between that and advertising is that this new marketing allows you to build a tribe, an audience, a group of people that stay within your orbit. You sort of earn the right to attract that business. You earn the status of resident expert in these venues. You draw clientele off of that.

Let me give you an example from traditional marketing. In the old days, we all probably knew some individual in our lives who was “the friendliest person that you ever met.” No one had a bad thing to say about them. Oftentimes, he or she was an insurance agent. I always knew an insurance agent in every town in which I’ve lived that was just wonderful with people. This person shook your hand, brought you soup when you were sick, called you on holidays and sent you cards. The person usually didn’t have a hard sell. They didn’t go around saying, “I really need you to sign up for a policy. Don’t you want to sign here? Please buy my stuff.” Instead, they achieved the status of the person that everyone likes, the person with expertise. So, when we felt that we needed to protect our families better, who do you think that we turned to? Do you think that those guys really had trouble getting clients and growing their businesses? The answer is no. Well, that hasn’t changed a lot. It’s just changed venues.

So, again, marketing is not advertising. Marketing, in some ways, is what it always has been. It’s just that a lot of professional marketers were engaged in advertising, and so, sometimes we think that’s what it is.

Now, marketing has been returned to the hands of you and me and the ordinary small business person in venues like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. A lot people think, “Gee, I’m a small business – do I really need a blog?” Of course you do. You need a blog because part of adding value to your community is giving back your information, sharing your insight, providing answers to commonly asked questions, clarifying and correcting frequent misconceptions, talking about little-used services that actually benefit the public and why they’re there, but not necessarily constantly badgering people with a price sheet and an invitation to buy.

Make your presence known by contributing something to the community. You’ll build your tribe. You’ll grow your orbit. Your business will grow, and you’ll attract clients. Keep in mind that that is the new marketing. That’s the meaning, really, behind Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and all of the new social media. After that, it’s just about finding your own particular direction for growing your brand.

This is Daniel DiGriz, Market Moose Internet Marketing. Hope to hear from you soon. Have a great day!