Page 44 - Duct Tape Marketing

Discover Your Core Marketing Message

often in the mind of the market, one accountant is like another, one
electrician like another, one auto repair shop identical to the next. It
doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not, unless you are willing to do
something about it.

The problem with residing in the commodity business is that
if your prospects can’t identify some specific way in which your
firm is unique, they will default to the only thing they can measure
—price.

Offering to simply exchange what you sell for a set price in return
is one of the weakest marketing offers you can create. Price, as I sus-
pect you’ve learned, is a terrible place to compete. There will always be
someone willing to go out of business faster than you.

Find something that separates you from your competition; become
it and speak it to everyone you meet. Quality isn’t it; good service isn’t
it; fair pricing—not it. These are all expectations. The difference needs
to be in the way you do business, how you package your product, the
way you sell your service, the fact that you send cookies to your clients,
your ability to show people how to transform their lives—it’s in the
experience you provide.

The Core Message Process

As you will learn in this chapter, capturing your unique difference and
communicating it in a powerful manner is a multistep process.

Here’s the path we are going to take:

 Discover, capture, and commit to a unique position.
 Create a marketing purpose statement.
 Turn your purpose statement into a talking logo.
 Craft a simple core message to use in all of your marketing.

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