Page 46 - Duct Tape Marketing

Discover Your Core Marketing Message

—and that’s the point. If you could create and communicate a guar-
antee that nobody in your industry would even consider, you would
automatically have two very powerful things going for you: a core
marketing message that would differentiate you from your competi-
tion, and a forced focus on delivering excellence and winning loyal,
repeat customers. What else?

 An astonishing guarantee turns heads—“Try our service for
ninety days, and if we don’t perform exactly as promised, we
will double your money back.”

 An astonishing guarantee generates buzz—“They promised
what?”

 An astonishing guarantee creates a mission—“Okay, troops,
there’s only one job: making happy clients. What needs fixing?”

What could you promise that no one else would dream
of? That’s the start of an astonishing guarantee. Let’s look at a
number of starting of points:

 Product—Can you offer a product that is so unique, or even
trendy, that your business is associated with that offering? Or
can you extend a product and offer a valuable service to make
the product more useful to the customer?

 Service—Same goes for a service. Many times this can
be the packaging of a service as a product. Consulting is
often delivered on an hourly basis. Packaging a consulting
engagement based on an outcome, with defined deliverables
and fixed package price, is a very effective way to differentiate
a service offering. Don’t forget to give the service a powerful
name!

 Market niche—Carve out an industry or two and become
the most dominant player serving that industry. A really nice

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