Q: I want my business to stand out from the crowd but A) I don't have any experience with this, and B) I am not made of money. What Should I do?
Margaret
A: Your question reminded me of a radio commercial I heard last week. In it, we heard this horrible, memorable for the wrong reasons, teeth-grinding noise. The announcer then came on (as the annoying noise continued) and said essentially, that we will have to keep listening to this terrible sound until we bought some sort of mouth protection they were selling. I changed the station the next time that commercial came on.
Of course, the person who made the ad tried to stand out from the crowd, but went about it all wrong. It was a lesson in what not to do, not what to do. Holding your customers hostage is a strange way to make a sale.
But they were on the right track. Because we are all so bombarded with advertising and marketing these days, it is indeed hard to stand out, but imperative that we do. The question is, how?
Do the unexpected.
The expected is boring. The expected is tuned out. The expected is, well, expected.
But the unexpected, now that's the ticket!
Recall last year's Super Bowl.GoDaddy.com placed an ad costing $5 million in which a bosomy woman who was speaking before a committee holding "broadcast censorship hearings" started to have her own wardrobe malfunction. Fox Broadcasting killed the second airing of the crude ad, viewers said that they didn't really like it, but guess what? 2.6 million people went to GoDaddy.com thereafter to watch the ad, and GoDaddy sales went through the roof, more than doubling in a year. No wonder Ad Age called the ad "an over-the-top hit."
Why was that? I submit that after the previous year's fiasco with Janet Jackson, the last thing anyone expected was an ad that parodied that event. Thus the GoDaddy ad was unexpected. Here's a lesson from GoDaddy president Bob Parson: "To grab a consumer's attention," he told Entrepreneur, "you have to polarize them."
The unexpected need not cost a fortune and it does not even have to be an ad. But it must be unexpected to be memorable:
I dislike the term "think outside the box" because it has become a clichÇ; it is itself in the box. Better: Have a brainstorming session and come up with 5 ways to catch people by surprise with your business. The great thing about going the unexpected route is that it gives you the freedom to try out some new kooky ideas.
The bottom line is that if you want to stand out from the crowd, remember the old line - dog bites man isn't a story, but man bites dog is. Why? You know why, and you didn't have to grind you teeth to figure it out.
Today's tip: Have a hard time closing a sale? According to Brian Tracy, one of the world's great salesmen, the important thing at the end of a sales call is to ask the potential customer to take action. Your job is to ask for the sale, so ask. "Why don't you try it and see?" is a good question to ask at the end of the sales call. Why don't you try it and see?