Integrated Search Marketing takes into account that no two businesses face the exact same challenges or limitations, have the same resources, know-how or advantages. As a result, this requires a unique solution to every company’s marketing challenges.
Your business is no different.
If you disagree, you’re basically saying that you consider you business no different than your competitors.
How do you copy your competitors? Do you…
- Approach your sales calls the same way?
- Talk about your products or service using the same terminology?
- Watch and mimic how competitors market or advertise, assuming if they do it, it must be working?
- Pile on claims like “years in business”, “family-owned”, “skilled”, “trained”, “licensed”, “certified” and others in the attempt to give your prospects more “reasons” to choose you?
What business can’t come up with some variation of that last one? Just about every serious competitor who’s really a competitor.
Sure, some similarities are unavoidable, but in many, if not most cases, you need to be considered equal before you can be considered better. This is part of your scale customer awareness which we’ll come in another post.
But you must be very aware of where to draw the line, otherwise you end up confusing your prospects who end up thinking, “This company says they are better and different, but they make pretty much the same claims as my alternatives. What’s up with that?
Hopefully you realize that this is not a good approach to standing out as the best choice in your marketplace.
You even face different competitive challenges than your competitors – unless, again, your business isn’t really that different than theirs. You’re all facing the same general challenges from each other, but when you pull your business out of the mix, your competitors are who’s left.
Some of your competitors are more challenging than others. You might or might not pose much of a threat to your biggest competitors, but they may be rolling right over you. Maybe your biggest competitor isn’t worried about you, but they are about another company.
And don’t even get us started about digging into the actual staff your staff is competing with at your competitors. The level of competitive marketing aggression and passion you have for your business is a big part of why and how you get it to be where you want it to be. A lot of businesses like yours will never think to do some of the things that could give you an edge.
So you have to make up your mind. Do you want to blend in or stand out?
To truly differentiate you need to embrace the subtle and not so subtle, obvious and even grandiose nuances (if anything grandiose can be nuanced) of what makes your business special. If you don’t have any of these elements identified, tested applied or even just considered, they need to be created, not falsely, but as real and impactful aspects of your brand.
With Integrated Search Marketing solutions, the approach we take focuses on (or if needed, helps you define) what makes your business different, better and per-eminent. We combine that with a very specific marketing and advertising strategy increases your high-quality leads and sales while reducing acquisition costs and shortening your contact-to-sale timeline.
The goal is first and foremost, to get you more new customers faster and more often than whatever you are doing now. Just make sure you can handle a steady flow of more of your best customers.