Are You Sure About Your USP?
In your marketing, do you stress your deep expertise or your terrific customer service? How do you know these are really your company’s biggest selling points? Do they really make your company unique? Or do they just sound like something you should be saying? Marketers like to talk a lot about the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The problem is that not enough companies understand what makes them unique. I used to ask new clients what they saw as their USP…but I’ve stopped, because I was often dissatisfied with the answers. It’s just too easy to rely on a shallow USP, which isn’t...
read moreWhy Is Strategic Planning So Important in Marketing?
It seems these days I’m always strapped for time. Do you feel that way too? I swear there are always a million things on my to-do list, some of them urgent, some merely important. Ha. I try hard to make the best use of my time. I can’t afford to mess around with activities that won’t bring me a certain amount of return. And that’s why, for each activity I do, I try to know precisely what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I try to think strategically about it. I’m not interested in guessing or hoping that a strategy will work, either. I want to know it...
read moreThree Reasons Why You Should Love Junk Mail
I was starting to write an article for this newsletter about benefits versus features, when I realized I needed some good examples to demonstrate my point. I turned to my “swipe” file to pull out marketing materials that I’ve saved over the years, when it occurred to me… Does everyone have a swipe file? Because you should. What is a swipe file? Brochures, postcards, flyers, direct (aka “junk”) mail, even email spam all go into my swipe file. It’s nothing fancy, just a plain accordion file, and it takes very little time to maintain. Read the piece then throw it in the file to...
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