4 unique ways to market your company

There are plenty of guides, books, articles, and directions as to formulas for effective advertising. Donald Gunn narrowed it down to 12 back in 1978, Suzanne Pope, 11 or so over at Ihaveanidea. I want take 4 directions that may or may not be labeled exactly as to the two lists I mentioned, and give examples of how you can use them, whether that be in networking, marketing, or face-to-face with your customers.

Stories

It’s not a matter of writing stories, but creating them. FedEx is known for their fly through a blizzard to ensure their package arrived on time story; a timeless classic in every b-school. A more recent one got to me and is an even better example from a customer’s perspective:

“One bright, extraordinary note in all of the sad stuff of the last few weeks - in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. Continue reading…

Please do continue reading that tale of a Zappos experience, and tell me you don’t now associate positive emotions with the company.

Exaggeration

One of the most commonly used executions in advertising, exaggerating the benefit of a feature of your product/service, is an easy way to get your point across. So easy, that it’s often the first thought that comes to mind for most people, and results in the majority of the predictable ads you see each day. So be careful with this approach.

An example of how not to exaggerate, from Luke Sullivan:

“Say you’re doing an ad for, oh, a water heater. The Exagerration chip’s first 100 ideas will be knee-jerk scenarios about how cold the water will be if you don’t buy this water heater: “Water heater? Easy. What you do is, like, you have ice cubes comin’ out of the water faucet. See? ‘Cause it’s so cold the water faucet will have like ice cubes, see? Ice cubes . . . ‘ cause they’re cold.”

If you’re able to get by those “Our service is so fast. How fast is it? It’s as fast as….” thoughts, exaggeration can still work for you.

Take for example, the image you see above with the different feet. Any idea what product it’s for? Push-up Bras from Valisere lingerie. See, exaggeration can work. :)

Metaphors and Analogies

Say you’re company that sells security for online businesses. Your primary product is SSL certificates. Here’s an easy analogy off the top of my head to share with potential customers:

“You own a business. You’ve put years and years of work into developing your company, building your team, and expanding your warehouse to the size it is today.

At the end of each day, you pack up, punch out, and head home. But you ensure you don’t forget to open every door and window, hit the switch on the “Welcome, take whatever you wish” neon sign out front, and put a step stool in front of all your filling cabinets so the guests can easily reach and pick through your customer’s contact, credit, and order info.

Thousands of online retailers already do that. But it’s not just after 5 o’clock. It’s each and every hour of each and every day.

While many of us may be naive to the underworkings of online commerce, it’s still our responsibility to not stand on the corner and hand out our company’s and our client’s private information.

What we do is remove that welcome mat and replace it with impenetrable steel walls, an around the clock staff of security surrounding your business, heck, even a moat!

While $500 a year may sound like a hefty expense, it’s not. It’s an investment in security. While you may have seen some people offer SSL certificates for pocket change, you have to remember you get what you pay for. With them, you get a badge (aka sticker on your window) that’s supposed to scare off thieves. With us, you get the equivalent of Fort Knox in internet security.”

If you need a quick sales point, that last line could work great. With the cheaper competition you get a sticker on your company’s window. With us, you get Fort Knox. Labeling yourself as the Fort Knox of internet security could branch out to thousands of different executions.

Association and Comparison

Side-by-side comparisons have been used for centuries, and will be for many more to come. Unfortunately, great examples of effective comparisons are few and far between. One the most recent remarkable executions has to be the PC versus Mac ads. An iconic campaign that reached the imitation threshold (positive of course). Even though it’s an advertisement, the good versus bad, or cool versus lame comparison can be used with your company in any facet of communication.

You can also associate your company/brand with much larger ones by comparing the two. Avis did this by labeling themselves as number 2, while they were nowhere near that position. As a small company, positioning yourself as second to a conglomerate can be risky, but as long as you live up to the expectations, you can leapfrog from nothing to something.

So there you go. I could spend weeks researching each direction and finding dozens of examples, but frankly, I don’t have the time, and only wanted to get you thinking. Hopefully i did. :)