A Vital Part of Any Start-Up's Marketing Strategy
The entrepreneurial road to success isn't paved with advertising. Don't waste your money on tv-, radio-, print- or even online ads, it's not the way to go. Too expensive and too likely to fail.
Instead, you have to be fundamentally different from all you competitors. But being different isn't enough, you have to be different in a way your niche market finds appealing and exciting; so exciting people just can't help but talk about it.
The benefit is obvious: free marketing done by people your potential customer's trust ten times more than any tv-ad. Really, think about it, when was the last time you trusted a tv-ad? Now, when was the last time you trusted a friend?
Companies on Trust-Steroids
Let's take a look at some companies who've all launched their way into success using this strategy of being fundamentally different in a highly appealing and exciting way to a small niche-market (at the beginning, at least):
The really good news here is: you actually don't have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money. The correlation between success and advertising-expenditure has been broken. All the companies in the storyslide above proves this, and they did so by being remarkable.
Being remarkable
Remarkable, as a marketing-term, was coined by Seth Godin in his book Purple Cow, and essentially means "worth making a remark about," to quote the author himself. You don't, however, get to decide whether you and your product is worth making a remark about, it's up to your customers to decide. Basically you have to let loose of some control. (Luckily for you, this isn't - and probably never was - an option as much as something you just need to know, a rule of the game).
Your job is to create a product so surprising, elegant, simple, effective, high-end, functional, fun or cool, people can't ignore it. Whatever you choose, go all they way and refuse any compromise.
You have to be absolutely outrageous. Don't simplify something by 10%, or even 20%, go all they way and simplify it by 1,000%. This of course doesn't just go for 'simple', but for 'surprising, elegant, effective, high-end, functional, fun and cool' as well. Some of these seem contradicting, and that's because they are. Simple and functional doesn't necessarily go hand in hand, as more functionality often means more features leading to more complexity. And that's the entire point of it. Either do 10 times more than everyone else or 100 times less. It really doesn't matter, as long as you're on the edge, doing the opposite of the mainstream market.
People rarely talk about average-Joe's life, and they most certainly never talk about average products. Average products are simply too boring. Just see how the 7 companies from the storyslide earlier in this article makes something worth talking about:
- When Starbucks launched they had a remarkably friendly staff and "second home atmosphere" like no other café.
- iPod isn't much when you compare the pure technical specifications with other mp3-players, but the fantastic design, easy user interface and integration with the iTunes music store, makes it worth talking about.
- Flying is typically dull and annoying, so when Southwest Airlines has service with great humor it's remarkable.
- Google has been on everybody's lips since it launched because it is among the most simple websites on the entire web despite the extremely advanced technology running behind the curtains.
- When American Idol launched, Simon Cowell's honest/vicious remarks were so outrageous they were remarkable, and often the hot topic at the watercooler the next day (not to mention the tabloids).
- When seeing a Blendtec's blender literally crush a rake (or iPhone or Chuck Norris action figure) into dust you just have to tell your friends.
- When using Skype to make free phone calls to anyone, anywhere in the world, you just can't help but invite your friends to use it as well.
How to be remarkable
To be remarkable you'll need some creativity, but a good way to get going is to find an element nobody else in you industry focuses on, here's a few examples:
- Humor - as Southwest Airlines does.
- Design - as Apple did when everybody else in the mp3-player industry only focused on technical specifications.
- Simplicity - Google's interface had 3 links when they launched back in 2002, Yahoo! had more than 200.
- Size - as the small Mini Cooper or the largest burger in town.
- Packaging - Tiffany's blue box.
- Service - as nobody is doing (read: irony).
- Eco - as Al Gore is doing.
- Experience - as Disney is doing.
- Go straight to the edge. As we talked about earlier this mean doing 10 times more than everyone else in the market, or a 100 times less. This more or less should appeal strongly to a small niche, not necessarily everyone.
- Implement it in everything you do. If you choose the humor element and create a product and website with humor, but your packaging looks and read like it contains an IBM computer, you would deliver an inconsistent message and end up looking silly instead of being remarkable. So implement your remarkable element in everything you do.
On a final note, it's worth noticing this strategy represents a new mind-set about what marketing is and should be: marketing isn't something you wrap around your final product. It is the product.
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