I was speaking with a marketing pro a few days ago and he was talking about the onboarding questions he asks potential new clients.
A lot of it was pretty standard but one of his questions stood out to me: “What bold claim can your business make?”
It’s not an easy question and I suspect a lot of business owners would have a hard time coming up with something that didn’t sound generic or trite and basically the opposite of a truly bold claim.
I started thinking about what kind of claims I could attribute to any company and what came to mind were in fact businesses that are unique and memorable and also very successful and huge.
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For example, here are some of the ideas that popped into my head:
- Coke: the world’s favorite soda for over 150 years
- Microsoft: powering the world’s business computers for over 40 years
- Nike: putting shoes on some of the most legendary athletes in any sport
- Ferrari: synonymous with fast good looking luxury sports car
- Costco: surprisingly good quality in bulk at value prices
These companies may not have started out to be in the position they are in but they got there because they could make bold claims and back them up with action in a way that customers appreciated and kept coming back over and over.
There are certainly smaller businesses that can also make bold claims and stand out in their fields as unique and memorable for the value they deliver and the loyalty they instill in customers but we wouldn’t all know the names.
The more important question for the rest of us as business owners is what are we doing that would let us make a bold claim about our place in the world?
It’s not an easy question to answer and often it’s not something we’ve really thought about. We assume that doing a good job in our chosen business should be enough to make us reasonably successful. And we may do OK with just that- many do.
The problem comes when new competition arrives, or factors beyond our control drive prices up, or the economy slows down and people are willing to spend less. In these cases, it’s the most memorable, most compelling and most valuable companies that will still do well and the ones that are just OK that will have a much harder time.
So how do you make your business into one that people don’t want to cut out even if you’re not the cheapest or the closest or the one with the biggest ad budget?
The answer is different for each business but it’s definitely worth thinking about. What can you do to position yourself to be bold and move to the top of mind for your specific type of customers?
Don’t think it has to be something expensive or grandiose. Very often it’s the little extras that people notice and remember and these are the kinds of things small businesses can do easily that bigger ones struggle with.
I don’t have an exact answer for you to use but I do think it’s worth thinking about and if you can come up with a good answer, and then live up to that claim, you will find yourself moving up the rankings of businesses in your space and reaping the rewards of customer loyalty, great word of mouth and the ability to attract and keep customers even if you are charging a premium.
This is where you want to be- you just have to decide to get there!