Your product is boring and your marketing is boring and you wonder why nobody is talking about your business! So what the heck are you doing to make yourself remarkable?
Slightly different won’t get it. Slightly cheaper won’t get it. You have to be outrageously different and so does your marketing.
I ramble through a lot of websites on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter if you are a planner, a photographer or a florist. Almost all of the websites look alike. When it really gets me is when I am starting work for a new web design client and I ask them to send me a few sites they like. They all look alike. Why are you all so committed to looking just like everyone else? Is it safe or are all you really just like everybody else? You are part of the creative class; you create for your clients every day. Why can’t you create for yourself?
Sorry if all that sounds harsh, but I want you to set yourself apart. I want you to be remarkable! Make this the year that your competitors question your sanity. Be different, be amazing, and discover your brilliance, your uniqueness, your personal flamboyance!
As you know, over the last year I have been emphasizing the web design part of my business. As a result I have had to do what I am asking you to do: really figure out what it is that makes me remarkable. Web design is a very crowded field. I have to be remarkable to stand out. Just tweeting or working Facebook isn’t going to do it. Everybody is doing that. I have to do what I have been telling you to do: find out why the clients that love me love me and then exploit it!
So what are you going to do? What is it that you do differently? Please don’t tell me that it is something as boring as that you prepare Excel spreadsheets for your clients. Please! We are thinking REMARKABLE here folks.
I could tell people that I build pretty sites that have remarkable SEO. Nope, not remarkable enough. I sell my work based on the fact that I can teach anybody, ANYBODY how to manage one of my sites themselves. Boom, Done! Buy your site, I stick around as your tutor, no more paying someone else to do your updates. Now people think I am crazy not to charge for all the support after the fact; but you know what, I have some of the loyalist client evangelists in the world. That IS my marketing!
What makes you remarkable? I can’t answer that question for you. You have to do the soul searching needed to find it out for yourself. If you can’t come up with anything then you had better start thinking why not? If there is nothing you do that is truly, really mind-bendingly remarkable then why should anyone hire you over your gazillion competitors?
It’s January; you can take a day off and do a little navel gazing. Here is what I want you to do. Nothing. Stare out a window. Float on a raft. Turn off the electronics, ship off the kids and spouse and let your mind drift. Focus on your uniqueness. Why do your clients hire you? Why do they give you their money and trust you with their event? Why?
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