Kick-Ass Business & Marketing Secrets: How to Blitz Your Competition

Chapter 6

Know What Business You Are In

There are a number of elements involved in creating a successful campaign that enable you to differentiate yourself from your competitors, be heard above the clutter, create first-recall brand awareness, and generate success. However, none is more important than knowing what business you are in!

After all—if you don't know what business you are in, your customer certainly will not. And if you don't know, how can you effectively communicate with the customer? You can't!

Whether it is during a business consultancy or via a presentation, one of the first questions I ask people is, “What business are you in?” It is unbelievably disturbing to me that, in this day and age, probably 499 out of 500 people answer by citing the category of their trade or profession. People who work in a computer company or store enthusiastically volunteer “computers”; insurance people say “insurance”; and so on. If that is the case, then Home Depot in America, Australia's Bunnings, and B & Q Hardware in Europe are in the hardware business. After all, that is what they sell. Well, perhaps—but it is certainly not what people are buying. No one, at least no one in his or her right mind, wakes up in the morning and has a burning desire to buy a hammer. You buy a hammer because your spouse threatens to hire a handyman if you don't fix the door, and visualizing the cost of such help sends you scurrying to the hardware store to buy a hammer.

You go to a hardware store ...