Avoid mistakes in messaging: What is your brand saying?

Hopefully, it’s not saying the same thing as everyone else is. We’ve all heard the reasons we should buy from company A or use services from company B. A lot of times they go along the lines of “professional service” or “technology experts” or maybe even promise “quality customer service.” Frankly, consumers are tired hearing it.

When you only use language like the examples given above, you fall into a couple of marketing pitfalls. First, you sound just like your competitors. They probably offer professional service as well. They may even have a team of customer service experts just waiting to woo your customers. Second, you sound like everyone else in other industries, too. What do you have to offer that is unique to your area of expertise and to you?

Rich Harshaw of Strategic Marketing, LLC. Has written a great article on this phenomenon, which he refers to as “marketing platitudes,” or, “words or phrases that are drearily commonplace and predictable that lack power to evoke interest through over-use or repetition that nevertheless, are stated as though they were original or significant.”

He goes on to offer a couple of evaluations you can use to test your platitudiness. We are particularly fond of the “who else can say that” evaluation and the “scratch-out, write in” evaluation. They are definitely worth checking out.

The bottom line is that you have to know your specialty and know your competitors. There is something about you that makes you different; if there wasn’t your business probably wouldn’t have lasted that long or been all that profitable.