“Look at me! I’m over here!”
15 June, 2007 - General Business - 5 Comments
Being different from your competitors is something you must achieve. You need a unique selling point (USP) but you also need to stand out from the crowd in your day to day operations. By standing out from the crowd, you get noticed. People remember your face. They remember your name. They remember your Web site address. That can only be a good thing, right?
So, how do you stand out from the crowd? Here are some ideas that I and others have done in the past.
Brendon Sinclair brought my attention to this one. According to the video description…
“We did this video one night after work. We are a company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker.”
Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo
Don’t you think it would be a fantastic way to introduce your company on your Web site “About Us” page? Imagine a title for each person during the video. It would make you stand out from the boring text based “About Us” pages, and as this particular video has done, it could become viral.
It doesn’t have to be as complex as that video. This next one also came to me from Brendon (He may be an Aussie who loves himself, but he sure knows a thing or two about marketing).
Why not just send a letter, rather than emailing somebody? Brendon does a little public speaking every so often, and after his most recent talk he sent a physical snail mail letter to everybody who attended. Of those 16 who got the letter, four emailed Brendon and one wrote a letter back to say how amazed they were that someone took the time to write a real letter.
That doesn’t surprise me, because Brendon took the time to send me a letter to thank me for sponsoring him in his recent charity bike ride. Yup, rather than sending me a simple email, he sent a letter half way around the World (Australia to England) with his thanks.
I don’t make crap Web sites
This next one was an idea from Tjobbe which I took and used very effectively. The idea was to send a box to potential Web development clients which contained one of those fake dog crap gimmicks. In the box, a message would read “We don’t make crap Web sites”.
As it happens, neither Tjobbe or I took it the whole way and did this. However, I did tell some people about the idea at a marketing course that I attended. The response was absolutely fantastic (By that, I mean I got the biggest laughs of the day, and the “That is horrible… but awesome” comments).
With that in mind, I wrote a letter to a few of the people I met on the day to say how nice it was to meet them and I gave them a little more information about me and my business. In each envelope, I enclosed one fake dog crap for their viewing pleasure. The response was just as I had hoped. I received phone calls saying they got a good laugh out of it, and as soon as the gimmick fell out of the envelope, they knew exactly who the letter was from.
What do you do to stand out from everybody else? What have other people done that has impressed you to a point where their name stuck with you?
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Posted on 15 June, 2007 by Jamie Harrop
Filed Under General Business |
5 Comments»
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What we need is a Equentity version of this, maybe done via web cams, i.e. you turn the camera round and into the screen where the next member takes over
Can’t wait to see it
Heh. I was actually thinking a HostingCon version would be good.
LOL I love your Video . It was Great !!
This video was fantastic. Great idea to share this with your readers. It is amazing the amount of attention it got for them and their company.
It’s just as amazing how much attention they gave the actual recording. As with anything like this, if everybody doesn’t give 110%, the end result will be horrible (Drama 101 to having a successful performance is for everybody to be fully committed). Kudos to them for doing such a good job.