Bored with Marketing the Same Service? Find Your Hook.

Do you offer the same service as 100 other guys in your market? Are you struggling to set yourself apart from your competition?  Finding it difficult to write about your services and get people excited; honestly, how many ways can you say that you’re going to wash a house?

What you’re missing is a seductive hook.  Let me explain.

There is a bakery outside of Dallas that bakes goodies and ships them all over the country.  Like every other bakery, they make and sell fruitcake during the holiday season.  No one that I know or have ever talked to gets excited about fruitcake.  How do you increase your sales in something that no one gets excited about?  With fruitcake, there is usually nothing special.  After taking an in depth look at the recipe, sales, marketing, one item made an impression.  The pecans this bakery used weren’t just ordinary pecans.  These pecans come from the native pecan trees that ONLY grow next to the streams in Texas.

A compelling and interesting story was composed about the majestic pecan trees next to the free flowing creeks and rivers in the countryside near Dallas.  Now that fruitcake is a one of a kind native pecan cake.

The result?  Sales boosted by 60%.  Nothing changed about the recipe.  IT’S STILL FRUITCAKE.  By changing the story and isolating something unique (sort-of, they are still just pecans after all) they created a hook.

So, what are your native pecans?

What item can be isolated in your service to make it so unique and special that no one can forget it or resist?  Odds are that your competitors have access to all the same facts and information, but how you speak your story and how you educate comes down to the hook.

Maybe it’s your brushes.  Do you know where the bristles of your brushes were made?  What about water?  It is just water.  Probably from the customer’s own water source.  But do you use PURE water?  Do you have an “optimal water temperature for cleaning that utilizes the detergents in a more powerful way”?  You get the point.

Find your native pecan.