Your “purple cow” is also known as your signature system, your unique selling proposition, or USP. It is a sentence or phrase that explains what makes you special. It gives your prospects a reason to do business with you rather than your competitors. A good USP that is properly used makes your marketing a lot more effective, because it gives you dominance over a market niche.
“But I do basically the same as most of my competitors do. How can I be different?” This is a question I often hear from clients as they start out on re-engineering their marketing strategy. It’s a fair question as most of my clients are service-based businesses. They primarily sell their services to clients as a builder, plumber, electrician or whatever. Sure they use products in how they deliver their service, but they are not a product-based business like a retailer or manufacturer. It is harder to differentiate a service-based business as you don’t have something tangible to demonstrate or customise for a client. The up-side of being difficult to develop a “purple cow” for a service business is that not every one does it, so when you can define a relatively small difference, you naturally stand out more. How do you do this?
When developing your USP, it is important that you put yourself in your prospects’ position. Look at your product or service from the point of view of someone thinking about buying it. What is important to your potential customer and what would be a compelling reason for that prospect to buy from you instead of your competition? It could be a slightly unique way that you deliver your service to the client that addresses their key concerns or desires in the outcome of the building project. Your Signature System in effect.
Warning. It’s no good having a fantastic point of difference……that NOBODY cares about or is prepared to pay a premium for. Your customers’ interest is focused on what your product or service does for them – the benefits. How using your service solves a problem or improves an outcome, in a particularly unique way. The key to unlocking the decision to buy is offering benefits that outweigh what the competition offers.
So benefits are all about how your service adds value for your customer, while features relate to what goes into making the product or service and how it is delivered to customers. This is an important distinction. Because customers are really not interested in features. They are only motivated by benefits.
Seth Godin wrote a great mini book on the subject called “Purple Cow”. Download a copy HERE. Give me a call or email and we can talk about developing YOUR purple cow. It can be one of the most transformational shifts in your business right now and can be done at little or no cost.