Graham McGregor: How to make your business memorable and interesting

When what you sell is both interesting and memorable to potential clients your marketing work becomes a lot easier. Photo / 123RF

One of the marketing challenges we face is in making our business both interesting and memorable to potential clients.

This is also very helpful for getting good quality referrals as well.

One way to do this is to come up with a one sentence description of your product or service that creates a vivid mental picture in the mind of a potential client.

Here's a good example

A while ago I met a client that was having problems selling a new software programme she had developed. The programme was an online booking system and was aimed at businesses who sold a time based service. So people like hairdressers, beauty therapists, tradespeople and many other businesses were potential clients for this online booking software programme.

When I first met with my client she was struggling to sell her online booking system to potential clients. She asked if I could help.

My first step was to ask her a simple question.

What does this online booking system do from the viewpoint of the person using it? For the next 20 minutes my client proceeded to tell me all the features of her online booking system and how it worked. At the end of her presentation I was a bit confused and I still did not understand what she was selling.

I explained that her main marketing problem was she was not able to explain quickly (in an interesting and memorable way) what she was offering to potential clients. And if potential clients didn't understand what she was selling it made her sales job a lot harder than it needed to be.

My client hired me to come up with a memorable and interesting way to explain her software programme. A few days later we had another meeting and I shared my ideas with her.

Here's what you sell I told her...

"You work with businesses who sell time and you sell a system that helps these businesses create up to 7 brand new revenue streams in less than 30 days."

I then showed my client a one page diagram I had created that showed what the 7 brand new revenue streams were.

I gave each revenue stream a catchy title

One revenue stream was called 'The 24 hour cash surge'.

Another revenue stream was called 'Turning lemons into lemonade'.

Another revenue stream was called 'Raising the dead'.

And so on.

I had a short explanation of each revenue stream and how it worked. The 'Turning lemons into lemonade' revenue stream was for the situation where a client cancelled an appointment at short notice. One of the features of the online booking software that my client offered was that you could text any of your clients a short message. So if there was an unexpected cancellation you could text clients who might want to have an appointment at short notice and give them an attractive reason to book this appointment with you.

This was your 'lemon' of a cancelled booking could be turned into the 'lemonade' of someone else coming and paying for that cancelled booking. My client got really excited about what she was selling once I gave her a new viewpoint on the benefits of what she was offering her clients. And she found it a lot easier to get potential clients interested in hearing more about what she was offering.

When what you sell is both interesting and memorable to potential clients your marketing work becomes a lot easier.

'For me, being memorable is more important than winning.' - Ricki Lake

Take Action:
Take a good look at the benefits of the products and services that you sell. Brainstorm with your business colleagues and see if you can come up with a one sentence description of what you offer that is both interesting and memorable.

Graham McGregor is a consultant specialising in memorable marketing. You can download his 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage' Ebook at no charge from www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com.