What differentiates your business from the competition?
It’s a basic question, not just for marketing and branding, but for the business’s core identity. A company’s unique selling points determine who it sells to, how it frames its service delivery, and how it hires.
If uniqueness matters, why are so many companies using the same selling points?
I’ve lost track of how many conversations I’ve had with business owners who say their most important unique selling point is service.
“Our service is the best in the industry.”
“Our customers know we’ll back up what we say.”
“We’re committed to customer success.”
The most truthful statements often are also the most banal. While it may be true that a company’s service really is the best in its industry, for marketing purposes that doesn’t matter. Everyone claims to have great service. Prospects have heard this pitch ad nauseam.
You have to go deeper.
Uniqueness takes work
I strongly encourage my clients to gather their leadership team together in a room, ideally away from the office, to brainstorm ways to express their unique selling points without relying on clichés.
Avoiding clichés requires knowing what they are. For someone who for years has led every sales conversation with “our service is best,” recognizing clichés can be hard.
The good news is we all have access to a new tool for generating an endless stream of clichés: artificial intelligence.
Using AI to generate content is a complex task requiring advanced editing skills, precise brand awareness, and a pinch of industry expertise. But using AI to generate clichés? Child’s play.
Here’s something you can do today: Go to Gemini or ChatGPT and enter this prompt: “What are typical selling points of companies in [your industry]?”
Because the AI is trained on vast quantities of examples taken from the web, it will draw together a broad picture of how the industry sells itself. Giving the machine a simple prompt gives it maximum leeway to be as generic as possible. In this case, generic is what we want.
After looking over the output, ask if your company uses any of the items on the list in its marketing.
Find the extraordinary amidst the ordinary
If you see some familiar ideas, don’t panic. It’s still important to tell your prospects that your service is great and you care about their success. In fact, if the industry norm is to say such things, not saying them might come across as strange.
But if your selling points are all represented, perhaps it’s time to work harder to identify one thing that sets your business apart.
I recently met with a client that works in a fragmented service space. Their existing website made the usual claims: great service delivered by people who care, a value guarantee, and so on. I wanted their story to be about something more.
Using the AI’s guidance about what the industry says about itself, we quickly eliminated the cliché ideas to arrive at their true unique selling point: a highly relational, hands-on approach that none of their competitors use.
We could have arrived at the same place without the help of AI. But using AI helped us get there more quickly so we could quit worrying about the company’s identity and start building a content strategy.
Red Mallard strives for better in everything we do. We constantly explore ways to make better use of AI to help our clients achieve the results they need with less effort. Strategies like the “cliché finder” offer shortcuts that create more time for higher-value work.
Want to talk about how to get the most from AI in your marketing efforts? We’d enjoy sharing our ideas. Send us an email or give us a call.
