by So you’ve got a pretty good handle on what you do for your clients and customers…
But what about what you don’t do?
It’s an often-overlooked opportunity.
Yet it makes sense to talk about the things you don’t, won’t or would never do in a million years to attract more of the people you want to help…
Especially true if you’re in alternative health, organic cooking or eco-friendly clothing of course.
While there are all sorts of great ways physical product makers can establish differentiation based on what they don’t do…
…what about the rest of us?
The consultants, online course producers, info-marketers and software companies with products and services you can’t hold in your hand?
It’s possible for us also to express our unique value and carve out a clear niche by communicating what we won’t do.
For every choice you make about who you work with or how, and what value you deliver, there’s a flipside:
What got left out, and why.
What you wouldn’t do in the name of profit.
Who doesn’t qualify to work with you – whether that’s as a partner, supplier or client.
These are important factors that influence your product/service, and talking about them in your messaging helps establish your unique value with your ideal prospects.
What you stand for – or against – is important to your customers
For instance:
Do you have a limit to how many clients you work with in a specific time period, or how many students you coach?
Make this clear on your site. It enhances your value as a limited resource, and shows you care about spending time providing value.
Do you prefer working with bootstrapped startups over funded companies or buy-outs?
Talk about why in your sales copy and content. The indie businesses you want to help will see you as a kindred spirit who understands and supports their independence.
Does your software dispense with certain limits or restrictions imposed by your competitors?
I had a Saas client whose copy talked about their product having “no annoying rate limits”, to highlight an existing common frustration in the market and set themselves in opposition to it. We managed to combine logical and emotional arguments in one simple feature.
Does your biz avoid shortcuts or upsells, forgoing profit to focus on better service for your customers?
I recently worked with a specialist translator who told me how online translation agencies sneakily outsource work in niche languages to cheap, unqualified freelancers (some of whom just relied on Google Translate!)…
The accuracy and quality of the work suffered as a result, with potentially embarrassing and expensive results for clients.
So we made a point of revealing this practice in her sales page copy…
But also how for her own clients, she translates every word personally with no outsourcing, ever. They pay for her expertise, and they get 100% of it.
Unlike the Saas example, this trend wasn’t well known amongst translation customers, so we were exposing an undesirable hidden practice rather than leveraging a common complaint.
In both instances my clients were able to enhance their unique value…
Just by talking about what they didn’t or would not do.
There may have been faster money to be made by taking the opposite decision – but instead they focused on the customer/client experience.
And that’s appealing to any prospect.
With that in mind…
Here’s a few ‘don’t do’ questions to ask when creating messaging for your biz:
1 – What do your best prospects expect you ‘not to do’? What are the basic no-no’s they expect from you?
And how can you express that in a way that creates a benefit from something they may have taken for granted?
2 – What might they NOT expect you ‘not to do’?
And what’s a beneficial or surprising way to communicate that? Does it show you going the extra mile, or produce better results?
3 – What do your competitors do that you don’t? Is there value in that for your customer if you told them?
(Hint: if you’re a small fish in a crowded pond, use that to your advantage – bigger ain’t always better…)
4 – What are some personal ‘don’t dos’ you could talk about to draw your audience closer?
Maybe you ditched Facebook, hate ‘gurus’ or walked out of a conference that sucked…
Why? How can you leverage your entertaining quirks and choices to stand out from the crowd?
Communicating ‘don’t dos’ more strategically is one way I help businesses like yours to Sell Unique and connect with more (or better) customers…
Check out what that involves here (or don’t)…
…including your chance to save $$s on a one-to-one consulting session before summer’s out.
