Highlight the Unusual
Finding Your “Dinosaur”
Imagine with me that you’re walking down an aisle at the store, and the shelves on this aisle are completely stocked with teddy-bears of all shapes, sizes, and colors. While walking down the aisle you see a plastic dinosaur stuffed in between two teddy-bears.
Let’s stop right there. Why would you notice the toy dinosaur? Because it was unusual. When you have a product that is different it will automatically draw attention either because people weren’t expecting it or they were looking for it.
With that in mind, I’m giving you a challenge. Take another look at the products or services you sell and try to find the figurative “dinosaur in the teddy-bears”. What’s unique about your product? What makes you stand out from your competitors?
If you sell handmade, nature-based beauty products, maybe your dinosaur is that you get your ingredients from a small local farm or you have a secret family recipe for creating each product.
Even if you have a “generic” product, I’ll guarantee you can still find your dinosaur; all you need is one unique point to highlight for your customers. To find your dinosaur follow these steps…
Write down your product’s features.
Go through the list you’ve written and find the feature that’s unusual.
Figure out how that unusual feature benefits your customer.
Highlight the feature.
Highlight The Dinosaur
Let’s go back to the person selling handmade soap. What if their dinosaur is that they designed all their own soap recipes while traveling the world, and each soap is inspired by a place they visited. We’ll call this business “Journey Soaps: scents and ingredients from around the world”.
Journey Soaps should include a tiny bit of each soap bar’s backstory in their product descriptions, along with how the unique ingredients will benefit the buyer’s skin, make them feel relaxed, etc. They could also have posts on their blog that describe in detail the adventure that led to the creation of certain recipes so when people buy that soap they’ll be a part of that adventure too.
Do you see what we did there? We went from selling a product to selling a unique experience that the buyer won’t get anywhere else. That’s how you hook people with highlights; make it something that appeals to your audience, something different from what your competitors are doing.
Actually, since we’re on the subject of competitors, it’s a good idea to look at your competition’s brands and websites so you know what their main highlights and features are. The reason you do that is so you can make sure you are doing something different (or “better” if you want to use that word) from what they’re using to draw in customers.
Remember, when you're in the same industry you’ll have similarities to your competitors, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Those similarities are “teddy bears” and just like the teddy bears from our story were in that store aisle because somebody out there wanted to buy them, you shouldn’t try and get rid of all the similarities between you and your competitors.
Since those similarities are often what people start out looking for when they find your business, it's all the more important that your “dinosaur” is different from everybody else’s.
So, can you think of what your dinosaur might be? If you still don’t know, keep looking; I guarantee it will be worth your time.