Effective Marketing Or Barketing?

Yesterday, Promotional Consultant Today shared the tell-tale signs of a classic “barketer”—the person or business that is repetitive, annoying and always has a one-way message. We all know of barketers, or maybe we see traits of barketers in ourselves.

Key signs of a barketer include calling themselves “as good as brand x” or copying competitors’ ads and other marketing materials. The good news is that barketers can change. Today PCT shares tips on what you can do to be an effective marketer, not a barketer.

Instead of Barking. When all the other dogs in the pound are barking, trying to bark louder will only get you noticed for the wrong things. When everyone else is barking you need to do something other than bark. Perhaps you should “meow.” Notice the differences between the TV ads that you want to watch and those that you skip. Make note of those differences and apply those techniques to your own marketing.

Compare your strengths against their weaknesses. This is the best way to stand out from the competition and turn boring and annoying marketing messages into attention-grabbing and memorable ones. Are you able to list your strengths and promote them against the weaknesses of your competition? That will probably take some intensive probing, so get outside help if needed.

The next question is: Are you bold enough to do it?

A client of mine, a family-owned funeral home, considered promoting their business by printing a comparison between their locally owned and the corporately owned competition. The comparison might look like this:

Head Office: Right here in your hometown versus Houston, Texas Number of corporate jets: Zero versus three Luxury Gulf Streams Number of corporate vice presidents: Zero versus seven

Be bold and play unfair. No team stops playing when they are ahead by one point. Just look at Domino’s Pizza—the commercials never talk about the taste of their pizza, just the speed of delivery. They built a hugely successful business on that one competitive difference.

PCT knows your time is valuable and you have a choice in what you spend your time reading. We are very pleased that you choose PCT, so instead of barketing, we’d simply like to close this week with “Meow.”

Source: George Torok is the host and creator of the weekly radio show “Business in Motion” on 93.3 CFMU. He wrote a business column for Success Weekly and has published a few hundred articles in national and international publications. Torok’s business experience covers 25 years in small and large business, in government and now as an entrepreneur. He has worked in a cross section of areas including sales, marketing, production and supply management. His journey took him through several industries, among them steel, electrical, automotive, machinery and hospitality.