Being Remarkable – How To Have An Extraordinary Business

I see lots of businesses, and business owners all the time. Some of them are remarkable and extraordinary when I first see them, but they don’t realise it and don’t know how to tell people about themselves. Some of them are rather dull, staid businesses, but by the time I’ve finished with them, they’ve got that extra something that gets people talking about them.

Setting out to make your business remarkable can have amazing benefits.

If you’re struggling to attract customers or to make enough money, you need to think again about how people see your business, or if they notice it at all.

What’s a remarkable business?

Think about some remarkable businesses and how they’ve achieved it. Below are some examples:

Innocent drinks have established a great brand for what is really a quite unremarkable and very expensive product. They even make a meanie like me want to buy them. Not only do they have fantastic packaging – they’ve created a whole story about the drinks which has tapped into exactly the right demand from consumers for natural and healthy products – Innocent now has 62% of market share which is enormous in their sector.

Swatch threw away the rule book when they started out. They found a way to make very desirable, stylish watches for a fraction of the price that Swiss watches usually cost – by using new technology and selling a lot of watches, Swatch is still around, and I’m wearing one right now. Swatch was remarkable because their products have such fantastic designs (many are now collector’s items) but didn’t need to be made to last forever. They even have their own club for regular customers.

Why would I bother?

In the old days, you could set up a business, place a few ads, put your name in the yellow pages and tell your friends about it. If you had a shop, you could depend on people walking past to come in and buy something.

In the 21st century, things don’t work like that anymore. We have all become more sophisticated as consumers. We take less notice of ads, we’re suspicious of anything that isn’t recommended to us, and we’ll drive to the shops we like, rather than go to the one down the road.  Or of course, we won’t go to a “real” shop at all, just shop online.

Promoting your business is a lot harder than it used to be in the good old days. Now, the only businesses that do well, are ones that are a bit different. If you’re selling the same old stuff in the same old way, you might not even survive.

How you can be remarkable

Have a good think about your business and why people should bother to buy from you. Unless you’ve got a big business, don’t even think about trying to be cheaper than the competition – the big boys have the deep pockets to run you out of town.

Amazon will always be able to sell books more cheaply than a small bookstore. The small bookstore that makes a whole experience out of shopping there and makes their customers feel excited about buying from there, will still be able to do well against the bigger firms.

You should be thinking about what you’re selling and what’s exciting about it. What would make your customers bother to tell other people about you? Are you nicer, funnier, healthier, more ethical, more knowledgeable? Could you be? Work out what your story is. You want people to be able to tell a story about you.

That’s what Innocent did – they have lots of stories about how great it is to work there, how they did their initial market research, and even how good the drinks taste …and we believe their stories. Have a look at all their stories on their website, and note that they don’t use any words for most of it. Next, you need to think about how you’re promoting your business. How do you get people to come to you? You want to make sure that people are talking about you, and traditional advertising usually can’t achieve that.

If you’d like some help and advice to make your business remarkable (and remarkably successful) get in touch now and see how we can help.

Photo credit to Mike Wilson from Unsplash