In order to advertise your product in a way that communicates with your target customer, you need to understand their problems and make sure that you're delivering a solution. Small businesses often deliver similar types of products, however what they choose to emphasize, communicates a great deal to their customers.
How many attributes can be attached to one brand (for many small companies their company name is their brand)? The simple answer is not as many as we wish we could. Are you going to have the fastest service, the cheapest price, the most reliable product...that's for you, the owner of the business to decide. However, it's important that you provide on your ‘brand promise' and it's probably more important that your brand promise is something that a reasonable portion of the market cares about. Let's think about a few brands and what they focus on:
Baja Fresh Mexican food - in their ads, they focus primarily on how fresh and organic their ingredients are - for a small but growing population that cares about how healthy their food is, and is at least somewhat skeptical about digesting man-made chemicals. They could choose to focus on how delicious their food is, and although that's a portion of their advertising, it doesn't seem to be as much of a product differentiator because so many restaurants claim to have great tasting food. They could have talked about the broad range of dishes that they serve, or that they had a number of low calorie dishes, but they have chosen to highlight their organic ingredients and seem to be doing very nicely with that brand positioning.
Domino's Pizza - their focus seems two-pronged to me and includes fast delivery of very inexpensive pizzas. Again they could have focused on a number of other attributes, but they seem to talk a great deal about how quickly their inexpensive pizza can find its way to your doorstep. Other pizza companies focus their communications on the taste of their pizza, the quality of the ingredients or on a specific type of pizza that they serve (such as deep dish pizza).
Maverick Convenience Stores Their advertising seems to be a little bit less focused that some company's. It seems that a great deal of their focus is aimed at "mavericks" or renegades who see themselves as going against the popular culture. Their advertising seems to include having reasonably priced products for a certain type of individual - maybe a group that might be likely to have Fu Manchu moustaches, enjoys a good NASCAR race and disdain the pretentiousness of drinking "designer beers" that cost well over $1 a bottle, and instead drink domestic "honest beers" that cost closer to $8 for a half-rack. Maverick seems to do a good business in the Western states where the word maverick implies strength and a strong sense of independence.
When you are designing your flyers, billboard or even radio or television spots, make sure that you think through the various product characteristics and which ones you can claim as your competitive advantage, make sure that you take your competitors' positions into account.
Know Thy Customer,
Chris
