Today’s quote: “Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” –Michael Porter

I read some fascinating comments from the owner of an engineering business a few year ago.

Here is what he said…

“I am an engineer and I regularly send out letters to prospective customers, that break every rule in the book. I use pink envelopes, include coffee sachets have no letter head or scripted text, and have lots of highlighting and always a couple of stories to highlight a point. Customers look for my letters and everyone gets opened.

Who says you can’t be radical in a very conservative market??

I believe, look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite.

Be brave and stand out from the crowd.

My gang think I am nuts, but we get results with very healthy growth each year, even in a diminishing market. One thing that I have learned, if the team think it is over the top, then we just have to do it because most people have a sense of humour and will notice and remember.

If we don’t get a 5% reject or complaint level, then it is not over the top at all.” I loved the comments about marketing from this engineer.
He was operating in a very conservative market and doing remarkably well by doing things differently from all his competitors.

Take Action:

How are most of your competitors marketing and promoting their businesses? And how could do the opposite of this and get positively noticed?