Learn These New Words to be a Leader of the Pack

We all want to be ahead of the game. That can be that one office dude who wants to be the star amongst his ‘Realm of Association’ or peers. Or that can be you, against your competitors in the residential home service industry.

However, not all people realize that ‘getting ahead’ means introducing new ideas to a sometimes stagnant plan. This applies to your business. If you want to conquer your industry, you need people attention so they can actually see what makes you different. What’s that new, interesting, or different variable you’re adding to the equation? Why should customers want to try your solution?

The answer? New words.

That’s right, new words. When you use words that pique people’s curiosity, you become the person that ‘has something to say.‘ People gravitate towards you for a drizzle of your new wisdom. Customers see you as the business like no other.

After all, you say things that others don’t. You probably know things that most don’t, especially being an expert in your industry. That’s the wonder of spearheading new ideas.

By introducing new ideas, you help attract and keep people’s attention, cementing your brand into a household name. You rise above the Sea of Sameness. You stand 600 ft. above your competition.

Keep reading if you want to learn what they are.

Old vs New

The concept of old vs new ideas came from one of the greatest business and communication minds of the century, Roy H. Williams. In one of his Monday Morning Memos, he said:

“Old ideas are carried by old words. New ideas are carried by new words. Old words keep you inside the box. New words help you escape it.“

That’s how the world operates. All obsolete ideas are defined by the words of their time.

In 380 B.C. a Greek astronomer called Eudoxus said the earth was the nucleus of the solar system. It’s the center of the entire cosmos and everything revolves around the earth. His concept introduced the first geocentric model of the universe.

The thing is, we’ve seen one too many technological advancements throughout this lifetime. Everyone knows the planets don’t revolve around the earth. Now then, how many more people do you hear using the term geocentric, today?

Exactly.

Introducing new ideas doesn’t mean making up ‘alternative facts’. New ideas are based on actual real facts. It does mean using new words to tickle peoples’ inquisitive nature.

For a business, if you want to introduce compelling ideas about old things, you need to describe them with equally fresh and unique words. That’s how you brand your business as revolutionary. You become a trendsetter, and once people start noticing your novel ideas, you evolve into the game-changer.

Let’s be honest, innovations in the home services industry might not come by very often. You need a means to set a unique angle, even if the products and services you’re selling aren’t new. This can be done by using new words to portray your services as something no one’s experienced before.

Remain Inside the Box and Fall Behind the Pack

Let’s take a quick look at two marketing campaigns from two different roofing contractors.

Roofing contractor 1 says:

“We have a new metal shingle that not only looks like highend slate, but weighs four fifths less than slate. This will allow you to install your new roof in one day on your existing truss system without even having to remove the asphalt underneath. While it costs 50% more than asphalt up front, it is half as much as slate, and comes with a non-prorated 50 year warranty. This makes it cheaper than both asphalt and slate in both total cost and cost of ownership because you’ll have to buy 4 asphalt roofs and make numerous repairs to slate in the same time period. Not only will you have the nicest looking house in the neighborhood, this roof will add a one-for-one return on investment to your home, creating instant equity. What asphalt roof will do that?”

Roofing contractor 2 says:

“For all your roofing needs, our team of reliable and fast-acting workers are here to help. We have convenient hours, offer free estimates, and financing options. We only install 25 year shingles to give you peace of mind. Whatever roofing solution you may require, your roofing wish is our command.”

Both roofing companies offer value, but who would a customer rather choose?

Introducing novel ideas like the “metal shingles that look like slate” already gets the first business ahead.

New ideas like this make people wonder what you’re selling. It keeps customers on the edge of their seats. It creates the illusion and pre-conception that a business’s set of services is one-of-a-kind and no other companies offer it.

That’s the power of new ideas. It creates an unrelenting brand that automatically sets you ahead of your competition. Even if customers don’t do intensive research, they already have a perceptual reality that you’re the solution to hire.

Let’s face it, all businesses nowadays use the same words to describe ideas. Like target customers, demographics, gross impressions, and unique selling propositions.

If you want to remain boxed and compete with other businesses within the same enclosure, be my guest. Use the same terms. Don’t differentiate yourself.

However, if you want to escape the box and explore uncharted territory, learn new words.

Learn the New Words

The only question that matters now is, do you want to keep up with the times or do you want to get ahead of the curve?

Here are the new ideas you may want to get behind and use for your branding:

Felt need

These are the desires in the heart of customers. They are deemed necessary by customers to correct any deficiency they perceive in us. Everyone has respective needs, but felt needs are universal. They are often these three things: money, energy and time. When your customer’s have their felt needs MET, you are actually selling ‘happy’.

Relevance

Relevance is more than the pertinence of a business to employees, customers, and stakeholders. It is also the degree a business or solution addresses a client’s felt need. In other words, a rendered service is relevant if it meets or exceeds your customer’s underlying felt need (money, energy, and time). In short, it matters if you solve their perceived problem.

Credibility

Credibility is the degree to which a message is believed. It is a measure of how trustworthy you are as a business and how reliable your services are to your marketplace. You attain credability by under promising and over delivering, exceeding your customer’s expectations. No amount of new ideas will cover up a substandard service for long.

Impact quotient

Impact quotient is the combination of relevance and credibility. The more relevant and credible your business is, the more you become the frontrunner for a service. Your impact quotient will go up with the right combination of new words. This is what we call the stickiness of words.

“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
— Roy H. Williams

Competitive environment

Yopur competitive environment is the objective assessment of two key things:

Your specific market conditions
Your standing in the market relative to your competition

In other words, it’s the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your company compared to the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your competitors. This includes your reputation, product or service lines, and brand awareness.

Limiting Factor

These are the elements or aspects of your business that holds you back. Derived from Liebig’s law of the minimum. It says, your overall productivity is not measured by the abundant elements but by your most limiting resource.

Where are your bottlenecks, breakpoints, and blind spots?

Unleveraged Asset

It’s the ace you have up your sleeve that you’ve yet to play. Something that, when used effectively, will give you a significant competitive advantage. This is one of the most powerful tricks you can play to move to first place.

Core Competence

Your CORE Competence is what you do consistently well. This is what you are known for. Very often companies make the mistake of diversifying their offering so much that their impact quotient drops. Sometimes it’s because they are confusing their prospects. Sometimes it’s because they come across as generalists, not specialists.

Southwest Airlines stay focused on regional flights with no seat assignments or food service. Just fast, easy service. That’s their CORE Competence. What’s yours?

Market Potential

The total dollars that are up for grabs in your industry or business category. This is the amount of money you and your business rivals are competing over. One way to measure this is through your NAICS code. NAICS or North American Industry Classification System is a six-digit numerical code that classifies businesses by industry. This code reveals the size of your potential market.

Share of Voice

Share of voice is the percentage of all business advertising in the category. It’s the clout that a business or an advertiser has on the public. Location visibility, word-of-mouth, signage and impact on the industry, are included in this metric.

When you can boost your share of voice in your market to the correct frequency, you will stand a greater chance of going from name recognition to a household name.

Share of Mind

The percentage of how much business owns the mind of the general populace. In other words, the mental real estate a business has in the target audiences mind. A higher share of mind means a higher conversion possibility with every published ad. It is measured by the equation:

Share of mind = Share of voice x impact quotient

Share of Market

Share of market is how much an advertiser or a business owns from the total business in a category. Basically, the percentage of how many dollars you siphon from the market potential.

Once you have total market potential dollars for your industry, take your topline revenue for the same reporting period and divide it into the market number to calculate your marketshare.

Share of market = Your revenue / Market potential revenue

Authenticity

Authenticity is the measure of your overall realness. It’s about how your prospects perceive you, based on who you say you are or what you say your business is paired with reviews and personal experience. The more authentic you are, the more trustworthy you appear in the eyes of your potential buyers.

Transparency

Transparency is a measure of truth. It’s about a business showing their flaws along side their strengths. It’s the admission of a downside rather than concealing or ignoring it. For businesses, being transparent and admitting their flaws and the flaws of their industry boosts credibility.

Personal Experience Factor

The personal experience factor is the buzz made by past customers regarding their experience with your business. Here’s the challenge: If your buying experience doesn’t align with the declared authenticity you present in your marketing, you lose credibility. You need the word on the street to coincide with your messaging.

Do what you say you’re going to do, and then a little bit more.

Ad-speak

Ad-speak is yesterday’s advertising style. Ad speak includes unsubstantiated claims, generalities, education, and facts about your business. Ad speak is what makes ads sound like ads — and be ignored. They don’t hold any weight, making them impressively easy to ignore and forget.

These can be marketing cliché’s and generic phrases. For example, saying, “we’re different” or, “the ones you can trust”, sound untrustworthy.

Curse of Knowledge

Those with the Curse of Knowledge know too much to make their communication as effective as it could be. These are the blinders that come with gaining expertise. Often those cursed are very intelligent, with an unwillingness to accept new, interesting, and different information.

We see many business owners who have adopted obsolete strategies that no longer work that are predisposed to stick with what they know. It’s about sticking with the status quo and being blindsided in the face of innovation or proven, yet ignored principles for shiny new tactics.

Brandable chunks

These are the vivid and recurring lines used by the Wizard of Ads™ for businesses that help define the brand. Taglines and slogans are acceptable in some situations, but brandable chucks ad further context and strategy. Brandable chunks allow your business do have a more dynamic narrative than being limited to one slogan.

Black Words

Black words are those empty words that don’t contribute to a colorful and desirable mental perception. Every word that a marketer or business publishes should inform a customer’s ideal perceptual reality. Businesses should remove black words from advertisements to make their concepts shine more brightly.

The 4 Keys to a Rainbow Future

If you want to be the leader in your industry, you only need 4 things. Everything else stems from those qualities. Here are the 4 keys to your rainbow future:

Remain relevant — Have the business and solutions that meet your audiences’ felt needs,
Protect your credibility — Be the symbol of trustworthiness and reliability in your industry.
Speak to actual felt needs — Your advertising strategies must speak directly to your audience’s felt needs. They must soothe their pain points and caress their pleasure points.
Do what you say you will do — Authenticity is key. Make every effort to prove that your business is what you say it is. Overdeliver. Exceed expectations.

Everything written above is anchored on good business and marketing. Make sure you’re equipped with the skills and experience to etch your business as the front runner in your industry. Wizard of Ads™ can produce the new ideas to make that a reality. Book a call.