Little Lessons

Sometimes you find great marketing from places you don't expect it - like small local businesses. These are people without marketing consultants (like me!), marketing budgets, or any previous experience as professional marketers. They're just smart businesspeople who instinctively understand the fundamentals of marketing: understanding the value they're offering a customer, how it makes them different, and articulating it.

I saw two of these here in Houston Heights this week.

One is our neighborhood hardware store. This isn't a great time for small hardware stores. Big chains like Home Depot and Lowe's are everywhere, and there's no way that a little store can compete with them on inventory or price. The big guys can buy in massive quantities, secure enormous spaces in highly visible locations, and run ads on national television and in the Sunday paper. How is little C&D Hardware, located off the main drag in our little Houston neighborhood, supposed to complete with the two superstores on the freeway nearby - especially in a town like Houston, where you have to get in your car and drive to go almost everywhere anyway? Why don't we just drive to the big stores?

Their sign says it all: "What You Need, Fast and Easy." Yes, everything I buy at C&D is available at the giant hardware stores, and it's probably a little cheaper. The difference is that I can pull up at C&D, park in the little lot within thirty feet of the door, and walk in and pick up a few items in minutes. If I can't find what I want, I can ask one of the friendly people who works there, and that person will actually know whether they've got what I need and where it is.

At Home Depot, I wander up and down endless aisles, trying to find things, and if I ask for help, I usually get a blank stare.

Now, C&D is not that different from any other neighborhood hardware store. But I'm impressed that they understand how they are different from Lowe's and put it out there on their sign. Come in here and it'll be fast and easy. Home Depot can't promise that.

This week I also had a new cleaning service come and clean my house. I am housecleaning-impaired. I hate it more than almost any task, so I react in the expected way: I avoid it. After a while my house becomes a nightmare of dust bunnies and cat hair, and even I can't stand it, so I clean. Halfway though I get incredibly tired of the whole thing, decide that the house has gone from embarrassing to barely acceptable, and stop.

I had a cleaning service, but they weren't very good, so I decided to go back to doing it myself. That worked wonderfully for about thirty hours. This week I surrendered, and the good folks at Maid in the Shade came to help me.

There are tons of companies that will clean your house in any large city. They all offer the same basic service: they come in, and they clean things. Hopefully they do it well. What's their customer value? Is it a clean house? No, not really; they make your life easier and they make you happier in your home. So note Maid in the Shade's tagline: "Making people happy since 1998."

That realy sums up my experience with them. I came into the house after their visit, and it was clean. No dust. No cat hair. Clean counters. Clean bathroom. I was incredibly happy, and this morning it feels good to be here in my home office working. They did an excellent job, and lived up to their tagline: they made me happy.

I make a point of looking for businesses that express their value in smart ways that differentiate themselves from their competitors. My gut tells me that these are businesses that understand their mission better than their competitors do, and therefore are more likely to leave me satisfied. That approach has been working well for me; it certainly works with respect to these two small Houston businesses.

What's your promise to your customers? What do you do for them? Is it clear in your company's name, your signage, your web site, your brochure? Figure out what the final result of your product or service is, and tell the world. Put it on your business card. Tell your customers what you can do for them in a way that matters to them and that's different from what your competitors say, and you'll reap the rewards.