Seth Godin, the marketing guru and author of several good marketing books, wrote Purple Cow, the book that explains how businesses, including sign shops, that use traditional marketing techniques are wasting time. He suggests that business owners stop advertising and start innovating. And, the way to do that is to build a brand by creating a remarkable product or service. Sounds simple, right? Well, of course it isn’t! But, what Purple Cow does for business leaders is help to motivate them to be remarkable. Godin says that the problem with advertising today is that it is filled with ads clamoring for the attention of your prospects. He argues that the only way to cut the hyper-clutter of products and advertising today is to innovate something new, unique, and remarkable. In other words, like a purple cow.

Godin’s point can be found in companies like Google, IKEA, Jet Blue, Krispy Kreme, and Starbucks, all with products and service that gets talked about. No amount of advertising can equal that kind of marketing.

Steps you can begin taking today to turn your business into a purple cow:

Customers and Competitors
When beginning a strategy to create your own purple cow, you want to think way outside the box. In fact, pretend that the box doesn’t even exist anymore. Then, really spend some time to consider the following points (warning: some of these will stretch you):

• Between what people want and what people are getting today, are there any gaps?
• Pretend that you are making a highly exclusive, top-of-the-line, gold-member-only type of product for your top ten customers. What would that be?
• Make a list of competitors who not trying to be all things to all people. Can you uncover a new niche to target?
• List all the customer suggestions and customer complaints you’ve heard, what could you do to address them?
• Think about the top sign shop in your market. If you could change just one thing about that shop in order to make it more remarkable, what would that be?
• Think about what the market leader is doing, and then focus on doing the opposite.
• Imagine you are your most loyal customer advocate. What could you do to make them boast even more about your company?

Key Point: Think beyond your limits and comfort zone and consider how
you can make your company the cheapest, most expensive, the biggest, the
smallest, the fastest, the slowest, the newest, the oldest, whatever it takes
to be the purple cow. Considering your competition’s market share and

your customer’s needs is helpful.

Product and Service Presentation
As with your competitors and customers, use this list to consider how you can make your product or service more like a purple cow:

• If packaging can make a product, and remarkable packaging can make a product remarkable, what can you do to make packaging remarkable?
• What would you do if you wanted to make a collectable version of your product?
• Consider building a competitor to your own product with 25% less costs. If you could, why don’t you?
• Pretend that you are someone who loves taking risks. What’s the one really risky thing you would do to make your product or service better?
• Imagine your service or product is a person, and you have to give them a job reference. What’s worth recommending and what isn’t? What advice would you give them to help them get a job?
• Who, in your segment of the sign industry, currently makes the most remarkable products or provides the greatest service? What would they do if they were in your shoes to make your service or product more remarkable?
• Imagine you woke up one day as a maverick with no respect for the company way of doing things. What the first thing you’d change about your product or service?
• Considering that convenience is king, what could you do to make buying, using, consuming, or disposing your product easier?

Key Point: Once a week, brainstorm how you can create infectious products and service.

Being a purple cow is not easy. Godin explains in his book that it requires being gutsy enough to not blindly imitate what your competitors are doing. It is knowing that your remarkable products and service pick specific customers and solve their problems really well. In doing so, you turn ordinary customers into fans. 

Johnny Duncan, President of Duncan Consulting, Inc., is a business writer and consultant partnering with business owners to provide workforce  management solutions including customer service training, job analysis, people-to-job matches, and conflict resolution. He can be reached at johnny@duncanconsult.com or by calling 407-739-0718.