Finding Your Purple Cow

Finding Your Purple Cow

Seth Godin speaks about the importance of finding the purple cow in your business, thething that makes you stand out from everyone else that is doing the same thing. Thenumber 1 reason why people would use you over others. So do you have a purple cow inyour business, do you stand out from the pack, are you clear on why prospects should beusing you and not your competitor. Here are a few things to think about when developingyour purple cow.

The first question to ask yourself is “what makes us unique” what do we offer, what do wedo, how are we different. This is the starting point of your purple cow. It might take a littleinvestigating of what your competition does, how well they do it and why a prospect mightuse them over you. The important thing here is do not try to be everything to everyone.It is important you look at what your business is great at doing and take your piece of themarket.

For example we don’t want to create websites for every business. We only want to createwebsites for businesses that want a marketing aspect to their website, that want to captureprospects as leads rather than having a website that is a brochure. Therefore we only workwith those sorts of clients.

Next you need to ensure that you have a clear message on what it is your business doesbest. Focus in and be specific. To many businesses feel they are going to lose business ifthey don’t generalise about their services. In fact this couldn’t be further from the truth, themore you generalise the more you confuse your market, as they are not sure on what partyou are the expert in. A great example of this is a graphic designer who says they also do print. Do you want yourdesign done by a printer or generalist? Probably not, you want design done from a graphicdesigner, an expert at their trade. Sure they might have a printer they use up their sleeveand they can do that as an add on, however it is not the message that needs to be sent.

Finally be consistent with your message in the sort of jobs you take on, the more ‘idealjobs’ that can be shown as social proof the more of those sorts of jobs you will attract. Atthe beginning it might be difficult to stick to it, you see other opportunities pass you by,however in the long your purple cow and being known as the best ‘xxx’ will be dividends.