In our break room we have two coffee makers.
One, a Koffee King behemoth hailing from the days when it was klever to spell coffee with a K, has one main dispenser and two warmers housed in a giant steel box. Somewhere, a waitress who calls everyone ‘hon’ is missing a coffee machine.
The other, a sleek, modern Keurig, features a screen for instructions, a tray just large enough for a mug and a single-serve cartridge section (with a prominent ‘pointy things inside’ warning for the curious).
Sadly, the Koffee King makes terrible coffee, putting a dent in the common perception that diner koffee is king – taking its sweet time to make its bitter mud.
The Keurig, of course, makes the exact flavor a jittery drinker needs (every time) and it’s finished before the Koffee King even has grounds in its filter.
What does all this have to do with marketing?
We all know the traditional tried-and-true ways of drumming up business for your company. Billboards, bulk mail inserts and cold calling all must result in some measure of new business. Otherwise those companies would be out of business, right?
But can you stand out with a giant sign along the highway or flyer stuffed among grocery store ads?
We all know the answer is no.
You can stand out if you take a look at your business – its personality, services , clientele, goals and challenges – and market yourself that way.
Who are you as a company, really? Take a good look around. Are you positioning yourself in the market as you are — or who you want to be? Does your current marketing reflect that?
How you market yourself needs to be tailored to your company. Much like the Keurig provides exactly what’s needed at the right time, you need to make sure that the marketing you need for your company will be sure to satisfy with the first sip.
Not me, though, I’ll stick to my specialty teas from Vermont.
