Do you have any of these common business problems?
There are never enough good quality customers or clients
You get a real mix of customers – not one type (and to be honest you don't like 80% of the customers you do get)
Lots of tyre kickers – but not many customers getting over the line & the ones that do are price shoppers who don't stay around long
Your customers don't even remember your name or what you stand for
Your business has been hit hard by the GFC or some other crisis
You take some action, run some campaign or another and all you hear are the crickets chirruping or you get results that barely cover the cost of running the campaign (if at all)
You are working long hours and never seem to get ahead
The biggest cause of problems in a business is lack of clarity. You are not clear on your business strategy, direction or goals. You can't stand with your hand on your heart and say "This is the difference our business makes – this is how we are different". As a result, mistakes and errors are made which means re-work and wasted effort. Fuzzy thinking means fuzzy outcomes.
Let's make this a bit more practical – if you haven't thought through who you are and why you are different, it is really hard to explain to customers why they should buy from you and not your competition.
Lack of clarity about you and your direction leads to "me too" marketing where your marketing materials, your stores and even your employees begin to look just like the other blokes down the road.
You cast around for what makes you unique, and you trot out lines like "we try harder" (than what), "we care" (as opposed to not caring). If you look the same and talk the same, the only thing people have to compare you with is the $ - so being the same means you instantly create price shoppers.
To be blunt, and letting you in on an industry secret, many copywriters write from the "me too" space – they don’t take the time to go deeper, to find out what really makes you unique. With writing, you need someone who can dig & help you find your uniqueness.
Uniqueness can be about the precise way you do something, the extra steps you take, or the way you care for your customers. For example, a pool builder I work with only uses hot dipped zinc reinforcing in his pool construction and his concrete is 30mm thicker than standard, which means no rust and no bowing of the walls. He makes pools to match the exact number of tiles – so a pool will be 115 tiles by 94 tiles, just so there is no cut tile at the ends. His pools are exact to the mm – and yet he didn't think he did anything unique. Yet, anyone who has had a rusty pool or a pool that cracks or leaks will know that what he does is pretty darn spectacular. And last year one of Stuart Bevan's pools took out international pool of the year – so others think he is pretty spectacular also.
The other problem is many businesses write from a space of "what is now" compared to "where they want to be". If you write from a "now" space you get outcomes that reflect where you are now in terms of income, clients and employees. By getting clear on where you want to be BEFORE you start to write, you will create more compelling copy that will propel you to your desired goal.
Your first sell in any business is to yourself, the second to your employees and the third to your customers. Unless you can be clear to yourself and your employees why you are in business, then your sales to your customers will be less than exciting.
One way out of this is to spend a fair bit of time working out what makes you unique. What is the purpose of your business? What difference do you make? What value do you add? Everybody has something that is unique about them – what's yours?
HR Tip of the Week: Do You Value Unique Thoughts in Your Team?
This sounds like an easy question - do you value unique ideas and thinking within your team? Now before you leap in to answer this question, stop for a minute and look at demonstrated behaviour within your team.
How many of your team actually come forward and share unique ideas or thoughts with you or the rest of your team? When was the last time that someone suggested something radically different to what the rest of the team was thinking or doing? How many innovations have been made to your processes or services in the past 12 months?
If, like many businesses, you struggle to come up with more than one or two examples, then you may want to consider whether your values are just in your head and not in actuality within your team.
Now think about what behaviours you and the team may be exhibiting that show that unique thought actually is not welcome in the team. Do you quickly jump on left field thinking saying there is no budget or we have already tried it and it failed? Do you ask for a mountain of detail or statistics to back up ideas, which means you paralyse the innovator and teach everyone else it's easier to be quiet than creative? Or do you play the game of "yes, but ..." with every new idea.
If your team is not coming up with new ideas, you need to take a close look at what you are doing to stamp out innovation.
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended as only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it.
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To be blunt, and letting you in on an industry secret, many copywriters write from the "me too" space – they don’t take the time to go deeper, to find out what really makes you unique. With writing, you need someone who can dig & help you find your uniqueness. 
This sounds like an easy question - do you value unique ideas and thinking within your team? Now before you leap in to answer this question, stop for a minute and look at demonstrated behaviour within your team. 
