4 Ways to make your business stand out

Raise your hand if you’re like me and you lose your phone 10 plus times a day.

I do. It has been found in the fridge. It has been found in my kids clothing drawers. It has been found on a shelf in the storage room. It has been found on the floor in the car. I am constantly losing my phone. Why? Well, because my brain is full. It’s full of bills, laundry, gardening, school, soccer, practice, dance lessons, doctor’s appointments, church meetings, grocery shopping, homework, plus all of my business stuff. My mind gets so full.

And guess what? This is true for all of your customers. They may not all lose their phone 10 plus times a day, but they all have a lot going on in their minds. You think about your business regularly and sometimes it’s very difficult to remember that your customers don’t, it is only one small part of their life. If you want to make your business stand out and get people to participate in it regularly, then you must make your business memorable. 

4 ways to make your business stand out in the online space

So how do you make your business stand out? Well, I have four suggestions for you today.

#1 – You need a big picture promise

If you are familiar with my MAP Method for website design, then you know what a big picture promise is. If you are not familiar with it, this is the most important thing on your entire website. Your business, in order to be successful, must solve a problem for somebody. And it must be a fairly specific problem. Something that they actually believe they have in their life, a problem that they’re really dealing with.

No, this isn’t a small problem. There are a lot of mini-problems that you will solve in your business. Every blog post you write, or podcast episode you create, should all solve a problem. All of those mini-problems should help solve the main problem that your business solves.

In my business, my big picture promise is ‘your website should make you money.’ Everything I do is focused on helping you create a website that makes you money. Everything I do. Every blog post I write, every Instagram post, every email I send, it is all with the idea that I am trying to help you make money from your website.

Now this big picture promise, I’m going to repeat it everywhere. It is in my Instagram profile. It is on my website. I say it often when I’m live, when I’m creating videos, it’s in my emails. It’s in my Instagram posts. I say all the time that your website should make you money. If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you know that I believe that.

This really helps me to stand out. When you’re sitting around with a friend and they say, “oh, I’m just not making any money from this dumb website.” You’re going to think of me because you know exactly what problem I solve. This is  one way in which you make your business stand out. You need a big picture promise.

#2 – Create slogans based on your values

What do I mean by this?

Well, first of all, you have to know what you value. What do you value in your business? What is important to you? What does your integrity allow you to do and not do inside of your business? Why did you start your business? I want you to create some slogans around them.

Here are a few of mine:

• people before profits. You might notice that these slogans aren’t necessarily new they’re phrases that you’ve heard out there. I’m not the only person that says them, but when I pick them up and use them and say them often, it helps you get to know who I am and what I value. And once again, that is going to make you memorable because when somebody is talking about my business coach, [00:06:00] she just making money is way more important to her than helping me. You’re going to hear me saying ‘people before profits,’ and you’re gonna say, “well, I know of a business coach who puts her people before her profits.” 
• default to generosity
• done is better than perfect.

I want you to create some slogans and phrases – succinct, short little phrases that you can repeat over and over and over again, everywhere you are. Emails, social media, website, so that people get to know you and understand what you value.

#3 – create a positioning statement for each category that you teach about

For example, I teach about copywriting. That is one of my topics that I touch on often. 

Here are a couple positioning statements that I have surrounding copywriting:

• Cut your words in half
• clear is better than clever

These are important because they tell you exactly where I stand on that topic.  Typically a positioning statement will be polarizing, either a little bit or sometimes a lot, but it’s going to be polarizing. There are going to be people who believe the direct opposite of you.

So I believe that you should cut your words in half in order to be effective in marketing. There are other people that will tell you to write a lot. Every time I talk about cutting my words in half, I have people come back to me and say, “but don’t I have to write a lot for Google?” Or “well, what if I have a lot to say?” Or “I want to give them really high quality content.” I’ve got answers for all of that, of why I believe you should cut your words in half.

Clear is better than clever. People come to me all the time. I have had design clients that I have begged them to change their tagline to something clear, but they won’t because they want it to be clever. So there are people who want to do the opposite. This is going to draw attention to me and it’s going to make me memorable.

A couple more examples in website design, that’s obviously another category that I cover. One thing I’ll say often is “You own your website. You don’t own social media, but you own your website.”

Last you’ll often hear me say “a website is about results, not looks.” That makes people think, “oh, what? You don’t want my website to be pretty?” No, that’s not true. I do want your website to be pretty because pretty websites create results, but I don’t want it to be just pretty.

I want us to think about more than just being pretty, but you see how that phrase “web design is about results, not looks” makes people do a double-take and really think about what I’m saying?

You need phrases like this in your business. So go through each category that you talk about and create a positioning statement, a polarizing phrase.

#4 – name things in your business

Yes, you need a name for your business, but each of your products needs a name. You need to create processes that have names.

So once again, let me show you examples. From my business I have the MAP Method for website design. I gave it a name, MAP {Money and Progress} method. It becomes memorable. Now people can tell other people, “oh, if you want to make money with your website, you need the MAP method. Misty teaches it.” It becomes something they can memorize, remember and tell others about.

My group coaching group? I don’t call it group coaching. I call it Tech Check. I have a Product Template Vault. You want to name your products and you want to name your processes.

As a Review

The four ways you could become memorable are to:

• have a big picture promise
• slogans based on your values
• create positioning or polarizing statements based on the categories you teach about
• give your products and processes names

I know you feel called to be in this online space. Don’t let Satan discourage you. You are meant to be seen. Implement one or all of these tips and you’ll be well on your way to making your business stand out in the online world.