Many small businesses don’t have a reason to exist. Take away their name and logo from their website or other marketing material, and you’d never know who they are.

From a customer’s perspective, there is no compelling reason to buy from them and they make sales The problem is that these businesses are just another “me too” business.

How did they decide on the price? How did they decide on the product? How did they decide on marketing?

Usually, the answer is they just had a look at what their nearest competitor was doing and did the same thing or slightly changed something.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with modeling something that’s already working. In fact, that’s a very smart thing to do.

Think of marketing as an amplifier.

You need to develop your unique selling proposition (USP) This is where a lot of people get stuck.

They say something like “I sell coffee.

There’s nothing unique about that.” Good marketing, especially direct response marketing, is always customer and problem/solution-focused.

THE FORMULA: You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact, [proof].