Quote Originally Posted by Dave A View Post
It does pose an interesting challenge, however. Somehow, you need to make your offering exceptional. Worth talking about. Our delivery needs to exceed expectations. This makes the service department a vital component in the marketing plan.
There are three things that Seth Godin speaks about quite a lot (and he has a book for each of them!),

1) Permission
2) Being remarkable (he uses the term Purple cow)
3) Free gift inside (i.e. more than your client expects)

Traditional marketing is not built on permission, in fact it is build on interruption. That has its advantages and disadvantages, but in a time when there are millions of things vying for people's attention, what gives us the right to butt in with ads (on so on)?

But look at the statement in another way too. There are some things which people would love to be interrupted with, and would be more than willing to give you permission to market to them. Typically those things are remarkable.

Now take that word remarkable. Is your product/service/etc so special that a client of your will make a remark to another person (potential client) about it when there is no direct gain for them?

I've started to try to think in those terms about my own service. Would people talk about it? Would they raise it in conversation purely for fact that it left a lasting impression, or only when something external triggers a thought?

When I got service from Outsurance that went way beyond what I expected, I went out of my way to speak enthusiastically about it. No prompting, no incentives, just a great service worth speaking about.