What's Your "Active Ingredient '90' "?

When I was growing up in the 1950's, Shell, the gasoline company, was advertising that their fuel contained "TCP" an additive that increased horsepower and made your engine run better. There was no reference to fuel economy that I can recall—who cared? ...gas was about 20 cents a gallon!

Anyways, Shell sold a helluva lot of gas with this tactic.

Thing was, all gas contained TCP, but Shell was the only one pounding that drum.
Back then, there was a lot more gas station brands to choose from so competition was fierce. And at 25 cents per gallon, there wasn't a lot of room for price cutting. Gas company credit cards were in their infancy so there wasn't any brand loyalty coming from card usage either.

Shell needed to create a perceived difference and they nailed it with TCP. Didn't matter that no one really new what TCP stood for, if it was in the product and made it better, customers were in the market for it …in droves.

Since then there have been zillions of product claims of "active ingredients" that make the product "new and improved" or in other words, "better than the stuff you've been wasting your money buying from us for years."

Advertisers are continually at war with one another to prove their product is better that the competitors'. In the ad industry this is known as the "unique selling proposition" and it is still one of the mainstays of advertising today. How is the product or service different, and therefore better, than the competition?

Take a look at what you're selling and ask yourself, "What do we provide or do that makes us stand out? What could we do or add to our product that would make more people want to do business with us?"

One way is to ask your customers why they do business with you. Tabulate the answers and see if anything stands out and if so perhaps the answer to what makes your business stand out.

Another way to do the same thing is to find out the problems or "pain" that those who could be potential customers are experiencing and that your services might solve. This is a bit more difficult but say you were a lawyer and you found out that a great many people could not get to a legal office due to infirmity or daytime commitments—you could advertise that your firm has flexible hours or makes house calls.

If you find a niche that needs filling, why not fill that niche with your unique product or service and stand out from the rest? It's like having "active ingredient 90" only this one makes your business run better and be more profitable.