So, if you’re following the commandments, you should now have a unique name, possibly a tagline, and established yourself as the first or leader in your unique category. What about the service or product you offer? Do you offer an extraordinary product or service, or do you offer an ordinary one?

Even if the service you provide is customary, traditional, and probably offered by your competition, you should make it appear unique just as well.

Remember that perception is more powerful than truth. You don’t need to emphasize that your product or service is unique, better than the competition, or even the best for that matter. Doing so by declaring that it is can sometimes be worse than not saying anything at all, and the reason for that is that it makes your self-serving claim appear suspect or exaggerated.

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The most common mistake newcomers to business make is to think that by expanding their portfolio they will secure more business. Conversely, they think that by narrowing their market they will also narrow their chances of getting more business. In either case, nothing can be further from the truth.

A management consultant who I believe had a knack for human resources also offered bookkeeping services, thinking that having more to offer will keep her busier — she then wondered why she wasn’t getting any work!

The truth of the matter is the fact that specializing and narrowing your focus as much as possible will increase your likelihood of getting more business.

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Core expansion is far different than extension. Extension is often referred to as franchising, licensing, line extension, or branching out — also known as conglomerating. In this context, I am referring to expansion by division.

If you’re a specialist in your field — which I hope you are after reading this book — and you offer only one type of service, you can expand from within by dividing your core (your product or service) into multiple, smaller components.

This helps to do 3 things. 1) It doesn’t take away from your category or specialization. 2) It increases your hit ratio when targeting clients, since some of them might be interested in your entire package while others may be interested in only a portion of it. And 3) it increases the aura of expertise you project because you refrain from spreading yourself too thin.

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A mistake businesspeople often make is when they try to sell their company directly in every communication they produce. (I’m referring to the idea that they try to sell their company as being merely open for business, also called “institutional advertising,” and not direct marketing, which is different.)

Institutional advertising (or what I call “blind branding”) will draw up immediate clients. When advertising, they spend hoards of cash on repeated, slick and entertaining ads. When marketing to people for the first time, they blab on until the cows come home. When sending out information, they send beautifully designed packages that make shipping crates look like a joke!

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The following is probably the greatest commandment in “Power Positioning.”

Now that we’ve talked about lead generation advertising, the next step is where to advertise. And the trick to having as many pre-qualified prospects come forward is to have your ad noticed and read by such a specific group of people as much, as often, and as effectively as possible. General publications won’t do that and they cost a lot of money… That’s cost-per-lead money.

Specialized publications, on the other hand, have the distinction of appealing to a specific audience and thus increase the chances of it being noticed as well as read. Why? If one newspaper has a readership of 100,000 but only 25,000 fits into your demographics, where another has only 40,000 readers but all of which fits into your demographics (because the publication is specialized), which one do you think will give you the greatest response?

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We’ve made it! You’ve now reached the last commandment. And what better way is there to end this book that’s chock-full o’ marketing secrets other than by telling you about something I truly hate. I hate networking. Really, I do!

I hate it because, in my experience, it hasn’t brought me anything substantial in return. You’re probably saying right now, “What? Is he crazy? Has he lost his mind?”

But wait a minute, hear me out. Networking isn’t a bad concept. Far from it. If the previous commandments have been properly followed, networking can be a fantastic marketing tool to leverage them. If you can be at the top of your prospects’ minds, you can also be at the top of your network’s mind, right?

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Here’s a bonus commandment. I thought I’d make it a bonus because 11 would sound a little funny, wouldn’t you think? And it is indeed a bonus since, with all that you have learned, you would never be as effective if I didn’t give this extra piece of advice while implementing the first 10.

I can never stress enough, whether it’s in this book or in my seminars that, in order to create endless streams of new, repeat and referral business, you must turn every single nook-and-cranny of your business into an effective marketing system. Everything you do must become a marketing activity.

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