If there’s one problem in all advertising and marketing, it is the sheer fact that there is too much competition out there. Everything just seems to look like everything else. If one copies another company let alone another company’s promotion, it only serves as a reminder of one’s competition!

You don’t want to remind your prospects about your competition, do you?

So, don’t copy them — or as Earl Nightingale once said, “Don’t copy, create!” Be unique. Be original. Be special. Be different. In fact, be so different that, if possible (and it is), your name or the name of your firm as well as the services you deliver become generic in the minds of prospects.

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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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In the second commandment, you learned that you should be the leader in your category or in your unique area of expertise. Now you need to be known as such. And one of the most effective ways to do this is through publicity.

I met a fellow once while working in New York City who ran his own show on cable television — his very own cable show! Cable and community television stations are wonderful mediums to get the word out effectively. This is an area in which you can get a lot of publicity at little or no cost.

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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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Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make.

We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people’s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective to the degree that it must communicate its essence and create top-of-mind awareness within an extremely short amount of time.

Names are often the best tools — and sometimes the only ones — for accomplishing this efficiently.

In the game of positioning, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the marketplace and must do so instantly. While uniqueness is an important factor, there are many other elements that can help the anchoring process — elements that help a name become memorable as well as chosen when a customer experiences a specific need or desire.

So, here are some simple rules to follow when choosing a name for your company or product.

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After that last article on viral marketing, some people emailed me wanting more information about how to create at least the perception of uniqueness.

Let me give you a few tips, inspired by the “Law Of Leadership” from my two favorite mentors, Jack Trout and Al Ries.

Often, many businesses build their entire marketing strategy around a particular brand and its “better” qualities. Claiming superiority smacks of being untrue and is often a very risky endeavor. In other words, if you claim that you’re the best, your statement will be suspect.

When a mentor told me that “implication is more powerful than specification,” I realized that this, in itself, implied many things as well. What I pulled from that statement is, it is much more effective to imply superiority — to be perceived as being a superior company or one with a superior product — than to simply being (or outright stating that one is) superior.

But how do you get others to perceive that you’re the best? How does one imply superiority without stating it outright? The following are a few pointers to guide you in that direction.

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I was recently interviewed by a print magazine about how I started my business. In it, I offered several tips and ideas on how to carve a niche in the marketplace that I personally applied.

And I realized that some of these tips were particularly powerful. So I wanted to reprint some of my answers here for you.

If you know my personal story, you know how niche marketing played an important role in my career.

Long story short, I feared rejection immensely, which led to a reclusive childhood. I wanted to overcome my fears and decided to dive into the world of sales in order to fight them. Years passed and many failures ensued until I finally became the top producing salesperson in Canada for a Fortune 500 company.

How did I accomplish that?

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