Don't Live in the Junk Drawer

You walk into your kitchen and want a coffee cup. You don't look everywhere, and you don't go to the junk drawer, which is where we put anything we don't have a category for. You go to the cupboard where coffee cups live. Almost everything in your kitchen is categorized and lives in one place. Anything without a category goes in the junk drawer.

So the number one piece of advice for all marketing is: don't be in the junk drawer. Fit into one of the cupboards or drawers where something like you belongs.

Then, and this is what makes marketing different from other parts of business, we get to create brand new cupboards, drawers and shelves in the prospect's mind, and live there. In a lot of cases we're the only thing living in that new cupboard.

Memorable mostly means that when they need something like you, or they're bored and standing in line for coffee, you might pop into their head unbidden. That's because you created a new cupboard in the kitchen, or a new section of one. Why everyone doesn't try to create a new section of a cupboard for themselves, I don't know.

Unless you're the biggest or second biggest player in a category, you don't want to share a cupboard with everyone else. You'll just get compared, and you'll end up competing on price.