There’s a dead simple shortcut to getting people to know what your product does. Yet hardly anybody does it.

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Negative space marketing. 

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If your company wanders on its quest to find the absolute best, easiest way to describe what it does - read on.

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Companies only survive by offering something desirable that people will pay for. Pretty simple. But so many companies struggle to articulate how THEIR offering is desirable and why customers should care. Buzz words, muddled messaging and a lack of differentiation from competitors run rampant.

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I’ve worked on this with literally every client.

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Granted, it’s challenging to distill a complex company, multiple products and an array of benefits down into a single sentence. And surprisingly founders are often the worst at doing this, because they are SO deep into the space and customer problems that they see ALL of the painful limitations needing to be solved.

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But selling solutions to everything is selling nothing to anybody. What gets sales is focusing on one thing.

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If you don’t? No leads. No ringing sales team phones.

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Here’s my dead simple method to find your powerful one-line raison d’etre - describe the negative ramifications of going with a competing product or company.

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Say you manufacture titanium widgets for cars.

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"If you choose a steel widget from our competitor, here's what will happen....

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• Fewer people can afford to buy the car because it requires more fuel, since steel is heavier than titanium.
• Families don’t want to buy the car because steel is less rigid, and thus safe, than titanium.
• Buyers in coastal climates aren’t interested because the car will rust with a steel widget - which titanium won’t do.

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By choosing a competitor, your cars will sell poorly to families, budget conscious buyers and people who live near a coast (which is a lot)."

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What you did is describe all of the space around what your product does. This has built a narrative with your brand as the clear, baggage-free center. The outline makes it obvious what you do.

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Then take those negative connotations, and simply reverse them.

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Your titanium widgets turn cars into fuel efficient, incredibly safe, long-lasting machines that perfectly meet today’s moment where cost, safety and longevity are major concerns of car buyers.

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Run this exercise internally, and in ad campaigns. 

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Paint the picture of the hellish world. That place looks terrible, so people instinctively run away from it.

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And where do they run? To your brilliantly lit, perfectly positioned safe place. 

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With their wallets.

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