If you’ve read anything on my website, you know I’m a performing songwriter as well as the music industry copywriter.
I don’t even try to separate my two music related lives anymore.
Besides, my love for songwriting and performing keeps me active in the mindset of your customer. Ultimately giving you a more effective music industry copywriter.
That said, I remember co-writing with a fellow guitar picker. A quite skilled one at that.
He stopped me in the middle of our writing session, leaned in close, stared at my fingers on the neck of the guitar and said …
“What are you doing there?”
Dumbfounded, I was just playing a CAdd9 chord or something equally plain.
I didn’t know what he was asking.
“No, no …“ he said with a mischievous little smirk on his face, “with your fingers there, what is that? What are you doing there?”
I still didn’t quite get it.
But then it dawned on me.
He was talking about something I do which I take for granted. A stylistic thing I picked up along the way to help fill in empty spaces, contribute a sense of percussion, and give a certain playing element not often heard.
I’ll tell you what it is, but there’s more to my point here.
What I was doing was full chord pull-offs. When I pull them off, they almost arpeggio as my fingers flick off the fretboard. It all works in conjunction with a right-hand strumming technique I also use for the full effect, but the point is this …
I do this without even thinking. It’s just how I play. And yet other pickers are trying to figure out what I’m doing.
He wasn’t the first one to ask.
What could this possibly have to do with your marketing in the music industry?
Everything my friend … everything.
In your business, you do things everyday which customers don’t know about. And you take them for granted.
Even the hum-drum daily activities you do could be an incredible hook for your business’s advertising.
Take the legendary Claude Hopkins.
You may not know Claude, but you’ve likely heard of Schlitz beer.
Claude was responsible for putting Schlitz on the map of beer drinkers everywhere.
Know how he did it?
He exploited one simple word every beer company used. He made a big deal out of something every brewery did.
Claude explained what brewing companies meant by “pure.”
He exploited the sanitization process Schlitz used to produce pure beer.
Now that might sound boring, or maybe you wonder what the big deal is about exploiting the sanitization process.
The point is, every brewing company used the same sanitization process in their breweries. They just didn’t tell anybody. It was an untapped benefit which was grandstanded, and it separated Schlitz from all other beers. It put Schlitz into the major league of beers right then.
But, it took someone outside the company to come into the brewery and find that little nugget. Because to anyone else in the brewery, it was an everyday thing … no big deal.
Just like me and how I play, I didn’t know what my co-writer was talking about … even when he tried to ask. It was totally oblivious to me, because I was so close to what I do every day.
And so it might be for you.
Look, all it takes is one key separation from your competitor … something to give you a unique selling proposition (USP). Even if it is as plain as washing brewery lines, sanitizing bottles or … in my case full chord pull-offs.
Often times, spotting these nuggets comes from someone inside the music industry, but outside your team. And, yes, you know it’s coming. If you need help identifying a marketable USP or that defining piece of information, I’m your man.
Just get in touch before your competitor does, because it’s first dibs on grandstanding those common but powerful things you do every day your customer doesn’t know about … yet.