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If your car needed repair work, would you go to a garage that offers free estimates? You likely would. Today, most garages offer them.

Not only has it become a customary practice, but also everyone expects a free estimate from mechanics.

However, here’s an interesting scenario. Let’s say your car broke down at the worst possible time, and you are in a terrible hurry. (If you’re like most people these days, you are.) Plus, you specifically wanted a free estimate.

If you had to choose a garage quickly, which garage would you choose? Would you go to the one you only think that offers free estimates? Or would you go to the one you know for sure that does? Especially if you don’t have much time?

As simple as it may sound, by communicating something that’s usually taken for granted by your target market, you will be chosen more often. Rather than claiming superiority, like “we’re #1,” you’re implying it by demonstrating what makes you superior.

A mentor once told me, “Implication is more powerful than specification.” In marketing, it means that you should imply your superiority rather than claim it outright.

If you claim superiority, your claim appears self-serving and whatever you do say is suspect at best. But if you imply superiority, your claim, although not directly stated, is accepted as more credible, genuine, and, paradoxically, concrete.

People will unconsciously assume that you are superior. You are communicating your superiority, not in some marketing piece you wrote or paid for, but in that most elusive yet vital of places in all of marketing…

… Your target market’s mind.

So, rather than outright stating that you are superior (e.g., that you’re the “best,” that you have a product of superior or high quality, that you offer greater service, that you provide better rates, etc), explain specifically why you are superior.

In fact, the most critical word in marketing contains only three letters. It’s the word “why.” It is much better to communicate why you are original, special, or unique, or why you are better, different, or superior than your competitors, and not the fact that you are.

In other words, the point is that you should imply your superiority by specifying, as much as possible, what exactly makes you better than anyone else and not that you are superior. This approach is far more powerful, and the effect lasts longer.

By implying your value proposition, it pierces through your market’s natural psychological barriers, as people hate to be sold to. They hate making a bad decision. They hate being patronized. And more importantly, they hate being taken advantage of.

Realize that what makes you special, unique, or superior doesn’t have to be your product in itself, although it certainly can be. But the easiest way to make your product unique is by what you add to it — specifically, to its value — as to appear superior.

Simply stated, you may offer something that everyone else does. But you could also offer something more, above and along with your product, than no one else does.

Let me explain. Your product is composed of three distinct levels:

1. There’s the core product (the product’s main benefit),
2. The actual product (the product itself and its features),
3. And the augmented product (the product’s value, such as the added value — additional features and benefits — you specifically bring to the table).