This quick marketing tip is all about the marketing power of being one of a kind in a world full of blandness.
One of the many common characteristics of successful businesspeople, is that they have the courage to be different. I’m not talking about being different just for the sake of it – I’m talking about being brave enough to stand out from the crowd and do what you believe to be right.
I remember listening to Warren Buffett, the world’s wealthiest and most successful investor, explaining how his company made so many tens of billions of dollars. He said: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” In other words, he achieved financial success by not following what the crowd were doing.
Marketing the ordinary
In marketing, we know that the more similar a product or service is to its competitors, the harder it is to market or get noticed. People don’t talk about the mundane and ordinary – they talk about the extraordinary. Yet, most businesses within the same industry are almost clones of one another.
Here’s what we see in every town and in every city: We see competing companies offer the same range of services, to the same marketplace, with the same generic promises.
- You need to be smarter than that, if you want to avoid price or fee sensitive customers.
- You need to be smarter than that, if you want to attract word of mouth publicity too; because people only speak (or remark) on those businesses that are remarkable.
- You need to be smarter than that if you want to want an above average business.
Most small business owners don’t really own a business at all. They have simply bought themselves a job with long hours and a ton of stress. They don’t look to the future with excitement, they look to the future with apprehension.
The great irony here, is that by taking the easy route and replicating what their competitors are doing and saying, they actually make business (and life) far harder for themselves. Conversely, by having the courage to be different, business and life become far, far easier.