Excellent customer service, trustworthiness, and quality products/services are NOT differentiators.
They’re expected. They’re the bare minimum.
- If you’re an architect, your drawings should be detailed.
- An accountant? Let me guess: you’re good with numbers.
- If you’re a restaurant, we can assume the food tastes good.
- A digital marketer? I assume you’ll get me “results,” as that’s what I’m paying for.
These are baseline values/characteristics, which as business owners we should absolutely uphold, but we get no brownie points for them.
Here’s the problem: If your marketing is driven exclusively by baseline values, your potential customers won’t be able to distinguish you from anyone else in your industry.
So how do you find a marketing message that actually resonates, that is distinct from what all of your average competitors say about themselves?
- List out all the qualities that describe your business: what clients say about you, what you’re proud of, etc.
- Then cross out all the ones that are expected of your industry. These are fluff.
- What remains is what actually makes you special, unique, and different.
It won’t be for everyone, but some people will absolutely love you.
