differentiate with marketing?

In November 2022, after months of procrastination and fear, I finally posted on my personal LinkedIn profile…

This post was important to me as it’s my #1 core belief in the world of business and marketing.

So basically, I heard this line thrown about a lot:

“How do we differentiate with our marketing”

…and this is my reaction every time:

The thing is…

You don't differentiate with flipping marketing. You differentiate by…

Providing the best product or service possible to your customers.

Might be common sense, but common sense is not common practice as they say.

The problem is there have been some major shifts in the market.
What's happened is there have been some changes in the rules of the game.

Buyers have evolved. As well as a lot of new technologies and competition.

When there's a lot of competition you need a lot of differentiation. You need to be able to separate yourself from the crowd.

If there's a red sea of sharks, you need to make sure that you are existing in a blue ocean.

If you can run slightly different marketing, so what?

It's the businesses that have great products/services that actually add real tangible value to their customers that win.

It's all about the product and you know what?

It's always been about the product.

What's happening now is the market has become more aware and so they don't just look at how slick your marketing is and then make a decision.

Instead, they look at the product. Try it out, check out the proof, reviews, testimonials etc.

If it isn't great, then people aren't going to listen to you and ignore your marketing.

So, it's all about the product. Then it's good marketing.

You can have the best product since slice bread but without good marketing, your business won't grow.

Once you focus on the product as the key differentiator, just imagine how powerful your marketing will be?

Examples of how to stand out

Now that I’ve covered, in my opinion, the #1 principle of marketing…

Here’s how to escape making your marketing 100x harder than it should be by NOT being the same as everyone else.

The goal of marketing is to cut through the noise and attract potential customers but many companies are blending in with one another. Same graphics, content and tactics.

The are many ways to stand out and gain traction. Here are just 2 examples of how you can:

1. Creatives:

Visual storytelling is a powerful tool for grabbing attention. As visuals are processed faster and more effectively.

By utilising creative visuals such as Graphics, Animations, and Videos you can create an engaging experience.

Research has shown that creative visuals have better recall rates than other types of content.

A good example is looking at what catches attention, a ‘scroll stopper’.

I used the inspiration of Youtube thumbnails and implemented them to salesflow.io ‘s blog page that hooks visitors to click on:

2 . P2P (people to people) Content:

'Earn the scroll' by providing copy that readers can connect with.

Your message, regardless of the medium, should be entertaining, educational and valuable. Always.

• Relevance: Provide content that is interesting and useful.

• Personalisation: Make the reader feel you're talking directly to them.

• Inject some personality with day-to-day pains, stories, etc.

Think about who you are going after and what would they find valuable.

This is the importance of innovation at the marketing level.

By improving those 2 areas, you suddenly become credible, instead of ‘another one of those’.

I hope you find this insightful,
Rachid