How to differentiate your marketing if you can’t naturally differentiate your business

Marketing textbooks, business coaches, and cold plunging tech bros will tell you that business success is simple if you ‘create a point of differentiation’.

Yet for many businesses, differentiation ain’t easy.

Perhaps the nature of your industry prevents the development of radical new features or services. Maybe your market isn’t receptive to anything beyond a comfortable status quo. Or maybe your business model makes innovation restrictive.

Fortunately, there are practical strategies that allow you to stand out without the need for sweeping changes.

Tools to differentiate your marketing

Use these to make your marketing stand out, if you can’t naturally differentiate your business:

1. Personality: Use the personalities of key individuals to demonstrate knowledge, likeability, and an ability to create desired outcomes. Read more here.
2. Proof: Showcase a unique point of difference by leveraging the social proof generated by your customers, industry bodies, and the media Read more here.
3. Persistence: Drive a competitive wedge by executing with hyper-consistent marketing messaging and delivery patterns. Read more here.
4. Problem Solving: Use empathy and problem solving skills to demonstrate a competitive understanding of your customers’ desired outcomes
5. Packaging & Presentation: Differentiate your products/services and major customer lifecycle events by wrapping them in a unique, outcome-based naming strategy
6. Cognitive Complexity: Your prospects prefer sales and marketing that’s easier to understand, and websites that are easier to interact with
7. Storytelling: Use the ancient art of storytelling to capture attention, build relationships, deliver tactical sales messages, and grow your brand
8. Personalisation: Differentiate your sales and marketing by leveraging even smarter personalisation
9. Variety: Use ‘pattern interrupts’ to prevent fatigue and accelerate competitive cut through

Let’s take a look at these in detail.

Strategy: Personality

Before we unpack this strategy, consider these statements:

“People buy from people.”

“We buy from those we like and trust.”

And, “people buy with emotion, and justify with logic.”

Whenever someone buys a product or service, they’ve usually evaluated if they ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ a brand. According to Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, this decision-making process occurs in the subconscious mind 95% of the time.

The goal of this strategy is to inject different types of personality into your sales and marketing, so you (a) stand apart from others and (b) influence your prospects’ emotional decision-making process in your favour.

Examples of this include:

• Demonstrating brand values in your marketing
• Choosing a tone of voice and visual identity that is appealing to your market
• Demonstrating the personality of your brand’s key team members
• Demonstrating your culture, and ‘why’ you do what you do

Here are some places you can demonstrate the personality of your brand’s key team members:

• On your website’s “meet the team” page
• In blog posts
• In videos recorded by individual team members
• In email marketing collateral sent to prospects and customers
• In social media posts

By demonstrating the personality of each key team member, you are demonstrating your brand’s likeability and therefore creating a valuable point of differentiation.

To summarise, your goal is to make your prospects sub-consciously connect with your brand by demonstrating the likeability of your team members.

Tactical Examples For Demonstrating Your Personality

Video Marketing

Video is a great way to demonstrate the likeable personality of your key team members. Here are some example videos, ideally containing a team member ‘on screen’, that you can share with your prospects to achieve this:

• Create a short video that teaches a prospect how to solve a particular problem they might have
• Create a short video that teaches a prospect how to achieve a desired outcome they want
• Create a short video that explains a perspective about a particular common issue or industry event
• Create a webinar that solves a burning problem, achieves a desired outcome, or provides valuable information about a coveted or popular topic
• Create a short video that walks ‘behind the scenes’ inside your business, or a department inside your business
• Create a Q&A-style interview video with key team members

Share these videos to your email list of potential customers, your blog feed, and your social media profiles.

Email Marketing + Blogging

Email and blogging is another way to demonstrate the personality and likeability of key team members. Simply modify the above list into an text-based email or blog, instead of a video.

Strategy: Proof 

This strategy uses different types of proof of your product or service’s ability to create positive outcomes to differentiate your sales and marketing.

This strategy also leverages any awards or recognition you’ve earned in your industry, and any mentions you’ve received in popular media platforms, to set you apart from your competitors and demonstrate the benefits your product provides.

Of course, this strategy can only be implemented if you are not limited by compliance rules/legislation, and you actually have social proof to leverage.

Implementing proof into your sales and marketing can be done by creating and showcasing the following items:

• Star reviews (via Google, TrustPilot, or similar)
• Customer testimonials – written, and video
• Customer case studies
• Industry awards (at a business level, or individual level)
• Media mentions

These items can be used in the following places:

• On your website
• On your social media profiles
• As paid social media ads
• In your automated email communications
• In your manual email/EDM communications
• In native advertising, usually within a broader media campaign

Tactical Examples Of Implementing Social Proof

For example, a business may communicate:

• Their Google Reviews (as a star rating, and also the written reviews) on their website, in their email marketing, and on social media
• A series of customer case studies demonstrating how they solved common problems, on their website and in their email marketing (these could be written or video case studies, or a combination of both)
• A set of written customer testimonials on their website
• Icons of the media platforms they’ve been mentioned in/“as seen in”, on their homepage
• Their recent awards, on their homepage

Many of the customers we work with have an automated process for gathering Google Reviews and/or written reviews. This is executed via a pre-written email autoresponder campaign that asks a happy customer for a review.

Strategy: Persistence 

This strategy requires you to be brutally consistent in the delivery of:

• Regular blog posts on your website
• Regular manual email communications to your prospect and sales pipeline lists
• Social media posts and community engagement
• Your messaging, and the tone of voice/brand personality you use
• Remarketing messaging
• Remarketing ad placement
• Follow-up calls to leads generated via your website (in under five minutes)
• Follow-up calls to potential clients (who are in your sales process) Being persistent in your sales and marketing helps you:
• Retain front of mind status
• Deepen your relationship with each prospect
• Influence a prospect’s decision-making process in your favour
• Achieve a “big brand” status, without a typical “big brand” budget investment
• Demonstrate your values and commitment to creating positive outcomes

Being persistent also helps you provide more value than other competitors who are executing less, or less-consistent, sales and marketing strategies.

Tactical Examples Of Persistent Marketing Implementation

For example, a business may implement the following persistent marketing rhythm:

• One blog post per week, published to their website, and shared on social media profiles
• Two manual email broadcasts per month, exploring recent industry-specific events (or content that prospects want to know about)
• One additional, standalone social media post per week
• A persistent banner remarketing campaign on the Google Display Network, using a 30-day window and a frequency cap of 4 impressions per week
• A persistent remarketing campaign on Facebook’s ad platform, using a tiered audience system displaying unique ads inside of a 7-day window, and a 28-day window

The same business may also adopt the following rules around their sales process followups (this only applies if you have an offline or complex sales process):

• Every web-generated lead must be called within five minutes if generated during business hours, and at 0830hrs the next business day if generated after hours
• Web leads must be called every two days, for eight days total, if they are uncontactable
• If they are uncontactable after 8 days, they are to be sent an SMS (if possible)
• Prospects must receive a followup call 36 hours after their intital consultation

Problem Solving 

This strategy pivots on the following direct-response sales and marketing rule:

If you can articulate your prospects problems better than they can, they’ll assume you have a powerful solution.

To expand on this furthermore, you’ll drive a sharp competitive position if you are able to:

• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of a potential customer’s unwanted problems, and what those problems actually mean to them
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the unwanted problems a potential customer didn’t even know they yet had, and what those problems could mean to them (this is a very powerful strategy)
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of a potential customer’s desired outcomes (this is also a very powerful strategy)
• Explain how to solve a potential customer’s problems, in a unique and compelling way

This strategy requires you to re-articulate each potential customer’s unwanted problems (and their solutions) and desired outcomes in a unique way. Alongside conversations inside of your sales process, here are other places you can proactively execute this strategy:

• On key landing pages on your website
• Inside of key content offers, premium content etc.
• In social media posts and advertising
• In EDM communications and other email marketing messaging

During your sales conversations

Packaging & Presentation 

Before we unpack this strategy, consider this statement:

People don’t want to buy a drill. Instead, they just want a hole in the wall.

If we draw a parallel with your business, this adage suggests that your customers are not paying you to provide a product or service. Instead, they paying you to create an outcome.

Using this concept, you can create unique and exciting outcome-driven nomenclature for your products/services and major customer lifecycle events, that help differentiate you from others. The most important part of implementing this process is identifying what your customers really want from you, which could be:

• An easier life
• Enjoyment or happiness
• Not having to worry about something
• A sense of belonging
• Self-actualisation
• Status and prestige

• Health and wellbeing
• Business growth
• More net profit
• More topline revenue
• Getting time back
• Growing wealth faster

When you’ve worked out what these important ‘ultimate’ benefits are, weave them into your packaging and presentation strategy.

For example, if you provide a professional service, consider formulating attractive, outcome-based names for key sales process events (eg. your initial consultation) and your

key services (eg. your core service, secondary services). Additionally, you might want to create a tiered naming system that helps you incorporate an anchored pricing model, to frame potential customers into the benefits of your higher-paid services. Examples of this ‘tiered’ naming structure are:

• Basic, Intermediate, Advanced
• Starter, Pro, Premium
• Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond
• Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond

You may also want to implement other packaging and presentation strategies to differentiate your business, including:

• Providing a risk reduction mechanism, such as a performance-based guarantee
• Creating visual design elements for each product or service you offer (eg. icons/logos)
• Redefining/upgrading your brand strategy (this is usually done via a branding agency)

Packaging & Presentation Tactical Examples

Sales Process Events – For Service Providers

After working with dozens of professional services clients in multiple industries, we’ve found that the most popular sales process event is an initial consultation (where firms conduct a triage process to demonstrate to a potential client how they provide value).

Your intitial consultation, held at the start of your sales process, could instead be called a:

• Growth Session
• Profit Accelerator Session
• Equity Multiplier Strategy Session

As you can see, the name of the session is tied to an outcome (ie. growth, accelerated profit, more equity).

Key Services

An accountant may name their key service as a “Growth & Profit Accelerator Program”. A financial planner may name their key service as a “Wealth & Happiness Program”.

As you can see, these program names are tied to various desirable outcomes. And each of these can be paired with a tiered naming structure, to anchor higher price points. Please note, these are basic examples only. You’re invited to get creative!

Strategy: Cognitive Complexity

This strategy reduces the mental gymnastics (AKA ‘cognitive friction’) your potential customers experience when they’re researching and choosing from different options. Making a high-risk decision, such as purchasing a high-value item (eg, home, car)

or engaging a professional services provider, may create feelings of uncomfortable uncertainty and therefore a higher susceptibility to cognitive friction.

Your goal is to make your sales and marketing ‘easy to digest’.

When someone experiences too much cognitive friction when browsing your website, reading an email you’ve sent, or engaging with another piece of sales or marketing collateral, they are likely to discount the item and move on to something else. This may result in them discounting your business and choosing another, because they found your content too hard to read or understand.

In the context of your sales and marketing, cognitive complexity occurs when:

• A website’s information is incomplete or difficult to read/navigate
• A website does not have an effective conversion strategy
• Sales and marketing messaging is complicated, weak, incomplete, or contradictory By reducing cognitive complexity, you will create a situation where:
• The logical and emotional information a potential customer needs to make a

purchase decision is delivered clearly

• A potential customer knows exactly what they need to do if they want to take the next logical step with your business–which could be requesting some free content, or buying something, or reaching out to you for a consultation
• A potential customer ‘feels good’ when they browse your site and engage with your content
• Your website and digital marketing is easy to use

Tactics To Reduce Cognitive Complexity

Your Messaging

Follow these strategies to reduce your messaging’s cognitive complexity:

• Use language, grammar, sentence structures, etc. that are easy to read and understand
• Use native terminology used by your customers (this is called ‘dog whistle’ language)
• Avoid using overly complex statements or concepts
• Use memorable written imagery, anchored to key buying emotions
• Avoid writing in large blocks of text (instead, use bullet points, ordered lists, sub- headings etc. to break up text and cater to skim readers)
• Use visual elements such as diagrams and comparison tables where possible

Your Website’s Useability

Follow these strategies to reduce your website’s cognitive complexity:

• Provide an easy-to-understand navigation at the top of each page
• Have clear calls to action suitable for visitors at different stages of their decision- making process
  • For website visitors in the ‘research’ phase… use a Top Of Funnel Offer (TOFO). TOFO examples include checklists, short guides, video series, or other short- format PDF documents that provide problem-solving value.
  • For website visitors in the ‘consideration’ phase, use a Bottom Of Funnel Offer (BOFO). BOFO examples include ‘Buy Now’ or a ‘Free Consultation’.
• Ensure your web forms are easy to use and don’t contain any friction points that slow down their functionality
• Make sure your telephone number is visible on every page, ideally in the top right corner
• Ensure your website looks and functions great on all devices
• Ensure you don’t have any pop-ups or awkward functionality that deters users

Strategy: Storytelling 

By telling interesting, tasteful, and educational stories in your sales and marketing, you can build rapport, foster trust, communicate a tactical sales message, and create a powerful point of differentiation.

This strategy is powerful because it taps into an ancient human desire to hear a story. Storytelling has been used for milennia to communicate values, educate others about important social topics, and provide entertainment. Think of the last time you saw a great movie, or read a well-written book.

In the context of your sales and marketing, a great story will:

• Capture the scarce attention of your potential customers
• Allow you to deliver a hidden sales message
• Demonstrate your status and authority
• Help readers/watchers form a closer bond with your business or persona
• Grow the trust a potential customer has with your business
• Differentiate you from competitors

The stories you tell in your sales and marketing come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. We write all types of stories to help our clients market their businesses. Here are some of them…

Story Type: Lighthouse In A Storm

A “Lighthouse In A Storm” story captivates your audience’s attention, demonstrates your deep understanding of their unwanted problem, and then positions YOUR solution as the lighthouse in their storm.

Story Type: Rags To Riches

A “Rags To Riches” story explores how a celebrity or historical figure overcame adversity to create an incredible or unforseen outcome, and weaves in an important message, lesson or anecdote for the reader (that sells a particular benefit or feature of your offering). This story type can also explain how you helped a customer solve their unique problems and/or create an incredible outcome.

Story Type: Believe It Or Not

A “Believe It Or Not” story explores the mysterious, outrageous, compelling, or unconventional way somebody from history achieved something of importance. This story type weaves in a valuable lesson for the reader, related to your service.

Story Type: Future-Paced Fable

A “Future-Paced Fable” story fast-forwards your reader into a vivid, exciting future where they’re already experiencing the benefits of your service. This ‘future pacing’ strategy uses descriptive language to help the reader emotionally connect with your offering.

Story Type: Dreamcatcher

“Dreamcatcher” stories are micro-narratives that demonstrate to a reader that you deeply understand what their dreams are. Dreamcatchers make a landing page convert like crazy.

Storytelling Tactics

Here’s where a you could use the above story types to attract, convince, and convert more customers:

• In social media advertising
• On your blog
• In case studies on your website
• During automated or manual lead nurturing, via email
• During your in-person sales process
• During followups with current and past customers

Strategy: Personalisation 

Modern sales and marketing email tools allow you to insert personalisation into the content you deliver. For example, when you send an email broadcast, you are able to customise the recipient’s name, email address, and any other information you gather about them.

Whilst this basic personalisation is useful , there are other, more exciting ways to use marketing automation to create a stronger point of difference:

• When someone signs up to your email list, ask them one or two short qualifying questions about their individual situation. Use this information to create messaging that’s unique to them.
  • For example, if a subscriber tells you that they’re an investor with three investment properties already, add them to a customised email followup sequence that helps them grow their portfolio even more.
  • Or, if a subscriber says that they’re a first home buyer, send them information that helps them buy their first home.
• Use marketing automation inside of individual emails to help subscribers ‘choose their own adventure’.
  • For example, send an email asking the subscriber to tell you their content preferences, using a list of options.
  • Use click-based automation to send them more information based on the option they choose.
  • This can be done completely on auto-pilot.
• Use email automation to create a list of your most engaged email subscribers.
  • Then, send them a video message using a tool like Bonjoro or Loom, asking how you can serve them better.
  • Or, ask them for their physical postal address, and send them a shock-and-awe pack via the post. This can either be done manually, or via a fulfilment house.

Strategy: Variety

As we’ve already explored, it’s important to be consistent in the implementation of your sales and marketing.

However, it is also important to inject compelling variety into your messaging, to ensure that:

• Your messaging isn’t lost into the ‘white noise’ of your own rhythmic delivery
• Your recipients don’t become numb to your brand’s visuals
• You provide a wider spectrum of value, so that you attract more attention from more people
• Your sales and marketing messages are actually received and digested, and contribute to your potential customers’ decision-making process

This ‘pattern interrupt’ strategy can be used in the following applications:

• Frequency of new blog posts or videos (eg. occasionally share more)
• The topics/strategy behind the content you create (eg. try and add variety to the things you write/record about)
• Email subject lines (eg. use all lower case, emojis)
• Graphic design of social media posts, cover images (keeping ‘within brand’ of course)

By implementing variety into your sales and marketing collateral, you’ll maintain the interest of target prospects in an environment where attention is scarce. This alone will create a valuable source of differentiation.