24 July 2009

By Ken Schmaltz, Marketing Director, Twist Marketing

Different: Not alike in character or quality; differing; dissimilar.

Deferent: Showing respectful submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, will, etc., of another.

While writing this article, I noticed a friend had posted the following on Facebook: There’s a fine line between love and hate. With apologies to my friend, there’s also a fine line between different and deferent.

One of the keys to effective marketing is differentiation. Setting yourself apart from the crowd. Putting a stake in the sand and declaring what you are and what you’re not. It gives your customers a reason to buy your new, faster, more accurate digitial widget instead of your competitor’s old, slower, less accurate (and cheaper) analog widget. It also helps your message cut through the clutter and get noticed, instead of blending in with the “me too” messages that your customers hear every day. (Yes, calling yourself “the leading [insert industry] company” is a me-too message; Google it and see how many of your competitors claim the same honor.)

But you have to put the “different” in differentiation—your customers aren’t going to do it for you. By this I mean it’s not enough to be different, you have tell people you’re different and why they should care. This is where some clients get cold feet. They’ve already made the decision to be different, and developed a product or service that is different. But the thought of telling people scares them.

What if nobody wants it? What if it confuses customers? What if customers think we’re bragging? What if the competition sees it on the website and copies it? What if...what if...what if...?

These are clients who saw a need in their marketplace that wasn’t being met. Something that nobody else saw, probably not even their customers. But instead of telling their customers and their competitors’ customers that they alone can fill this previously unrecognized need, they expect those customers to figure it out for themselves. A couple paragraphs in a brochure or a new link on a webpage, they reason, should be enough for customers who want the new feature/product/service to find it, read about it, have an “Aha! moment,” and buy it. With any luck, the rest won’t even notice. More often than not they call this “stealth marketing.”

This is where these clients cross that fine line and go from being different to deferent, which entails far more risk. They’re deferent to competitors that wouldn’t show them the same courtesy. Deferent to the handful of customers who may, may, not share their foresight. Customers who are probably less loyal and less profitable to work with in the first place. But above all, these companies are deferent to their own complacency—and that’s one message all of your customers and competitors will pick up on through the clutter.

The Twist: You have to give your customers a reason to buy from you instead of your competitors. That means you not only have to be different, you have to tell them you’re different. If you don’t, you’re showing deference to your competitors that they don’t deserve.

For more marketing articles, please visit www.twistmarketing.com/resources.