“What makes you different?”
I asked it first for sales, then for marketing and now to engineer epic market positioning. But the intent says the same, the relentless pursuit of meaningful differentiation. After all, it’s the beating heart of every sales pitch, marketing plan or business strategy.
Differentiation is critical work. When we launch a “me-too” product, we make it almost impossible for anybody to defend their decision to buy it. Which is a weakness of tectonic scale when you’re selling B2B to customers who need multiple approvals to purchase.
We all understand the need to stand out, yet the pursuit of commercially meaningful differentiation still challenges us all. Perhaps it’s because we emulate our successful competitors, building products that are only a hair’s breadth away from a cease and desist notice. Competition becomes our blue-print for market success, so choosing to chase share from them by being the same seems like a solid strategy.
Although differentiation is the natural obsession of product teams, few leaders really contemplate it. When pressed, they find it hard to really define any meaningful points of difference. In fact, if I had a dollar for every time “being from New Zealand” is top of their list, I’d be writing this from Tahiti, not Titirangi. Just for the record, you might think that it makes you stand out because customers like New Zealand, but it cannot differentiate you. There are literally millions of us here!
Of course, not everybody has the luxury of instant differentiation. I’ve experienced seemingly un-differentiatable markets, like life insurance or the darker reaches of financial services. And this is where we start to encounter the supernatural impact of ghost value.
Ghost Value. The differentiation points you make up, that customers can see right through. Usually found where big ego meets hard reality, where we make up things that we think matter to our customers and trade on the unstoppable momentum of institutional mega brands.
This is the domain of made up scientific names, the liberal sprinkling of the word “innovative”, people in lab coats in the background of ads, claims of “superior” customer service or bold green-washing statements. We can all pick our favourite ghost value, there are so many examples around us today.
Few reading this newsletter will be in that position, but may certainly be struggling to make their own business appear different. And here’s the issue. We’re told to be different, but as it’s such an intuitive concept, we don’t give it nearly enough thought. So I hope the following reflections might help shape your thinking next time you start positioning.
First, remember that differentiation can come in many forms; for example product, service, price, range, channel or brand. It’s not just what you are, but how you do it and why, that makes you stand out. The great news is that all of these can be created. If you find that you’re not meaningfully different, then find a way to make it happen, nobody has to ever accept the status quo.
But before you rush off to augment your customer journey, first work out who you are differentiating for. This is essential, because differentiation is relative to your ideal customer, not absolute to the market. In other words, you’re differentiating your product away from the competition in the eyes of the person most likely to buy. You only have to differentiate from the competitors that customers might choose instead of you.
This should come as a relief. Trying to differentiate from every competitor creates needless product backlogs and Frankenstein solutions. We end up trying not to disappoint everybody, rather than trying to please somebody.
So this Halloween, why not go ghost hunting in your own business, to flush out the ghouls of untruth? You might have to remind some people that choosing to be the same is much more frightening for your growth plans in the long run.
