The Importance of Differentation
Posted on June 3, 2009 | Tags: Personal Branding
No two dentists are the same.
No two marketing approaches are the same.
No two shoe brands are the same.
No two individuals within the same profession will deliver the same service.
The ability to tell one from the other is the key to successful communicating.
When you’re communicating about yourself to a marketplace, your words need to resonate with your prospect. Your prospect needs to say “hey .. that’s for me!”
Whether you’re writing copy for a postcard or creating phrases for a Google Adword campaign, how do you verbalize what it is that your market is looking for that differentiates you?
A Gucci bag in the end isn’t much different in quality, design and construction than many other less expensive brands. It’s got a reputation. It’s got a “perceived value” over and above the mere materials and design.
Building your reputation is what differentiates you. It’s not an overnight process, but it doesn’t have to take long. Part of it is creating a “perceived value” over and above the actual service or product.
You want to be the Gucci or Nordstrom’s of your industry? Differentiate. It’s not complicated, nor does it require diabolical genius. It’s a process of examining what you do, analyzing what your customers have said about you, and your competition and identifying what’s different. The perceived value is often not something you might recognize yourself. Sometimes I discover it from reading testimonials or talking to my client’s customers.
When you differentiate, you lose a lot of concern over competition. Why? Because when you do it right and define how your company or product is different, and the value that’s perceived about you, you have a strength you can build on. You’re different.
Further, when you identify which market will appreciate and pay for your difference, you’re attracting the customers you want.
What makes one dentist a better service provider for a woman over fifty who needs rehabilitative work? When the dentist who has years of experience working with that exact demographic with rave results is being compared with a dentist just learning, there’s no contest. As long as she knows about the more experienced dentist, she’ll choose him, right? She’ll probably even fly across the country to get the experienced service provider.
Differentiate. Make it real. And then promote the heck out of it.
That’s personal branding.
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Will KFC’s Tweak to Their Image Attract New Customers?
Posted on May 16, 2009 | Tags: Personal Branding
KFC, along with other fast food chains, is hopping on the health bandwagon ….as best a fast food restaurant can. T’was a time when no one thought twice about eating fried foods, but today there’s an entire strata of folks, myself included, who will never see the inside of any restaurant that’s got the word “fried” in its name.
With more people flocking to fast food restaurants during leaner economic times, my bet is KFC will win big and attract customers who normally wouldn’t patronize its stores. The company’s challenge is to “unthink KFC”. That’s’ right: forget what the “F” stands for and try it’s grilled chicken (which actually isn’t grilled, but baked in a convection oven and then stamped with grill marks.)
Pretty bold. But then again, what else do you do when the word “fried” is in your name that you’ve spent so much to advertise? Worth tracking this one to see how this experiment in altering your personal branding impacts the company’s revenues.
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Are You Attracting the Kind of Customers You Want?
Posted on December 15, 2008 | Tags: Personal Branding
Did you ever study how plants propagate? They actually have to attract certain types of insects (wasps, bees, etc) to pollinate it. Not just any old insect can pollinate any old plant. There are probably thousands of varieties of possible pollinators, from wasps to bees to moths, but each plant can only be pollinated by certain types.
A business needs to be “pollinated” by the right kind of customer for that business. Even mundane products like bathroom tissue, still have certain customers “pollinating” their brand.
It’s called “niching” or “personal branding” or just “branding,” of course. But even within a niche, you have to attract the customers you want and who can pay for your services. You might be the Queen of Breeding Purple Orchids, but if the customer you attract loves purple orchids but can’t pay for them, you’re out of business.
In 1990, when my partner and I first started our PR firm, we discovered that authors and publishers of non-fiction were a great match for our services. At that time, we were one of the only firms booking guests on top talk radio shows, local tv and national tv. When we expanded our client base to include corporations, it no longer was quite the perfect match. So we developed new services more appropriate for that market.
Because we billed only on a results basis, we attracted all kinds of attention. A lot of it wasn’t right for our business model. Getting paid on results is the fastest path I know to finding out very quickly which type of customer you want to attract. There’s no benefit to telling a client you can help him if you really can’t.
That type of billing was unheard of in our industry at the time. It set us apart from other firms and, combined with the fact that we got results, helped earn us a listing in PR Week’s Top 100 PR Firms.
A service business can spin its wheels taking in the wrong type of customer because it needs the business. I believe that’s what makes business exhausting and arduous. By personal branding that allows your prospect to be very clear about what you do and your results, you’ll reduce the problematic clients.
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