Differentiation: Why It’s “So Difficult” To Figure Out!
“The irony is if you ask service providers if they know what their differentiation is all will say yes.”
No one likes the feeling of showing up to a party in a dress someone else is wearing, yet when local small service businesses or self-employed professionals think about setting themselves apart, there’s an uncontrollable urge to do what everyone else in their industry is doing.
I’ll hear things like:
- “I don’t have a target market per se.”
- “I don’t want to create the wrong vibe: My industry typically uses images like this.”
- “They find me stalkerish but this is the typical process”/“Expecting things to be done in 2 weeks makes no sense.”
- “We all wear different hats: A laundry list of services doesn’t confuse my audience.”
You can’t stand out for being different if you’re unwilling to own what differentiates you. When someone views what you’re selling as a commodity, failure to realize you’ve ‘lost money’ because you showed up to the industry party in the same dress as your 50 other counterparts is being in denial.
But differentiation isn’t as simple as saying, “I know I stand out for this because people tell me all the time,” either.
Differentiation is a sauce that’s made up of 4 specific ingredients. What makes the sauce special varies from business to business or service to service. For example, it’s the reason Pepsi, Diet Coke, and Coca-Cola have loyal fans who vouch for how different the products are from each other. And why I no longer attract people looking for a graphic designer.
When these ingredients are well-represented, your ideal clients will not only be attracted emotionally but be also willing to pay statistically up to 16% more for your product or service.
Read: The Buyers Pyramid
What does that extra 16% look like for you?
Subjecting Yourself To Differentiation Is Hard Because…
Being blacklisted, considered weird, or even hated is a suffocating experience for business owners and service providers who want to be liked by all the wrong people.
Speaking as an ex-people pleaser, it’s true: human beings want to feel a sense of belonging, but to whom and why matters. So while it’s understandable, to feel alienated when you’re not liked due to not sharing the same perspectives as others in your industry, you’re overlooking that you’ve also made all those people feel something specific and tangible about you and your services — that’s real impact!
It’s a sign of true differentiation that, in the long term, will be more effective than being unnoticeable or forgettable because you look and sound like everyone else in the industry choir.
Want to shake the so-called competition at their core — undermine their thoughts on color for example or anything else they think they know and believe about what you really do?
You have to be ok with feeling ‘hurt’ for:
- Serving a specific market
- Using images that are uncommon for your industry
- Flipping the typical sales process and having processes for your projects
- Selling a productized solution instead of a laundry list of services
You have to be ok:
- Defending your position on being different even more when “half the audience tunes out.”
We want people to feel like they know who we are from the next guy. As 1–3 man shows, this is where key talking points supporting our differentiated approach — serving specific people, creating a unique vibe, and operating and showing up distinctly prove valuable in our marketing.
Now, Is It Plausible To Be The Authority On Differentiation When You Have Not Achieved It Yourself?
If you’ve gotten this far and missed it, I’ll say it plainly.
Differentiation isn’t difficult to figure out, it’s subjecting yourself to the process of differentiation that’s difficult.
So it isn’t plausible to advise on something you innately don’t like or first understand how it applies to you. And being different just for the sake of it is inauthentic.
It took me five years to find the right words to express how I use color in my brand before I could boldly write about using color more genuinely and purposefully, and the consequences of not doing so.
Read: “Bold, bright and glossy”: a Trinbagonian guide to using color in design
So authority is earned through the solutions formed out of real experience with specific situations.
As demonstrated earlier in this article, clients have a hard time leveraging what makes them different, yet they want authority…on what?
A calculated risk, after branding, looks like authentically knowing why you’re leveraging specific things about your services. The process of creating that special sauce comes with its own set of relationships and rules — like how a femur must connect to the kneecap and the shinbone to form the knee. You can’t just merge whatever you feel like merging for shock value.
Read: What Is Shock Value In Design?
I know many local small service business owners feel like they can “wear many hats.” However, if the focus of your work has been without an emphasis on branding for the last 21 years with 7 of those years focused specifically on branding for 1–3 man shows — then logically figuring out or achieving differentiation will also be difficult.
So for now, I just want you to only see the possibility of doing something unheard of, as I did 7 years ago when I challenged myself to create a space for clients who value specificity and predictability in an industry, that’s often the opposite. In one sense — you’ll always be accepted by the right people for the right reasons. While others in the same dress scratch their heads on how to deviate outside the norm, after shaking the cock n bull stories holding you back, you’ll have achieved it!
I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB
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