The holidays are upon us and it’s a noisy world out there. Last week we talked about the value of focusing on your offer versus your product to strengthen your brand. This week, I am going to build on that and give you a strategy to stand out to your customers even more: highlighting your expertise.
A few years ago I wrote about my love of mayonnaise on a grilled cheese. Specifically, instead of making grilled cheeses with butter on the outside of the bread, I told you that I use mayonnaise. It gives an otherwise ordinary grilled cheese the perfect amount of tangy flavor. Whenever I talk to friends about it, they are either anxious to try it because they like the idea of added flavor or anxious to try it because it’s a new and different approach. Some are even anxious to try it because they do not believe it will be good. And whether they realize it or not, they’ve probably overlooked dozens of grilled cheese recipes that use some variation of butter on the outside and cheese on the inside. Why? It’s not new information and doesn’t help them live a happier, better, (or tastier) life so they don’t have time to consume that information.
In short, if you can present a new and novel approach, you automatically create expertise for your brand.
To explain this more, here is what expertise is not:
If you are simply touting your amazing customer service, people are overlooking you. Everyone says they have amazing customer service.
If you are simply citing a commonly known industry process and saying that you do it best, people are overlooking you. Everyone says that they are the best at the best practice.
If you are telling people to use an umbrella when it rains, people are overlooking you. Everyone says to use an umbrella to stay dry in the rain.
Do this instead:
Instead of the ordinary, find the extraordinary. How do you do something different in a way that makes you stand out from all the other product managers in your industry? What is it about your background that makes you uniquely understand use cases that most other product managers can’t say they’ve experienced?
Why did you start your business? Most people don’t start a business because they think they can do something exactly how businesses currently do it. They start one because they think they can source vendors better because (insert unique reason here). They start one because they have discovered a better process to (insert service function here).
What is your novel approach? And most importantly, how will it make your customers’ lives easier?
Some of the things that I do in my business are similar to what other marketers do, but the majority of the things I do are novel and even go against the grain of my industry.
For example, to fix flatlining growth patterns, I implement changes one directed step at a time rather than make a complex turnaround plan that companies often have trouble implementing anyway.
When it comes to analytics-based decisions, I distill concepts for my customers rather than complicate them so that they can eventually take things into their own hands if they want (my greatest measure of success as a consultant is no longer being needed).
When it comes to digital advertising in the awareness phase of the funnel, I layer my ads to create custom audiences off of the top line ad results so that my ROI is ultimately multiples cheaper in the conversion phase, even though it involves more work in the consideration phase.
In short, customers notice me because I say (and do) something different (and it actually works… please don’t say something contrary or surprising if it isn’t true or a stretch).
When you figure out how to create this type of expertise for your business or brand, you will naturally stand out from the noise to your ideal customers. Remember, we regard others as an expert when they teach us something or provide us with something we cannot otherwise get. We do not pause for information we already know. We’re simply too busy and distracted for that.
That’s really it. It is really that simple… and I dare say that every brand has some kind of expert or novel approach to talk about. Try it… I promise your prospective customers will notice.
