Building Business Distinction That is Not Easily Matched
When I help clients with their digital marketing strategy we address dozens of measurable performance indicators.
As a marketer, I’m looking for the one quality that cannot be easily matched, and that’s business distinction.
During the late 90’s my landscape business was entering its second decade. Despite a strong economy our growth was leveling off and margins were being squeezed. Why?
Our success to that point was the result of innovating to give our customers better products and services. Then we made an unsettling discovery.
Product innovations are readily imitated. As we learned back then, if you are relying on product excellence to differentiate your business, you may have a problem.
Create Distinctly Exceptional Customer Experiences
If your business has studied millennials you know they tend to value experiences above products and services. Of course, products and services still matter, but their quality has risen to a level where buyers no longer recognize distinctions.
Experiences matter because they add tangible value.
We used to think of the customer experience as the domain of the sales team, but in a digital world, it’s every interaction a buyer has with your business. For that interaction to add value, you have to get buyers to feel something at an emotional level.
How you do that is accomplished with your business process. It’s a way of doing things that probably goes against industry convention, otherwise, it lacks distinction. If you’d like an example, study how Apple sells computing devices like nobody else.
We turned our landscape business around when we realized buyers will only buy when they encounter a business that answers three questions with consistency.
a. You know and understand me
b. You have the expertise to help me
c. I’ll enjoy a relationship with your company
Seriously, all of the other buying criteria like price and specifications are product-based. More important is the experience of acquiring your landscape products, because that greatly enhances the enjoyment of the outcomes they deliver.
Products and services have no meaning until people give it to them. That’s what you and your team do with your process.
In every industry, there are buying obstacles that are maddening.
What are those challenges in your local market?
Ask your customers and they will tell you. Just be prepared because you may now be creating some of them. That’s right, we don’t always see ourselves as we really are.
Then get to work building a unique process that clearly demonstrates you:
a. Know and understand those challenges
b. Have the expertise to make them go away
c. Are building a process for making everything work out beautifully!
That’s distinction. It’s what buyers line up for.
Good luck building yours.
