Forget all that. You need to get people in the door, who are willing to pay you real money, with some consistency.

Get the foundation right. Then you can worry about the window treatments.

I’ve observed that many people try to avoid it, I believe because it’s too confronting.

A. They have to pick up the phone and dial to make sales
B. They have to face a lot of rejection and can’t accept anyone calling their baby ugly
C. They’d rather distract themselves with busy work

For example:
- Back in the day you may have been able to differentiate by being the edgy alternative.
- Now you have to decide between medium or medium-rare edgy.
- In the near future, there’ll be a full spectrum of edgy-ness, delivered through a tailored personalized experience.

The difference nowadays is that modern differentiation is much subtler. And with the advent of digital marketing, quicker iterations, and now automation powered by AI — differentiation is going to get even more refined.

At this rate, we might soon be able to deliver on the “promise of digital marketing”: being able to reach the right audience, with the right message, at the right time.

As long as we use our powers for good.

Imagine a world without spam marketing!

Take the time to clarify your positioning. Seek out your ideal customer profile. The act of developing more resonant marketing material is what brings in exciting new business.

Good brands equip their customers with these little moments:
- A. to reinforce the experience in the moment, and
- B. to give them ammunition to resell with.

If you failed to give your customer something special, they won't see the difference and we have nothing to share.

Think about the stories we tell our friends of the good and bad experiences with companies. They’re peppered with the little details that made the experience stand out. That details that make it different and remarkable.

But obsessing over your competitors is a dangerous habit to get into. Best case, it becomes yet another distraction. Worst case, you forget what makes you special.

I recommend that they push to differentiate harder, but to keep it within range of their target audience. Different doesn't just automatically mean better.

The solution they’re building, and the value they communicate, must be rooted in the target’s problem.

Relevant differentiation is the way.

Most of the time it’s a lack of clarity around their value proposition. The pitch comes out undifferentiated.

Their prospects are lumping them into the same old categories of existing offerings. They're not going to bother switching to your solution, if it’s just more of the same.

It’s a subtle difference, but Validation.Run is all about market testing. Yes, technically this is just a subset of the former. But details matter.

Differentiation helped me split the difference. Research can be broad, open ended. Testing is focussed, deliberate, action oriented.

Compare the two and Mercedes comes out on top with undeniable cache.

Differentiation is not only powerful, but in some instances its everything.

There's nothing wrong with a Corolla. They're reliable, hold their value, and won't ever die. But this is just more brand narrative. I'm not saying it's wrong. Just to remember these messages are steeped in stories that we tell ourselves, which are informed by what they've told us to think.

Differentiation might be the core of the Mercedes-Benz marketing strategy. What makes a person buy one of these over, say, a Toyota Corolla? They both do the main job of getting you from A to B. And yet, many people are more than happy to spend at least double for one over the other.

"We market to you from the day you're born, so that by the time you're 50 and can afford one, you've got enough brand capital to actually consider it." (This quote is attributed to a Mercedes Benz executive, but I can't find any real attribution.)