In a world of shrinking white space and growing white noise, how do you make your business stand out and get noticed?
Get weird.
The word weird comes from the Old English Wyrd meaning fate or destiny. As a small business or independent professional one of the most powerful questions you can ask is “What am I here to do? What is my destiny as a professional or business?” Why did you start to do what you do, when you knew there were so many others already doing the same thing?
One of the key components to developing an effective brand is knowing what separates you from your competitors in the mind of your customers. One tool to help you discover that is the USP or Unique Selling Proposition. The heart of that process is to identify and communicate what makes your brand truly unique.
What is more unique than you?
Here are 4 thoughts to help you establish your own unique space, and cut through the white noise.
- Don’t try to be what you are not. This is ‘wyrdness’ in the old sense. Get clarity in determining who it is you or your business have always been meant to be. Before all the coulda-shoulda-woulda’s of the world took over and molded you into something more normal, more pallatable, more average and invisible. Becoming a truly unique brand is not about becoming someone or something different, it is about getting back to who you set out to be in the beginning.
- Don’t be afraid. Seriously. One of the biggest impediments to letting our freak flag fly is fear of being noticed. The irony is at once apparent: the one thing a brand needs to do more than anything else: to get noticed, is the one thing our cultural forces (including lovely institutions like high school) make us most afraid of: being different.
- Build your tribe. Being weird does not mean being lonely (another cultural fear). There are others out there who are not only like you, they actually value what the unique you and your unique business have to offer. Not every customer is the right fit for every business, but every truly unique business has its fanatically loyal tribe.
- Don’t sail by your competitors. This is between you and your customers. Don’t EVER adjust your brand, marketing strategies, or organizational culture because of something a competitor is doing. That reactive, normalizing fear-based behaviour is probably the quickest and most effective brand-killer there is.
I work with business owners to redesign a business and its future. Want more out of your business? Contact me. From my home base on Vancouver Island, I provide planning and coaching support to businesses across Canada.
[...] SMB Success Factor: Get Weird [...]
Great article. I wish every SMB would remember these principles. It is so easy to build up a company just like everyone else, but in order to last, you have to stand out and be a little different.
Thank you Joe,
You are so right. And the biggest challenge is our fear of being different. It is ironic that we are so afraid of doing the one thing that could do so much to make us successful.