That’s how it is across professional service markets such as legal, health care, accounting, business consulting, marketing, engineering. Setting aside superficial points of distinction such as name and logo, too few firms are finding substantive ways to stand out from the crowd. And no good comes from that, as business advisor Scott McKain argues in his 2009 book, “Collapse of Distinction”:

If you cannot find it within yourself to become emotional, committed, engaged, and yes, fervent about differentiation, then you had better be prepared to take your place among that vast throng of the mediocre who are judged by their customers solely on the basis of price. It is singularly the worst place to be in all of business.

And yet, that’s where most businesses, service or otherwise, find themselves. Rather than dive into the many reasons for this state of affairs, I’d like to address just one: Too few in business understand how to create relevant distinction.

When I say relevant, I mean distinction that identifies you as different from your competition and is meaningful to your clients and other stakeholders in your business. After all, you may be truly different but if that difference doesn’t matter to your clients or those who work for you, then it’s of no value.

I share McKain’s perspective:

Creating differentiation doesn’t mean you have to become completely, totally unique from your competition from top to bottom. It simply means you must create small, solid points of distinction that are recognizable and important from the customers’ perspective because customers perceive that different is better.

7 dimensions of service brand distinction

So how can you create these solid points of distinction for your service business? I just answered that question for one of my clients and will share what I came up with. I call it the seven dimensions of service brand distinction. I’m confident you will find valuable areas of relevant distinction in one or more of these realms:

1. What we do: The obvious starting point of distinction for most of us is what we offer and the needs we address. Here our differentiation strategy is on providing a unique service or solving an unmet market need.
2. How we do it: We might look to our models, methods and systems we use or the culture we’ve built to deliver our services. Our focus is doing the same or similar things better than our competitors, whether it’s being smarter, more strategic, more creative, more prepared than those like us.
3. Who does it: This dimension asks us to examine our collective character and personality – who we are being as a firm in the conduct of business. This strategy asks us to see our firm as more than a collection of unique individual service providers and find ways to adopt and exhibit a shared set of traits. We’d emphasize training and careful hiring that stress the ability of employees and partners to consistently be who we say we are as a business.
4. For whom do we do it: This looks for distinction in the markets and clients we serve – a commonly used method of differentiating. We would focus on serving niche or specialty markets or parts of organizations that are under-served or poorly served today.
5. Where do we do it: This isn’t just about differentiating on where our offices and clients are; it can also be about where we concentrate our services – the strategic front-end of an engagement, the tactical back-end execution, somewhere between or all of the above. Our strategy may include being the best provider in our service category in our community, focusing on building an expertise and national reputation in a specific industry niche or identifying specific points upstream, midstream or downstream in solving a client’s need.
6. Why do we do it: This is what I would call the existential point of distinction. It derives from our mission (our reason for being as a s business), what we stand for, our core beliefs and values, the difference we want to make. Here we focus on engaging like-minded stakeholders in our overarching purpose and demonstrating we do what we do to make a larger social, environmental or economic difference.
7. Do we do it: Here we emphasize proof. We are who we say we are, we do what we say we do and we deliver what we say we’ll deliver. It may be that all our competitors are saying the same thing. We are the ones who actually walk the talk. Our strategy is on delivering on the client experience we promise, measuring and being accountable for positive client outcomes and cultivating and communicating proof of performance.

This list is not an exhaustive source of where you can find and create those “small, solid points of distinction,” but it’s a great place to start. What this list presupposes is you also have a solid understanding of 1) what your clients want and need and how they experience your business today and 2) what distinction strategies are being used by similar or competitive firms. Otherwise, you run the risk of being both irrelevant and indistinct. Chances are that’s a position your competition already owns. Gladly leave it to them.

Photo credit: MrB-MMX at Flickr

My consulting practice centers on progressive businesses and nonprofits that are trying to change the world, their organization or their stakeholders in ways large and small. We all know from experience that personal change can be hard. So it’s no surprise that trying to influence change in others can seem impossible or painstakingly slow. And if we’re not careful as marketers, throwing more content at the problem will only make matters worse.

The world is drowning in content generated by marketers — blog posts, case studies, white papers, ebooks, videos, photos — and the social media meant to publicize and disseminate the content. It’s axiomatic in marketing circles that awareness precedes action. Some content is aimed at creating initial awareness. Other content is produced to generate leads, establish thought leadership or deepen customer loyalty. Too often, however, the marketing objective becomes producing more content instead of the change we seek.

Bridging the say-do gap

Content marketing conforms perfectly to marketing’s traditional role of providing the customer or audience with all the information they need to act. Thanks to digital and social everything, what’s changed is our ability to cost-effectively create, deliver and promote content in multiple forms, across multiple channels and track who and how many access our content. And with news media in decline, marketers can no longer rely on editors and reporters to pick up and run with their stories. Getting the word out depends more than ever on filling the content developer void left by the news media.

So it’s easy to see why content production and distribution is becoming the largest piece of the marketing pie. But is all this informative and entertaining content making a difference?  When it comes to sustainability, for instance, research shows a large say-do gap. Among its results, a 2010 Yale study found:

• 88 percent of Americans say it is important to recycle at home, but only 51 percent “often” or “always” do
• 81 percent say it is important to use re-usable shopping bags, but only 33 percent “often” or “always” do
• 76 percent say it is important to walk or bike instead of driving, but only 15 percent “often” or “always” do

Clearly, most Americans are aware of the importance of certain “green” behaviors. We’re just not doing what we say is important. The Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University offers up the Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change. Number 7? “Believing that information leads to action. We humans aren’t so rational.”

We don’t simply need more information. We need help bridging awareness into action. This strikes me as the new frontier for marketers: creating behavioral change — not just content for content’s sake.

‘Make people feel something’

“Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change,” say Chip and Dan Heath, brothers and authors of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. “Make people feel something.”

People have a rational side and an emotional side, and those wanting to create change have to reach both, the Heaths argue: “But when it comes time to change the behavior of other people, our first instinct is to teach them something.”

In other words, we produce more content and feed it to the rational side. That’s the easy part. The harder part — and the part marketers need to master — is recognizing, finding and connecting to the emotional side of our audience in ways that influence and inspire concrete change. Not just through clever communications but by learning and deploying behavioral change techniques.

In Switch, the Heaths lay out a three-step template for creating change:

1. direct the rational side by cloning what’s working, scripting specific behaviors, pointing to the destination
2. motivate the emotional side by finding the feeling, shrinking the change so it’s less daunting, instilling a growth mindset
3. shape the path by tweaking the environment or changing a situation, building new habits, capitalizing on the tendency for behavior to be contagious

Of course, you’ll need to read the book to fill in the many blanks in this template. But notice the strategies listed here. It’s not simply a process of producing more and better information. It’s understanding how to stimulate and guide change in others. And tapping into the whole person, the rational and the emotional.

For those of us whose measure of success is positive change, being a purveyor of content is not enough. Content untethered from proven strategies for creating change renders marketing ineffective. If you want your marketing to reach greatness, learn how to create change. And let that be the king of your content marketing.

Source Flickr: By koalazymonkey

This is the backdrop of R.Bruer Company, my bigger story, if you will. Yes, I provide branding, messaging and storytelling for businesses and nonprofits. Those are my services. My bigger story taps into what I believe matters most in our work as individuals and organizations: helping others add meaning to their lives while engaging them in a larger purpose.

Each of our organizations has a smaller story to tell. Unfortunately, it’s often the only one we share. We focus on what our organizations do: develop software, design clothes, grow food, treat illness, remodel homes, educate children and on and on. We carve out ways to differentiate what we do from our competition and explain the difference to our customers. Important stuff, to be sure. Just not the stuff that really floats anyone’s boat.

Beyond your smaller story

There’s a reason your organization may be sticking to its smaller story: You don’t know or have forgotten your larger one. One place you may find it is in what author Rob Walker called the “fundamental tension of modern life” in his terrific book “Buying In: The Secret Dialog Between What We Buy and Who We Are.”

“We all want to feel like individuals. We all want to feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves.”

Is it about us? Is it about more than us? It’s both, and your organization can find its bigger story by being aware that your customers, employees and other stakeholders are looking to fulfill both of these desires, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes separately.

We want to contribute to the common good. And we want to feel uncommon doing it. When your organization recognizes and satisfies these twin needs you have a bigger story to tell. You’re engaging your stakeholders in what matters most to them. And that’s big.

Businesses tend to speak to one end of the fundamental tension: our desire to feel like individuals. Nonprofits usually speak to the other end: our wish to be part of something bigger. Connect your stakeholders to both and suddenly your story takes on dimension like never before.

Think bigger

My business isn’t branding or messaging. It’s helping my clients reconnect with their larger purpose, what makes them competitively unique and how they can be more important to those they rely on for success.

Don’t limit your story to making or selling a better, faster or cheaper product or service. Think bigger. Think of your organization, product or service as what others can use to express or achieve meaning in their lives and make a difference outside themselves.

That’s easier said than done for many of us. Because, frankly, not all of our organizations can honestly tell a bigger story. Our business can’t deliver on the desire for others to feel like one of a kind because we don’t know what makes our business unique. We can’t promise to connect others to something larger than themselves because we don’t stand for something bigger.

It’s not about you

That leaves us with our smaller story. For many, that’s enough. Perhaps you believe the purpose of business is simply to make money. And as long as you’re doing that, you’ll go on building a better mousetrap and leave that purpose and fulfillment stuff to others.

Never mind that your customers don’t see their purpose as helping you make money. They won’t stay connected to your smaller story because it’s about you, not them. Eventually, they turn to the business that’s tapped into its bigger story. Because that’s where they find themselves — and a whole lot more.

Papua New Guinea, an island somewhat larger in size than California, is home to fewer than seven million people and more than 800 languages. There are places on the island where you can encounter a new language every two to three miles, according to Pagel. Some would say that’s cultural diversity at its finest. Pagel would say it’s “very peculiar, even bizarre.”

Source: petersbar via Flickr

The reason? Humans, Pagel said in his TED talk last month, originally devised language some 200,000 years ago as a means of sharing ideas, knowledge and wisdom. “Language is a piece of social technology for enhancing the benefits of cooperation,” Pagel said. So it was “bizarre” that humans should have gone on to create thousands of different languages.

Today, there are 7,000-8,000 languages spoken across Earth.

“It seems we use our language not just to cooperate but to draw rings around our cooperative groups and to establish identities. Perhaps to protect our knowledge, wisdom and skills from eaves-dropping from the outside.”

Research shows the presence of multiple different languages slows the flow of ideas, knowledge, technology between groups, which flies in the face of language’s original purpose.

Isolation vs. global connectivity

As Pagel observes, this apparent natural tendency to isolate and keep to ourselves is being confronted by a powerful modern force: the inexorable march of global connectivity.

Source: @fredchannel via Flickr

Today, we are connecting and communicating with other humans around the world at an unprecedented rate. And for Pagel that begs the question: Can we really afford all these different languages getting in the way of the free flow and exchange of ideas, wisdom, technology? The presence of this flow, after all, is why humans evolved far beyond our pre-human ancestors and other animals.

It behooves us as a species to remove anything that blocks this easy exchange. Pagel suggests humans have reached the point where we are more dependent on global cooperation and exchange than ever before to maintain our levels of prosperity. Which is why we appear destined to be one world with one language.

The anti-business approach of business

Pagel didn’t say anything about the seemingly endless sub-languages within any single language. Every industry and occupation has its own vocabulary designed, as Pagel would say, to draw rings around those in the industry or occupation.

We wrap our identities as individuals, businesses and institutions around our specialized knowledge because it elevates our status or competitive position. The language of knowledge, as much as knowledge itself, is power. So is it any wonder we don’t want others speaking our language?

No, it’s not. But how exactly are we helping ourselves or our organizations by making it difficult to communicate with others? Human language evolved to enable communication and facilitate cooperation. Somewhere along the line we decided to limit how much we cooperate and with whom.

In the realm of business, I can’t think of anything more anti-business. When we hold on to our proprietary language we effectively block people from doing business with us. “Very peculiar, even bizarre,” Pagel would say.

We don’t individually or collectively prosper by erecting language barriers — now or over the course of human evolution. It should be the objective of every business to hear their customers exclaim: “Now you’re talking my language!” One world with one language — your customers’.

1. Assess organizational brand and sustainability: Develop an accurate baseline appraisal of how customers, employees and other stakeholders perceive your business, how you stack up against your competition and how far you’ve gone in implementing sustainable practices.
2. Review Mission: A great brand takes its cue from an extraordinary mission. Does your mission inspire or gather dust?
3. Identify Sustainable Branding Team: Involve representatives from across your business in defining your brand. Don’t leave it to marketing alone.
4. Define Brand Identity: Get clear on who you are as a business. What do you stand for? And how does that create competitive distinction and customer relevance? Do you want sustainability to lead your brand or live in the background?
5. Engage Employees: Get your employees on board with your new brand. Ask them to identify how they and their groups can deliver the experience your brand promises.
6. Produce Brand Marketing Plan: Determine how you will create and keep customers through the communications and presentation of your brand identity.
7. Produce Sustainability Plan: A sustainable brand is built on sustainable business practices. Determine how far you are willing and able to go with implementing sustainability in the short and long term.
8. Execute Sustainability Strategies: Prevent greenwashing by not letting marketing charge ahead of your sustainability practices. Walk first, then talk.
9. Execute Brand Marketing Strategies: Balance your natural enthusiasm for storytelling with a resolve to portray your business as it is, especially when it comes to sustainability.
10. Measure, Report and Adjust: Sustainable brands celebrate what they do well, hold themselves publicly accountable for their shortcomings and continuously strive to do better.

Could it be that to know thyself is to know thy customer? At the very least, it’s a great place to start when your profiling a target audience.

Earlier this year, I helped a nonprofit build a case statement for gaining donor support. They struggled with defining who their target donor was. As I got deeper into interviews and research, I realized they were describing people who bore little resemblance to them as staff and board members. They feared prospective donors in the community wouldn’t be sympathetic to the troubled teens they were helping.

What I helped them see is that it was exactly people like them who would be most apt to support their mission and want to give. I built their case around appealing to kindred spirits. Just speak from the heart about what you believe and your donors would connect, I advised them. At their annual fundraising breakfast in May, donations were up 40 percent.

Business or customer?

Looking back on who I selected as my target client, I realize I too was drawing a picture of a client whose values are much the same as mine. When I say I want to help the organizations that are trying to make the world a better place, I could just as easily be talking about my work as a consultant.

There’s a chicken-and-egg thing going on with branding and marketing. Which comes first: your customer or your business? I don’t have a definitive answer. And I’m not sure it matters. If you’re struggling to define who you are as an organization, take a good look at who your customers are. Likewise, if you’re not able to describe your customer, then describe your organization instead. Chances are you and your customers have a lot in common.