I was wrong about differentiation

👉 here's how to use my mistake

When I look back at some of my older writing I often cringe at just how serious I was about business.

“Your writing and emails need to add value or no one will read them”. “Your website has to look professional so clients take you seriously”. And all that “dress one step above your clients” malarky I must have heard somewhere.

Sheesh.

Perhaps it’s age, but I’m much more open to the frivolous and fun in business now. Lord knows we need something to laugh about these days.

Take differentiation for example.

I used to believe that differentation was only valuable if it was “meaningful”. If the ways you were different to your competitor were useful to your clients in some way.

“An accountant who wears a clown suit is different” I used to say, “but I don’t think it’s going to help him get hired”.

I suspect I might have been wrong.

Because while having some form of meaningful differentiation is crucial - especially for high value products and services…

…”meaningless differentiation” can be valuable too.

For example, if I look at my emails, they’re meaningfully different because I share different ideas to anyone else and I use different personal examples and stories to illustrate them.

Those unique ideas are how my readers get value from my writing. The stories make the writing interesting and build credibility because they show I have experience applying those ideas in the real wold.

But the other way my emails are different is the graphics.

The silly cartoon figures and the little arrows and lines and scribbles.

There’s nothing particularly meaningful in them. They don’t add value other than hopefully making you smile. They don’t build up my credibility in any way.

But they do get asked about more than anything else in my emails.

People remember them.

It would be great if whenever one of my readers decided they needed a course or support to write better email newsletters they immediately thought “that Ian Brodie has shared some amazingly valuable yet practical insights about email newsletters - we should definitely buy his course to up our game”.

But I suspect their thinking goes rather more along the lines of “that guy with the funny cartoons in his emails does a course on newsletters doesn’t he? We should take a look to see what it’s like…Ian Brodie or something I think he’s called”.

The “meaningless differentiation” of my cartoons and scribbles get me remembered.

Ideally, that helps them recall the value and insights in my emails. But if not, remembering me is a decent enough start because they can see the value and insight by coming to my site.

And if they don’t remember me? Well, it doesn’t matter how meaningfylly different I am, it never enters anyone’s thoughts.

So weird as it seems, sometimes differentiation that has no real meaning can actually be the most important thing you do if it can grab attention and make sure potential clients remember you.

If you think of how you differentiate yourself: how much of it is the rational meaningful differentiation that aims to set you apart from your competitors in a way your clients will value?

And how much of it is simply to get their attention and to get them to remember you?

Because if you don’t have the latter, the former never comes into play.

Serious young Ian didn’t realise this.

Frivolous old Ian does.

- Ian