Be the stallion in a pack of zebras

There’s a trend in business for everyone to huddle together for warmth. This usually means looking at what everyone else in your industry is doing, and then doing exactly the same thing - after all, nobody likes to be the outlier.

In that way, companies are a lot like zebras. A zebra’s stripes don’t help it blend in with the environment, they help it blend in with the pack. A predator can’t hunt an entire pack - it needs to separate one from the herd to take it down. If every zebra in the herd looks the same, where does the lion begin?

While this strategy is justifiably popular with zebras, it’s not great for businesses. In our world, the lion is the buyer; you are the zebra.

When companies all look exactly the same in the herd, the buyer doesn’t know where to begin - how are they supposed to choose which company to bag if each one is identical to the untrained eye?

For small businesses, who are approaching the £1 million in revenue mark, having stripes doesn’t seem like an immediate problem. They’re able to hang out by the waterhole and have Timon, Pumba, and other pals recommend them to new clients, introduce them to new businesses, and get them what they need to eat without having to break away from the herd.

But for bigger businesses, they can’t take sips from the same watering hole and hope it’ll be enough - after all droughts happen. We’re in one now. The waterhole is drying up. The economy is stagnant. Clients aren’t spending, and new clients are harder and harder to come by.

The lions are hungry, and looking at the zebras trying to figure out what to do next.

While the zebras who stay together might bore the lions until they move on, it means that we all end up starving and thirsty by the watering hole. This is why you need to stand out - so that you can attract clients without having your entire revenue stream dependent on the good will and effectiveness of your network.

The tactics that got you to where you are now are not the tactics that are going to get you to where you want to be.

In fact, they’ll only help you blend in further with the herd.

So, what do you do?

Paint yourself red.

Dare to stand out from the herd, so you can make it easier for clients to be attracted to you because you’re not lost among all the others.

It’s easy, at this point, to think that in order to stand out, you need to re-do your brand, splash some extra colour on it, and come up with a new logo.

Don’t.

If your current brand has been around for years, you’ve built up brand equity and recognition. Others know you and see you. Risking that brand equity could cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost business and lost time. So the key is building on your existing brand, and finding a way to make that stand out.

With that said, here are some ideas for how you can stand out without re-doing your brand.

Define your niche and become experts in it 

Having a defined niche, and becoming experts in that niche, shows your prospective clients that you care about their business and that you can solve the challenges that they have.

It also puts you in a position where you stop being the kind of company that’s ‘everything to everyone’, and this positioning itself helps you stand out by showing prospective clients that you’re serious about what you do.

One of the biggest highlights of niching is that it removes a lot of the competition. When you work with every type of client or product, it can mean that you’re fighting over the same patch of dirt as everyone else, and this creates challenges for inbound marketing.

After all, how do you market to one segment of the market when you serve all segments of it equally?

Have a strong tone of voice

What your company says is as important as how it’s said. Having a strong tone of voice doesn’t mean that your business needs to be casual - turning up in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt isn’t going to help you win business - but it does mean that you should have a strong tone of voice for the market you occupy.

Crucially, this means distancing yourself from playing ‘buzzword bingo’ and layering your messaging with marketing terms that your prospective clients don’t use themselves. They don’t care that you believe your strategies are ‘innovative’ - they care that those strategies get the results they want.

For example, specialising in regulated industries will naturally have a different tone of voice to working with Fast Moving Consumer Goods; what’s important is that the tone of voice is strong, consistent, and developed with your ideal customer in mind.

Think about the way people in your target market communicate, and then reciprocate.

Great copy sells 

In a world where everyone that owns a keyboard calls themselves a ‘copywriter’, it can be easy to forget that great copy really does sell, influence behaviour, and attract customers to a brand.

When you strip all advertising of its design elements and placement, what remains is the copy. Deploying great copy to sell your services is one of the most powerful things you can do.

When it comes to marketing your company, it’s important you have a strategy for how you can stand out from the herd to be noticed by prospective clients.

These aren’t solutions that will happen overnight - at least not without the help of an outside agency and a lot of will power - but understanding that the tactics that got you this far won’t get you the rest of the way, and creating a strong B2B strategy around that, will help make sure the marketing you do successful in the short and long term.