\u201cDifferentiate or Die!\u201d Great title for a book. Sound objective in practice, too. Here\u2019s the big question: what\u2019s your referent? What exactly do you want to be different from and where are you looking for your benchmark?<\/B><\/p>\n
On purpose, I ask small business owners this specific question, \u201cHow are you different?\u201d I say, on purpose, because I purposely keep the question short, leaving it wide open for their own interpretation. You probably already know how every single answer begins. (Want me to give you a minute to think about it? Okay\u2026ready?)<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how everyone has answered it so far: \u201cWe\u2019re different from the competition because\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The immediate point of reference, the benchmark, is always the competition. While it\u2019s probably good to know what your competition is up to (conventional wisdom says so; well, then maybe it doesn\u2019t matter what your competition is up to, hum?), you\u2019d be better served by knowing what your target audience was up to.<\/p>\n
Tom Asacker suggests you go so far as to immerse yourself into their worlds. Go deep enough to \u201cknow what they feel, when and where they feel it\u201d (p. 62). When you\u2019ve done that much, you\u2019re prepared to take the first of three steps he outlines for truly connecting with your market:<\/p>\n
One: use your awareness and empathy to create something highly differentiated and desirable\u2014something \u201cvaluable\u201d (p. 62).<\/p>\n
By awareness, Asacker means awareness of your customer, not your competitor. After all, ignorant empathy is empty.<\/p>\n
(What are the other two steps of the three step process? \u201cTwo: attract their attention and interest\u2026.Three: creatively express and deliver real and compelling value to them over time\u201d p. 62)<\/p>\n
Tom Asacker on Twitter<\/a>. Tom\u2019s book A Little Less Conversation<\/a>. My radio interview with Tom Asacker<\/a> for the Social Media Professor<\/a> program. Subscribe to the Social Media Professor<\/a> podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDifferentiate or Die!\u201d Great title for a book. Sound objective in practice, too. Here\u2019s the big question: what\u2019s your referent? What exactly do you want to be different from and where are you looking for your benchmark? On purpose, I ask small business owners this specific question, \u201cHow are you different?\u201d I say, on purpose, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-treypennington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}