How do you stand out in a crowded market?

Photo by Robert F. on Unsplash

This is the question that has been on my mind for the last three months.

I think if you are in a career that allows you to position products, services, or your company, the following thoughts and stories can help get some ideas flowing, at least. Or, maybe you’re a “creatorpreneur” working to carve a path in the creative landscape. Either way, the following is a snapshot of my last three months of thought at my company and what I have discovered.

How we got here.

I was brought onto my current company, LeisureMedia360, on March 1st of 2022 as a Digital Media Specialist.

My first main task and goal here was to learn the BASIS DSP and start to implement those skills in digital advertising campaigns for our clients.

I will spare you the time it would take to explain what that is and basically just say it is a software program that allows you to place advertisements across the world wide web in an automated, auction-type process.

Hiring me was a move to bring that service in house instead of outsourcing with hopes to save on overhead costs and become more efficient with our strategy and profitability.

After our last big campaigns finished up in October, (We are in the tourism niche and things slow down around the holidays) my efforts turned from running the digital advertising campaign ship to figuring out how to stand out amongst our competitors.

You should see the main wall in my office, it is currently decorated with the digital collateral of many of our competitors. It kinda looks like a scene out of a detective movie with all the headshots of bad guys with threads connecting them, notes written, and question marks everywhere.

I have taken a very high-level approach to how we can stand out in the market and, without sharing my biggest secrets, I just wanted to quickly share some of the main points I am looking at in my efforts to distinguish ourselves as a brand and company.

1. Branding

You don’t need me to tell you how important branding is. However, I think it is easy, as we get into the weeds of why we are better than those around us or how we can distinguish ourselves, to get lost in a game of ability and forget the importance of user experience.

Colors, fonts, tone of voice in collateral, what imagery we choose to show (or not show!). These all effect how a potential client or customer feels about working with the brand. If you appear to be just like everyone else visually, tonally, you will get lost in the crowd.

Oh, and consistency MATTERS. On my collateral wall, there are competitors with 4-page presentations and each page has different fonts, colors, graphics. This is ONE single piece of collateral that can’t even keep a consistent visual brand or message.

To me, this gives the impression of unprofessional, pieced together, lack of care or concern.

2. Interaction

People love people. I obviously know that there are different personality types and some folks prefer to be alone more than others, but I have to imagine that if we had to choose between being isolated for the rest of our lives or being able to communicate with others, most of us would choose that latter.

Customer services is of utmost importance when it comes to brand. Colors and fonts may not do much to make someone want to buy from you, but the experience and feeling you got from working with others is very important.

Luckily enough, LeisureMedia360 prides itself in years and years of incredible customer service and it’s baked into everything we do.

3. Products/Services

As I stared at my wall of competitor collateral, two things became very obvious (and annoying).

1. Everyone is technically offering the same services.

2. Everyone is trying to stand out by cramming jargon down your throat (to add some sense of credibility - “we understand this and you don’t”) and by making a massive deal about minute aspects of products or services they offer that sound the most sexy but don’t actually really mean anything.

I find my digital division of LM360 in a market of land-grab, half-assed, outsourced, inconsistent, overpromised, walled garden BS and it really upsets me.

I want our products and services to be clear, distinct, easy to understand, proven, and helpful.

No hiding behind industry jargon or theoretical concepts.

4. Transparency

This ties in with my last point and flows throughout each point.

The marketing and advertising world has a reputation of making a mountain out of a molehill and spinning it in their direction.

How do you sell a pen and make it sound better than every other pen in the world? Good marketing and advertising. (Also sales, but I’m not in that field so much)

I love this industry and that’s why I’m in it.

However, I also love transparency.

And in the digital advertising industry where new terms and acronyms are being created every day, and it’s hard enough for someone to keep up with all the new tech and solutions when it’s their full time job to do so, I never want to hide behind that or do shady things because the client doesn’t understand exactly what is going on with their advertising dollars.

5. Education

Therefore, a big part of what I want to do for our clients to serve them well, is to try and offer educational content to help them understand where their marketing and advertising dollars are going.

Further, I want to welcome them into the process so they can help strategize and see what is possible with the tools we, as the agency, are experts in using.

I want to be open with answering any questions or concerns they have and explain wherever they may need help in understanding.

Oh, and do all this in super simple terms so they understand it enough to be comfortable with us, or whoever, running campaigns for them in the future.

6. Results

In talking with clients, I have found one major pain point they have when working with advertising companies is a lack of reporting.

Not just a lack of pdfs showing the results of a campaign, but a lack of understanding on what the results mean, and how they can glean any information off them.

ROI is the biggest and most important beast when it comes to any marketing or advertising effort. What is your Return On Investment?

And when an advertising company takes your money, promises a few numbers then emails you a pdf at the end of a campaign to show your results with no explanation, you start to wonder if it was worth it or a waste of time and money.

Results can only be deemed good or bad if they are understood and measured against goals.

Therefore, I always want to go the extra mile to serve clients — post-campaign — to scrape as much objective and subjective value from a campaign as possible to not only show positive results, but help them use that information in future campaigns or insights into who their audience is and how they react to and interact with their product/service/destination.

In summation

As I am working through how to stick out amongst our competition, these are the things I am focusing on. There are many more points to be made along the lines of consistency, success rate, testimonials, etc. but these are all very much just a part of being a solid option in the market.

I think the items listed above are areas where we can aim to be different and stand out amongst our peers.

I still have A LOT to learn in the business world and I’m sure as I look back at this article in years to come I will chuckle at my naiveté in some areas, but we press on, we learn, and we make an effort to be better today than we were yesterday.

I hope you all found this article useful and would appreciate comments on any thoughts or ideas on things I discussed here. I love hearing from you all.

Thanks for reading!