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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
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How to Find Your Winning Difference

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Previous Episode:Three Months of Vacation Thanks to Smart Business Design, With Sean D'Souza More Episodes Next Episode:The State of Freelancing in 2017, with Emily Leach

All Episodes:

April 10, 2019

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August 22, 2018

A Digital Nomad at 50?

August 15, 2018

The Long Road to Greatness, with Lewis Howes

August 13, 2018

The Hollywood Model for Building Winning Teams, with Shane Snow

July 25, 2018

The Entrepreneurial Good Life, with Jonathan Fields

July 18, 2018

Lessons Learned from the Sale of StudioPress

June 27, 2018

The Million-Dollar One-Person Business, with Elaine Pofeldt

June 13, 2018

High Impact Content Marketing, with Peter Abraham

May 30, 2018

Entrepreneurial Habits, with James Clear

May 23, 2018

Picking Up the Pieces when a Partnership Implodes, with Jordan Harbinger

April 18, 2018

Conquer the Discomfort of Taking Your Business to the Next Level

March 21, 2018

The Email Newsletter as Media Platform, with Sam Parr

March 14, 2018

Specialize to Thrive, with Sara Dunn

February 21, 2018

Is the ‘Youpreneur’ Approach the Right One for You?

February 14, 2018

Know Thyself: The Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon

January 24, 2018

How to Earn More on Every Project with Tiered Pricing

January 10, 2018

The Power of Perfect Timing, with Daniel Pink

December 13, 2017

How to Charge What You’re Really Worth, with Mike McDerment

December 6, 2017

Perry Marshall on Smarter Online Advertising

November 15, 2017

Four Steps to Landing Higher Paying Clients, with Ed Gandia

November 8, 2017

A Counterintuitive Key to Solo Success, with Kaleigh Moore

October 18, 2017

How to Discover Your Ideal Client, with Sarah Jones

October 4, 2017

Seth Godin on Succeeding as a Solopreneur

August 30, 2017

Can Online Community Help Build Your Business?

August 23, 2017

Two Keys to Becoming a Webinar Superhero, with Tim Paige

August 2, 2017

How Website Personalization Grows Your Business Faster, with Brennan Dunn

July 26, 2017

From Side Hustle to Digital Domination, with Nathan Chan

July 19, 2017

Unleash Your Intuition to Win, with Bernadette Jiwa

July 12, 2017

The Power of the Company of One, with Paul Jarvis

June 21, 2017

8 Ways Startups Can Make Money with an Online Audience

April 26, 2017

The State of Freelancing in 2017, with Emily Leach

April 20, 2017

How to Find Your Winning Difference

April 11, 2017

Three Months of Vacation Thanks to Smart Business Design, With Sean D’Souza

April 4, 2017

The Beauty of Recurring Revenue

March 28, 2017

3 Conversion Optimization Tactics that Work, with Talia Wolf

March 21, 2017

Content Marketing that Sells, with Marcus Sheridan

March 14, 2017

9 Daily Habits for Business Success

March 7, 2017

Designing Your Lifestyle with Entrepreneurism

February 28, 2017

The Two Keys to Successful Delegation

February 23, 2017

Are Automated Marketing Funnels a Fail?

February 21, 2017

Succeed by Serving an Audience, with Emily Thompson

February 14, 2017

The State of Social Media Marketing, with Michael Stelzner

February 7, 2017

Creating a Productized Service, with Dan Norris

February 1, 2017

Answers to Smart Business Questions, with Chris Brogan

January 31, 2017

The Psychology of the Entrepreneur, with Sherry Walling

January 25, 2017

A Crash Course in Copyright for Creators

January 24, 2017

Enhance Your Freelance, with Jennifer Bourn

January 18, 2017

Become an Expert Interviewer, with Andrew Warner

January 17, 2017

The Four-Step Process that Transforms Your Business (Without Knocking Yourself Out)

January 11, 2017

Start Your Successful Podcast in 2017, with Jon Nastor

January 10, 2017

The ‘Pulp Fiction’ Technique for Engaging and Persuasive Content

December 20, 2016

Blogging is Back, with Darren Rowse

December 13, 2016

Creating Online Courses to Level Up from Freelance, with Carrie Dils

December 6, 2016

Content Curation in an Age of Fake News, with Dave Pell

November 28, 2016

Tim Ferriss on Finding and Focusing On What Truly Matters

November 21, 2016

Gary Vaynerchuk on Playing the Long Game

November 15, 2016

Steal Like an Entrepreneur, with Austin Kleon

November 8, 2016

It’s Your Duty to Design the Life You Want, with David Kadavy

November 1, 2016

Host Your First Virtual Conference, with Bailey Richert

October 25, 2016

Understanding the Brain Science Behind Effective Persuasion, with Roger Dooley

October 18, 2016

Create Your First WordPress Product, with Chris Lema

October 11, 2016

Tips for Crowdfunding a New Product (Or Your Entire Business), with Khierstyn Ross

October 4, 2016

How to Build a Business that Sets You Free, with Sol Orwell

September 27, 2016

SEO that Grows Your Business with John Jantsch

September 20, 2016

Building Your Virtual Team with
Jess Ostroff

September 13, 2016

The Stoic Entrepreneur with Ryan Holiday

September 7, 2016

How to Find Your Next Big Thing with Jenny Blake

May 25, 2016

Henry Rollins on Entrepreneurial Art

May 10, 2016

The Economics of Artistic Integrity

May 4, 2016

How to Use Interactive Challenges to Build Your Email List and Business

May 3, 2016

Turning Your Process Into a Product

April 26, 2016

Creatively Breaking the Rules of the Art Business, with Hugh MacLeod

April 20, 2016

How to Turn a Personal Liability into an Entrepreneurial Asset

April 19, 2016

The Dark Side of Scale

April 13, 2016

What Real Entrepreneurism Looks Like, with Rand Fishkin of Moz

April 12, 2016

Steal Like an Entrepreneur, with Austin Kleon

April 6, 2016

Are You Doing the Work You Were Born For?

April 5, 2016

How to Cultivate Authentic Expertise, with Jordan Harbinger of The Art of Charm

March 30, 2016

When to Shift Your Side Hustle Into Your Main Thing

March 29, 2016

When ‘Solo’ Goes Wrong

March 23, 2016

Three Keys to Effective Video Marketing

March 22, 2016

Why Teaching is the Key Entrepreneurial Opportunity of the 21st Century

March 16, 2016

When Collaboration is the Wrong Choice for Startups

March 15, 2016

How an Obscure Little Niche Led to a Profitable Online Course

March 9, 2016

The Trait All Successful Freelancers and Entrepreneurs Share

March 8, 2016

Inside the Lucrative World of Self-Published Ebooks

March 2, 2016

Why Customer Complaints are a Valuable Business Asset

March 1, 2016

Are Entrepreneurs Literally “The Crazy Ones?”

February 24, 2016

The Entrepreneurial Evolution Behind the Success of Creative Market

February 23, 2016

How to Grow Your Email List Much Faster

February 17, 2016

The Rise of the Youpreneur

February 16, 2016

The Power of the Post-Geographic Company

February 10, 2016

Why Freedom Beats Money and Status

February 9, 2016

Is Online Business Only for Those Who Teach Online Business?

February 2, 2016

Is Personal Branding Dead?

January 27, 2016

Chris Brogan on Simple Systems for a Better Business and Lifestyle

January 26, 2016

What Will Spark Your Business Growth This Year?

December 22, 2015

Is Content Syndication Smart? (Season One Finale)

November 24, 2015

The Ups and Downs of Digital Product Creation

November 18, 2015

From Freelance Designer to SaaS Superstar

November 6, 2015

The Key to Successful Information Products

October 27, 2015

John Lee Dumas on Discovering Exactly Who You’re Speaking To

October 21, 2015

How to Get Money to Make Money

October 14, 2015

The Perpetual Side Hustle

September 30, 2015

The Tyranny of Facebook

September 23, 2015

How to Sell Like a Saint

September 22, 2015

Paid in Full: How to Charge More and Collect On Time

September 16, 2015

Listen to Win: How Actionable Observation Provides Profitable Answers

September 15, 2015

How to Onboard New Clients the Smart Way with Paul Jarvis

September 9, 2015

The Art of Branding

September 8, 2015

Michael Port on the Power of Presentation

September 2, 2015

Seth Godin’s Top Tips for Freelancers

September 1, 2015

Dan Pink on the State of Free Agent Nation in 2015 (And Beyond)

August 26, 2015

Why Don’t Some Online Courses Sell?

August 19, 2015

The Power of the Very Small Business

August 18, 2015

Get More Clients With An Online Lead Generation Strategy That Works

August 11, 2015

How to Avoid Getting Nailed by the FTC for Your Online Marketing

August 5, 2015

Your Most Valuable Intellectual Property (Plus, How to Compensate Partners)

August 4, 2015

Three Counterintuitive Activities That Will Improve Your Business

July 29, 2015

Create Successful Products with the MVP Process

July 28, 2015

From Projects to Products: How to Stop Selling Your Time

July 22, 2015

The Benefits of Bootstrapping

July 21, 2015

The Habitual Startup Approach to Wealth Building

July 16, 2015

The Unemployable Skill Set

July 15, 2015

From Solo to CEO: The Evolution of an Entrepreneur

July 14, 2015

What Does it Mean to be Unemployable?

April 20, 2017

How to Find Your Winning Difference

It’s the bane of modern marketing. Any product can be replicated or reverse-engineered. Any service can be copied, leaving only execution as a true difference (which comes after the point of decision).

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In short, people see less difference between competing offers than ever, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not looking. Search engines and social media sites empower everyone to take charge and figure out their own choices, regardless of your claims and positioning.

With consumers, your prospect may be aware of your advertising, or completely tuned out — but they’re making choices on their own terms regardless. If you’re not showing up during the prospect’s self-determined buying journey, you’re not in the game. But if you are showing up via content, you’ve got a chance to tell a truly different story.

Your winning difference is the reason people do business with you and not someone else — it sets you apart and makes you the only real choice for the right people. And you reflect that difference with your content marketing.

Which begs the question — how do you find your winning difference? Today I’ll give you three different five-minute exercises that will shake loose an idea that works for your content marketing efforts.

Listen to 7-Figure Small with Brian Clark below ...

How to Find Your Winning DifferenceBrian Clark
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The Show Notes

  • If you’re ready to see for yourself why more than 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — swing by StudioPress.com for all the details.
  • Fascinate, Revised and Updated: How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist
  • Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets
  • Rate Unemployable at iTunes

The Transcript

How to Find Your Winning Difference

Brian Clark: In the 1920s, Schlitz beer went from fifth in the market to a tie for first. All because a sharp copywriter named Claude Hopkins highlighted their water purification process in an advertisement.

Never mind that all beer companies used the same process. No one had told that story before.

Advertisers became more astute after that point, which led to the development of the unique selling proposition by a guy named Rosser Reeves. This was the beneficial feature of a product or service that the competition would not — or could not — offer.

As these types of unique features became scarcer due to even greater competition, more products and services became indistinguishable. The winning difference became purely psychological, thanks to mass media message positioning in the minds of prospects.

I’m Brian Clark, and this is Unemployable, the show that provides smart strategies and tips for freelancers and entrepreneurs.

On the psychological front, take fiberglass insulation, a near perfect example of a manufactured commodity. And yet, Owens Corning became the market leader by focusing their messaging on the fact that their insulation was pink.

Fast forward to today, more than 20 years into the commercial web. Any product can be replicated or reverse engineered. Any service can be copied, leaving only execution as a true difference (which comes after the point of decision).

In short, people see less difference between competing offers than ever, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not looking.

Search engines and social media empower everyone to take charge and figure out their own choices, regardless of your claims and positioning.

With consumers, your prospect may be aware of your advertising, or completely tuned out — but they’re making choices on their own terms regardless.

If you’re not showing up during the prospect’s self-determined buying journey, you’re not in the game. But if you are showing up via content, you’ve got a chance to tell a truly different story.

Just like the water purification story made people feel differently about Schlitz in the 1920s, effective content marketing makes people feel differently about you and your offer.

Even if they don’t see a difference initially, you’ll get the shot at proving you truly are different in a meaningful way.

As Sally Hogshead says, different is better than better. The authors of the recent positioning book Play Bigger agree, making the case that you should create a unique category rather than trying to compete within an existing category.

Your winning difference is the reason people do business with you and not someone else — it sets you apart and makes you the only real choice for the right people. And you reflect that difference with your content.

Which begs the question — how do you find your winning difference? Try each of these five-minute exercises and see if they don’t shake loose an idea that will work for your content marketing efforts.

Remember that content consumers don’t go to just one blog, subscribe to just one site, or buy just one product. They want anything and everything about the topic they love.

That means your positioning doesn’t have to beat everyone else out. It simply has to appeal to your target audience in a way that’s unique from the others.

The Crossroads Approach

First up is the Crossroads approach.

To create a crossroads difference, take two seemingly unrelated ideas and bring them together. Copyblogger was created from the crossroads approach through the intersection of copywriting and content, plus the idea that you should use content to sell products and services rather than advertising.

This made the site a complement to other sources of blogging information, but for a time, it was completely unique. Then the content marketing industry took off.

This is how many movies are crafted and pitched.

For example, the hit film Speed was famously pitched as “Die Hard on a bus.” Clueless is Jane Austen’s Emma set in 1995 Beverly Hills.

You can create a crossroads USP by taking something well-known and presenting it to a new audience. There are intersections between travel and personal growth, or screenwriting concepts and digital marketing, and many other crossroads concepts

You’re looking for two roads that are different enough that you create some energy, but not so different that you can’t realistically bring the roads together.

So “The Complete Guide to Flower Arrangement for NFL Players” probably won’t find an audience.

The Metaphor Brand Difference

Next, let’s look at the Metaphor brand difference.

Sometimes you can find an overarching metaphor that will snap everything into place. For example, in addition to the crossroads difference at the intersection of travel and personal growth, the title of my email newsletter Further and the tagline “keep going” are both metaphors that represent personal growth itself.

Or take one of my favorite metaphor brands, Duct Tape Marketing by John Janstch. John offers something you can find in lots of places — marketing advice for small businesses.

But the “duct tape” metaphor reveals a lot. It tells you the approach is practical, effective, and not terribly fancy. It probably skews slightly toward men, but not exclusively. It can be interpreted many different ways. And it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

No one’s ever going to confuse Duct Tape Marketing with a site called Marketing for Hippies or Mass Control Marketing.

With this approach, you can create your own USP just by using a metaphor to define the market, the approach, and the angle. You want the right people to instantly understand what you’re all about — and that’s incredibly powerful when you make it happen.

The Persona-Driven Difference

Finally, there’s the Persona-Driven difference.

If all else fails and you can manage to be reasonably interesting, your USP can simply be … you. As Scott Stratten once tweeted, “If you are your authentic self in your business, you have no competition.”

Seth Godin, Martha Stewart, Tony Robbins, Cal Worthington, Erika Napoletano, and Gary Vaynerchuk have all created persona-driven brands.

They started with something fairly ordinary (business advice, housekeeping tips) and made it extraordinary through the force of their personality, their passion, and their individual expression.

To some degree, this can seem limiting — the business is always tied to you. But each of those people has learned to partner and delegate in order to create companies that go far beyond a single individual.

(You don’t really think Martha Stewart plants all those tulips herself, do you?)

If you’re going to create a persona-driven USP, you’ll need to keep showing up. It’s your job to stand front and center and say something interesting. You’ll provide the voice and flavor for your content.

And don’t think you have to have a “shock jock” personality for the persona-driven USP to work for you.

For example, Darren Rowse of Problogger and Digital Photography School is a soft-spoken, helpful gentleman.

Chris Brogan will take time to help you no matter what he’s doing. And they’ve both created successful businesses by focusing on what they care most about and how they could help others.

At the end of the day, the only reason you need a USP at all is to answer one simple question. Why you?

Why should anyone read your content? Why should anyone buy your product or retain your services? What do you have to offer that makes it worth anyone’s time and/or money?

It can be a painful question, but it doesn’t have to be one that ties you in knots for weeks on end.

Keep it simple, and keep moving forward. The strongest difference on earth won’t help you if you don’t back it up with all the other actions that create success for a business.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening, and keep going.

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