Differentiation vs Distinctiveness
Updated: January 16, 2024
This LinkedIn post by Peep Laja on Differentiation vs Distinctiveness me think.
Summary
Problem: In a crowded market like CRM software or candy bars it's fundamentally harder to have a strongly differentiated product.
There's distinctiveness which is what leads to mental availability or being thought of first.
He makes a point worth thinking about.
Us SaaS marketers love to wax poetic about needing to be more different - and we expect that to be a product change - probably because most SaaS orgs the product is the company.
It’s a luxury for a marketer to request product changes.
In a large enterpise or B2C, marketers can’t demand sweeping product changes.
The marketing team for Kitkat can’t pitch that they need to fundamentally reinvent the candy.
More often, they can pitch ways to be thought of first. That is: improve the unchanged product’s mental availability.
Key Points
- The goal of differentiation is to stand out and be top of mind more.
- Having a differentiated product is just one tactic available to marketers to achieve this.
- Being differentiated via distinctiveness is another (standing out in non-product ways).