Why bother look­ing to build your pos­i­tion in your mar­ket­place and be seen as the leader, when it’s far easier to be like every­one else.

Accord­ing to the Busi­ness Pop­u­la­tion Estim­ates (BPE) there were an estim­ated 4.8 mil­lion private sec­tor busi­nesses in the UK at the start of 2012, the highest estim­ate since 2000. Basic­ally, there are more of us look­ing for cus­tom­ers and find­ing our right­ful pos­i­tion in the com­mer­cial world.

Lets put that to one side and say ‘balls’ to cham­pi­on­ing integ­rity and to be seen as the only solu­tion to your audience’s prob­lem by mar­ket­ing AT people, not WITH them. Here are our 8 ways to be the King (or Queen) of mediocrity.

• Tell Every­one How Good You Are

Brand­ing is all about emo­tion, this is what con­verts pro­spects into cus­tom­ers. To be a sure fire ‘turn off’ use every chan­nel pos­sible to shout out how bril­liant you are (Twit­ter is a great chan­nel for this for a one way mes­sage). Rather than focus on your cus­tom­ers and tar­get audi­ence, it’s all about you.

• Use Everyone’s In-​Box To Sell

To stay in the front of your audi­ence, using email mar­ket­ing can be a fant­astic tool for them to par­ti­cip­ate and to look for­ward too. How­ever, a ‘Happy Xmas’ mes­sage is a great ‘value for money’ tac­tic, but does not make it an invit­a­tion to sell some­thing. The worst case of this is meet­ing someone at a net­work­ing event and once cards are exchanged, this becomes an oblig­a­tion for an in-​box to be bom­barded fre­quently with sales messages.

• That Busi­ness Card Serves No Purpose

From a busi­ness card that has every piece of con­tact detail on just one side to a card that is in a tiny font that has every area of skill a busi­ness rep­res­ents, does not cre­ate a per­cep­tion of a cred­ible brand. The card rep­res­ents the iden­tity of a com­pany and the image you por­tray. Then again, to be the King (or Queen) of mediocrity, it’s far easier to look exactly the same as every­one else on a 400gsm card.

• Sell First, Then Think About Value

Focus­ing purely on the sale, at least gives a focus to your actions. Put­ting any ounce of value and rap­port into build­ing rela­tion­ships and trust on the back­burner, can pos­i­tion you as the true ruler of mediocrity.

• Ignore Your Web Presence

The new web­site is up and run­ning, it looks all shiny and new, job done. To cre­ate a site that has no recog­nis­able updates, lim­its any way to com­mu­nic­ate the essence of your brand. The true leader of mediocrity, ensures that even if there is a news area to update, the last art­icle was included back in 2011, when Pine­apple Dance Stu­dio had its place on TV.

• Not Being Visible

Today’s com­mer­cial world presents a host of chan­nels to com­mu­nic­ate. Yesterday’s round of golf, is today’s Twit­ter exchange. The world of online is now human­ised where pro­spects can be nur­tured and dia­logues built. The once a month net­work­ing com­mit­ment has now changed where enquir­ies are hap­pen­ing in new places. The King (or Queen) of mediocrity will keep to the tried and tested ways, with the ‘same old, same old.’

• Don’t Stand For Anything

The leader of mediocrity will go with the flow and not stand for any­thing that sets them apart from the rest of the com­pet­i­tion. A lack of opin­ion means a lim­ited voice to present, stand up and be recog­nised for.

• The Same Old Content

If the com­pany web­site and any prin­ted col­lat­eral has an over­all mes­sage of ‘why we have the greatest ‘insert product descrip­tion’ in the world,’ then the crown is well and truly in pos­i­tion. To steer away from any­thing that is com­pel­ling, inform­at­ive and rel­ev­ant to build a con­ver­sa­tion pos­i­tions a com­pany as hav­ing no iden­ti­fi­able traits where a focus is on demon­strat­ing expert­ise and personality.

The anti­dote to being mediocre is to be trans­par­ent and authen­tic in everything that your brand rep­res­ents. Stand up for being indi­vidual and the bene­fits that your product brings to the mar­ket­place. Always look to build a rap­port and cred­ib­il­ity to what you offer. Never let that mediocrity crown sit com­fort­ably with you.

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