Your Differentiator Probably Isn't What You Think
It took me a few years as a marketing agency owner to fully understand that marketing agencies are more or less commodities. By “commodities,” I simply mean that the options are very similar to each other, and it’s hard for the clients for whom we’re competing to tell the difference.
I intentionally put the emphasis here on the client’s perception because that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter that there are, of course, actual substantive differences between different agencies’ approaches and capabilities. From a go-to-market perspective, what matters is whether our clients know that. Can we become known for a specific thing (which is a question of awareness) and differentiate ourselves from competitors on that basis?
I start with this example because it applies to adtech companies just as much as to the marketing or PR agencies that serve them. A lot of adtech companies think they’re differentiated, but their clients (e.g. brands, agencies, and publishers) cannot tell the difference, or the client’s perception of the difference is different from the adtech company’s. This is a problem for marketing to solve.
Please allow me to use my own company, Sharp Pen, as a brief example. I think a key factor that differentiates me from other PR agencies and consultants is that I have a strong understanding of the industry, I learn fast, I obsessively keep up with and participate in the industry conversation, and I have a knack for the storytelling required to exploit the nuance that will meaningfully differentiate my customers from their competitors and drive attention. In other words, I like to think I’m good at what you might call narrative building or more broadly branding.
There’s a problem, though. You cannot build a differentiated reputation on the basis of that word salad. No one is going to say, “Oh, yes, Sharp Pen. They’re the PR agency with the guy who excels at differentiation and narrative building. So, you should hire him.” I mean, an individual person might say as much (if I’m lucky). But it’s not crisp or tangible enough to stick and to become universal as an identifier within the industry. It’s too complicated, too flimsy. What does branding or narrative building really mean? Is that what a given client needs? How do we really know he’s better than the alternative? Plus, what we really need is “PR,” not branding. Branding sounds like expensive bullshit.
My average client size has nearly doubled this year, and my name ID in adtech has soared from very low to pretty good. That’s not primarily because I’m good at branding or marketing strategy (though I’d like to think that’s a contributing factor). To the extent that it’s attributable to things under my control, the growth has occurred because I’ve leaned into a tangible, believable differentiator: I’m the guy who talks about adtech marketing a lot on social — and also the guy who helps adtech companies build their reputations by doing the same thing. “Good at branding” or “good at strategy” will always be debatable. The guy who seems to be everywhere talking about adtech marketing on social and who takes a content-led approach to PR is an easily recognizable differentiator.
As I said, I take you through this self-referential example because it applies to my clients as much as it applies to my own business. Many adtech companies struggle with one of the following situations as it pertains to building a differentiated brand:
They can’t tell you what their differentiator is; there’s internal confusion.
They can sort of tell you what their differentiator is, but it’s not tangible enough to stick.
Their conception of their differentiator doesn’t align with customer and market perception.
In any of the above cases, differentiation is a problem preventing the company from capitalizing on its competitive advantages and making the most persuasive possible case for itself in marketing and sales. To overcome this problem, a company must do the following:
Identify a differentiator that is believable in terms of real product advantages, the industry narrative, and the company’s place within it.
Understand the gap between the company’s perception of that differentiator and customer/market perception. Implement a communications strategy (perhaps led by content) that closes the gap.
Ensure internal alignment on the key differentiator. External confusion is inevitable if internal confusion persists.
I’ve written, for example, about how Criteo seems to have successfully reinvented itself by leveraging its performance marketing chops in commerce media. This is a company that effectively synthesized its historical strengths and identity in the market (retargeting) with the future of a growing category (commerce media) and relentlessly stuck to the bit, eventually sticking the landing and driving a 100% growth in market cap over five years.
By contrast, most adtech companies do not have a clear and believable differentiator. They’re either floating aimlessly in a sea of sameness (as I’ve written about in regard to DV and IAS) or attempting to associate themselves with popular terms and categories (e.g. data collaboration and CTV) without developing distinct and believable stories about their new directions.
Most marketing challenges fall into one of three buckets: awareness, differentiation, or urgency. For most adtech companies that have already achieved a meaningful level of success, it’s the second one. Ensuring the differentiator is actually believable and then doing the work to popularize it will help those companies become known for something that will actually position them to generate and win more deals. And that’s the point of marketing.
