I was walking around Stavanger in Norway earlier this year when I spotted a road sign that had been given an unofficial upgrade by a local graffiti artist. I had to stop and take a photo, but it made me laugh out loud, and since coming back home to the day job, supporting clients with their marketing and design, it made me think about marketing in a way that so many strategy documents always seem to over complicate.
Because that sign did something brilliant: it made someone stop, look twice, and feel something (or in this case many people stop and look and photograph). Ok, it might not be the perfect style or to the taste of your specific audience, but in a world where most marketing washes over people without registering at all, it’s a great example of why the most memorable things are rarely the safest ones.
Standing out with your marketing is more achievable than most business owners think. It doesn’t require a big budget, a rebrand, or doing anything reckless, but rather the willingness to back yourself.
Why now is a good time to be different with your marketing?
Digital content is forecast to increase tenfold over the next few years, with approximately 80-90% of that being AI-generated.
When the average piece of content a business puts out looks and sounds increasingly similar to everything else, a business that sounds like a real person, with a genuine point of view and some actual personality will cut through. The bar for standing out has never been lower.
Research by System1, carried out with the IPA and marketing effectiveness expert Peter Field, found that marketing which generates real emotional connection significantly outperforms neutral content on long-term brand growth. The full findings in their report are a really good read: The Extraordinary Cost of Dull. You don’t need to be theatrical or unconventional, but you just need to mean something to someone.
This matters more now than it did a few years ago. As search and AI tools change how customers find and choose businesses, the ones that get found and chosen are the ones that feel real and specific, not necessarily the ones with the most content.
What standing out looks like for a small business
Most business owners assume standing out means doing something dramatic, such as a viral marketing campaign, a complete rebrand, a radical new direction. It rarely means any of those things and much of it stems from marketing strategy and foundations.
In my experience, it usually starts with something much simpler: being clear about who you’re really talking to. When you try to appeal to everyone, your message ends up meaning very little to anyone. The businesses that connect well with their customers have usually made a deliberate decision about who those customers are, and that focus shows in everything they put out.
From there, it’s about making sure your brand messaging reflects what makes you different. A lot of small businesses have a strong offer but describe it in exactly the same language as everyone else in their sector. The product or service is distinctive, but the marketing just doesn’t show it.
And it’s about letting your personality show. Content that converts followers into customers does so because there’s a real person behind it, not a content schedule being ticked off. That applies to your website, your emails, your ads and anywhere a potential customer encounters you.
The case for being a little braver with your marketing
I’ve worked with businesses across agencies, in-house teams, and now as a freelancer for over 15 years and one pattern I’ve seen consistently across every sector is that the businesses that connect well with their audience are almost never the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones that made a decision about what they sound like and stuck with it.
The ones that struggled were usually the ones that kept softening everything until it could have come from anyone or they chop and change each quarter with a different direction, because they haven’t seen immediate positive results.
I can count on one hand the clients who came to me wanting to do something really different, with personality. Something that made a real connection rather than just filling a content calendar. Even with a wildcard option dropped into the mix which challenges their ‘standard’ marketing approach, most picked the safe option. Every time.
I completely understand why. There are stakeholders to keep happy, a brand someone’s spent years building, a real worry about what customers might think. But the risk of safe, forgettable marketing isn’t that someone will complain. It’s that nobody notices. Research by System1 found that 57% of UK ads make people feel nothing at all – not annoyed, not impressed, just nothing. All that budget, all that effort, generating a collective shrug.
In traditionally cautious sectors such as trades, professional services, healthcare, the bar for standing out is even lower, because almost everyone around you is playing it safe. Being the business in your sector that sounds like a real person is often enough on its own.
What happens when you choose to stand out with your marketing
I worked with Laid Bare Clothing on their brand identity, starting from nothing, just an idea for a British unisex clothing brand with a focus on sustainability and a personality worth showing off.
Rather than going somewhere generic, we backed a direction rooted in British heritage: a bowler-hatted gentleman as a logo mark, bold typography to keep it current, a neutral palette to keep it timeless. The brief called for something playful without sliding into eco-brand clichés, and polished enough that customers would take the product seriously. We could have played it safe. We didn’t.
As Rob Pritchard, Laid Bare’s founder, put it: “Working with Chris was great fun and a real partnership, refining and developing ideas that have been lovingly crafted into the end result which feels like us and connects exactly where we want to with our customers.”
“Feels like us” is what good marketing looks like. Not a template that could belong to any business. Something that feels like the actual one behind it.
Read the full Laid Bare Clothing case study.
How to make your business marketing more effective
None of this requires a major overhaul, but maybe start with a few questions to help evaluate:
What does your business believe? Not your mission statement, but your real opinion on something in your industry. Businesses with a point of view are interesting and will align with a select group of customers. Ones without tend to sound the same as everyone else and blend into the background.
Who are you talking to, and what do they really care about? The more specific your answer, the more your marketing can speak directly to someone rather than vaguely at everyone.
Does your marketing feel like you? Look at your website, your last few social posts, your email footer. If a competitor could swap their name in without anyone noticing, that’s the thing to work on first.
Then give yourself permission to test something. Run one piece of content that’s slightly more ‘you’ than your usual output. Set a clear objective before you do so you can actually read the result. Even if it performs similarly to everything else, you’ve learned something. The businesses that connect well with their customers aren’t necessarily the most sophisticated, they’re the ones that made a decision to sound like themselves and committed to it.
If you’re not sure where your marketing currently sits, a straight-talking strategy session can help give some clear direction. We’ll dedicate 57 minutes looking at what’s working, what isn’t, and what to focus on next.
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