When I was in high school, I signed up for band class. I was also a football player, which conflicted with the band’s performance at each game. This created a quandary. How does one play football and play the school song after each touchdown? How does one sit through a coach’s halftime speech and be on the field when the band is doing its routine? You can’t do both, so I played football and the band performed without me. But I had signed up for the band and, because there was a grade to be given for the class, I had to attend all of the band practices before school started each day without the slightest chance of playing a single note with them. My band teacher, frustrated by a student who was useless to what he was doing, decided to make me a cowbell player. Cowbells are really nonessential to the overall sound of a band. You can have a great sounding band without a cowbell. It was not like the brass section or the drum line. I was easily removed without anyone noticing.

I’m sure my band teacher thought he had solved the dilemma. He handed me a cowbell and a drumstick. I had no sheet music. He told me to just keep up with the beat and stay out of the way. That was fine with me. However, I found that the cowbell could really make quite a lot of noise – er music. I found that, depending upon where I struck the bell, I could be heard over the rest of the band. In fact, I could really take control of the band with my cowbell. It was like I was the maestro directing the rhythm of the group when I played that cowbell. The band teacher noticed it too. He informed me that he could do with a lot less cowbell during practice. He intended for me to fade into the music, not stand out above all of it.

So what is your cowbell in your marketing? How do you stand out from the crowd? If your marketing makes you blend in, it is not doing its job. Marketing is meant to make you stand out and to set the rhythm for your sales. Too many times, people cannot decide on the one thing that is unique about their business. They can think of a dozen different attributes. In marketing, we want to take one and emphasize it. It needs to be your strength, not your weaknesses, and it needs to be different from your competition. Take a moment and make a list.

• What do I do well that my competition does not?
• Do my customers know these strengths?
• What does my competition do poorly?
• Are there ways I could shore up some services that would make more of a distinction between what I am doing and my competition’s poor performance?
• How can I get my strength message in front of potential customers?

Ring your cowbell with your marketing stick. Help your customers see how you are different. Don’t be content to blend in – it doesn’t sell anything when your marketing fades into the rest of your competitors. Make sure you stand out.