Every Business Makes a Choice: Zebra Marketing or Unicorn Marketing

Quick! What color is a zebra? Black and white. Or if you have been to Africa (or your local zoo) you may answer brown and white, as zebras can be either.

Is your brand lost in a sea of stripes, where everyone looks the same?

And whether their stripes are brown or black, they all have remarkably similar patterns. So similar that most of us, untrained in the nuances of zebras, can’t really tell one zebra from the next. Oh, some are bigger than others are, some fatter, some thinner. But unless two zebras stand side by side, you probably can’t tell one from the other as they all appear so alike.

Interestingly, the pattern on each zebra is unique; as distinctive as your fingerprints are from mine. Even in a massive herd, a baby zebra can always find its mother, because to it, mom’s stripe pattern is very easily distinguishable from the stripes of all the others.

In Search of Unicorn Marketing

Now think about the last unicorn you saw. (Okay, work with me here).

Unicorns are distinctive. Unicorns are memorable. One has no doubt that even within a herd of unicorns, each is singular from the next … they are after all, unicorns.

Which brings up the next question. In your business or consulting practice, are you a zebra marketer or a unicorn marketer?

Your product or service is different from those of other business people and consultants in your field. How you deliver your services is as individual to you as a fingerprint. And those people who are closest to you, recognize and appreciate your distinctiveness. They even reinforce your own sense of how matchless you are in your field because to them, your friends and family who know you so well, you are a-one-of-a kind. And if your family and close friends are all you really need as customers to sustain your business or consulting practice, then you’re set … you are a zebra mama!

But what do you really look like as you graze and travel the savanna, searching for clients and new business? Do you stand out from a distance? Do you stand out at all? Or are you simply one more zebra in a herd of moving stripes?

True, unicorns are very rare. But no one ever fails to spot the unicorn in a herd of zebra. Wherever unicorns are found, their stories become legendary and are told and retold, spreading virally, alive with a marketing magic most business people only dream of achieving.

Today you may be a zebra, a workhorse, or even an old goat, but remember, transformation is both possible and necessary. You can remain, lost in a sea of others who appear to be just like you. You’ll get business and you will get new clients this way, because sooner or later a certain percentage of people will go out on safari, searching for someone who does what you do, and if you are in the right place within the herd at the right moment and catch their eye, the vigilant hunters will find you. Or you can become a unicorn.

Tagged as: brand, business marketing, last unicorn, marketer, marketing, marketing tool, new business, zebra, zebras