How to be a purple cow?

It is common knowledge that to be successful, you have to stand out in whatever you are doing. There are several people doing the same thing in today’s world. Why is one barista better than the other? Why is my content better than yours? Why is my product or service better than yours? If you cant qualify and quantify it, then you are just like everyone else. People don’t notice a cow in a herd, but they notice a purple cow in a regular herd. You can read more about Seth Godin’s purple cow here. Lets discuss a few ways to distinguish your product & distinguish yourself in your team:

Distinguishing your product: Is there a specific feature that your customers really need and the competition is not offering it? How quickly can you get that to the market and also include most of the other features offered by the competition? Is your product doing the same thing that is done by most other products in the market? Think about how the user experience is different with your product. Is it faster? Is it simple and intuitive to use? Market these and stand out. If there is nothing that distinguishes your product (its just another ‘me too’), then identify ways to make yours stand out. Talk to your customers about what they’d like to see improved & implement them. See how your customers use your product and make changes to your product. If they have to do 10 things before they reach their final goal, how can you reduce it to to say 5 things instead of 10?

Distinguishing yourself in your team: With so many smart people around, how do you get the purple color on you? For starters, you don’t have to be an inventor to stand out. Even being a follower can distinguish you. You may not have invented blogs. But you can be the first one in your product marketing team to use blogs for your product. You can be the first one in your team to create communities and allow your users to provide feedback & new feature requests. If you are not the first one to blog in your team, make your content more relevant to the target market. Offer incentives for people to read your content. Also, share ideas. If you keep ideas to yourself, you will be perceived as insecure. Whereas sharing your ideas makes you a thought leader. If you are smart, show case it to the team in the meetings by thinking out loud.

You can start by doing small things. Overtime they add up. To be a purple cow, you can start with having purple patches. Don’t have to have yourself covered in purple paint.

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