"Publics" and "Niches" Are Different Terms

By understanding the old PR term of “publics” you’ll be able to better identify the various groups within your niche and hone your marketing better.

One caveat to remember is that niching is not for everyone. But everyone has “publics.” More on that later in the article.

In Public Relations, there’s an old concept called “publics.” It describes “who are you talking to?” and it groups people you interact with into recognizable categories by common interest. It helps when you’re speaking or writing to be able to envision who you’re talking to. Hence, “publics” help to hone your message.

An individual or group has various publics. For example, your Facebook public might be limited to your friends and family with whom you share views on politics, religion and personal matters. Your Linked In public, being strictly business contacts that you know, would receive communications from you relevant to your skill set, ongoing work projects, etc. Your Twitter account public might be followers who found you for professional reasons, most of whom you don’t know.

Your blog may speak to a more general public – ie anyone interested in reading your musings on a variety of subjects.

When applied to marketing your services or deciding on a product/service to offer, you want to see if there’s a “niche” for it. Usually this is done by researching online and doesn’t typically apply to an offline, brick and mortar company. Your “publics” for this niche may have certain attributes that help you to define how you speak to them.

For example, if you’re an attorney with a niche in asset protection for  in high net worth individuals with assets over $1 million, your marketing plan will focus on how to attract the attention of those individuals. As “publics” however, they may break down into different groups. One group might be retired medical professionals, while another may be professional athletes in their prime earning years. Each of these “publics” would be spoken to in a different way in  your speech and writing so that they felt sure that you understood their concerns.

How you would go about targeting new clientele is your niche marketing plan, but how you speak to your publics mentioned above will convey an image about you.

To Niche or Not to Niche

One one hand, niche marketing has become absolutely vital in selling online. If you’re publishing a downloadable Kindle book on Amazon, you have to define your niche using specific terms if you hope to make any sales. By the way, the best information I’ve seen so far on this subject is from long-time internet marketer James Jones. I find his stuff to be high integrity information and very affordable. I don’t get anything for telling you about him.

If you have a hair salon in a medium sized city, you don’t want to limit yourself to curly haired clientele. If your salon is in New York City, you might find your business model more profitable to service only curly haired clientele, much like Diva Curl has done in that city. (Despite my blog photo with straight hair, my hair is wildly curly and I’m glad to see hair care products targeted to my niche)

If you’re in a mid sized market and don’t want to limit your clientele, you might want to niche yourself by your authenticity. For example, let’s say you’re a dentist and your town has an oversupply of dentists. Since most people choose dentists by proximity to their work or home and whether the dentist takes their insurance, they don’t really have any other criteria, unless they’re looking for specific cosmetic services. Therefore, the best way to niche is to get a lot of exposure to the people in your area to attract them to the practice, but retain them by immediately showing your authenticity, whether through demonstration of exemplary service, being on the cutting edge of the subject, etc. You get the idea. To try and niche yourself by publics may just be too narrow, even in New York City.

There’s usually some workable benefits to any trend. As one of my brothers who’s an Assistant District Attorney puts it “the truth is usually found somewhere in the middle.” After nearly 25 years in PR and marketing business, I’m hesitant to grab onto any fad as the “next big thing.”

The bottom line is simply this: you have to take all the elements that comprise your business, your wants, your customers’ wants, the direction you want to go in, your assets, etc – and come up with a unique message and marketing plan to achieve that. Your PR is not your “BS,” it actually includes facets of your business such as how you interact with your public, your manners, the way you address people, etc. Organically these create an image that the public has of you.

In a brilliant post about Steve Jobs and the US Government, NY Times blogger Matt Bai points out the difference between true leadership and it’s antithesis: relying on focus groups and polls instead of taking risks.

In other words, while Mr. Jobs tried to understand the problems that technology could solve for his buyer, he wasn’t going to rely on the buyer to demand specific solutions, just so he could avoid ever having to take a risk. This is what’s commonly known as leading.

Were it not for Jobs’ brilliance and insight, would we have the sleek, user-friendly yet sophisticated tools that Jobs introduced through MAC? In the 1980s when computers were in ugly tan boxes, would the average “public” person surveyed en masse have provided the sheer genius of Steve Jobs?

My opinion is no. Jobs’ approach defies today’s marketing and political metrics that dictate a near- compulsive consultation with “the market” via polls and surveys. I will admit, these are valuable. But do they stifle genius?

Mat Bai also points out how Jobs merged community with individuality. While his devices provided an unprecedented autonomy and personalized computer experience, he recognized as well the importance of community and created tools to facilitate that. Yet government, Bai points out, still lives in the world of polarities:

Either we’re being told that centralized, 20th century systems can never be changed to accommodate more individual flexibility (like say, decoupling health care from employment), or we’re being told that all federal programs are wasteful and that everyone American should basically fend for himself. Either we’re supposed to rely entirely on large institutions, or we’re supposed to rely only on ourselves.

Will the Steve Jobs leadership example be emulated in Washington? The founding fathers drafted a document that created the freest country on earth when the average citizen had no interest in waging a war with England. Had they had polls at the time, we might have a different country.

There are, no doubt, many Steve Jobs’ in the world in different industries. Let his vision, kindness, toughness and indomitable spirit inspire us all.

Thank you, Steve Jobs.

Differentiating is just as much about you as it is about your customer. You actually need to know yourself (your products/services) as well as you know your customer. Why? You need to be able to select just the right messages.

In the early ’90s I started to work with talk radio show producers. Early on, I had the opportunity to be at CBS National Radio headquarters in New York. The producer I was visiting had a desk that was literally stacked several feet high with press packs and releases.

It was in those CBS offices where I discovered why it was our fledgling PR firm was getting such great response from talk stations around the country: my headlines were concise and spoke to the need of  the producers. I knew my client’s subjects and I knew the mindset of the busy and overwhelmed producer and host.

Wading through the press materials from other firms and big publishing houses was …. well .. boring! Their headlines, written in 12 point, would often read something like:

John Doe Releases New Book About XXXX

Compare that with 36 point font headlines screaming a question, followed by smaller sub headlines, followed by short paragraphs that promised not to drone on.

I figured if I didn’t have ‘em after those three points .. it probably wasn’t a subject they’d be interested in anyway.

National Enquire-ish? Sure. Effective? You bet.

I KNEW the mindset of the talk show producer and host. I’d been a talk radio junkie in Boston since the early 80s and I listened to how subjects were introduced on the air.

Eventually, I applied the same principles to local tv. I watched how they introduced a story. What was the teaser? How did they talk to the audience? Once I understood that, writing to tv producers became equally as effective. They wanted to book our clients.

The same principles apply to your prospect. How do they want to be communicated to? Are you imposing what YOU believe to be interesting without really consulting their interests?

Know Yourself. Know Your Customer.

Get into their head. Imagine their mindset, their wants and frustrations.

Upcoming articles will delve into: The 3 Steps to Differentiating Yourself; How to Match Your Messages to Your Marketing; When Differentiation Matters Least; 5 Ways to Attract Your Prospect’s Attention, and How to Deploy Your Differentiation Strategy.

While my experience is that this model can be a tremendous boon to business, this is true only if the response is well managed. I read recently of a restaurant that sold a tremendous number of Groupons, but their poor service caused a problem for Groupon and the restaurant generated some negative word of mouth.

Example: a service business offers a coupon with 80% off. This requires hiring extra staff. Of course, you’re delivering the service at a loss; but you’re also not laying out thousands of dollars and hoping for a profitable response.

How to make the best of the response? Here’s some tips:

1. Service the coupon purchasers at a rate you can control, if possible. If your business allows you to schedule the Groupon customer’s service, such as a spa or dental practice, limit the number per week. Work how the maximum number you can service with excellence while still servicing your regular clientele.
2. Spiff up your image and customer experience. Ensure your service staff and processes are at their best so that your coupon customers are impressed enough to return. These coupons can create a huge surge of exposure and this can be negative exposure if your business is not prepared to service the surge.
3. Set up a system to track the ROI. How much does it cost to deliver to that coupon purchaser? What percentage of users return? Are you providing an incentive to return? Are they referring?
4. View the exposure as free PR. The exposure of  your business to the Groupon or Living Social’s email list is tremendous. There’s really no other comparison for a local business owner. Use that to showcase your business; have a website with lots of information. You don’t have to have everything perfect – just make sure you don’t look rinky dink.
5. Create a bond with that coupon purchaser. Get the name and address of everyone who redeems their coupon. Put them on your mailing list.

This morning reading Ben Hunt’s excellent post and video on the importance of description tags in getting better click thru rates, I realized I’d already incorporated the point of his post into what I do myself. To me, it was common sense. But my background includes using copy to attract attention. I loved how Ben professionally covered the subject when it comes to attracting more visitors to your site. See his post here.

This post excerpts  paragraphs in random order from an interview with NY Times best-selling author Doug Casey on March 2, 2011 in his free e-newsletter. My first PR firm worked with Doug’s publisher on his last book and I’ve remained an avid reader of his since. Doug is founder of Casey Research, is a financial newsletter writer, speaker, and world traveler and investor. His world-view of the economy, finance and politics derives from personal experience with nearly every region on the globe. Click HERE to subscribe.

The Future of Corporate Media

“Big broadcast TV is disappearing too, for the same reasons we’ve been discussing. When some kid with a webcam in Egypt, Libya, or even Belarus, can produce a live documentary that’s more riveting and costs nothing compared to professional TV news coverage, you know that the business model of major news networks is on its way out. Anyway, kids today don’t watch TV, where you just absorb what you’re fed. They watch a million channels on YouTube, and get what they individually want and need on millions of websites. Broadcast, network, TV – with its arrogant executives, and feather-bedding union workers – is on its way out.”

Small Business vs. Politically-Connected Corporate Giants

“In a true free-market society you could only get big by making a product the consumers love. In a fascist society you get big through political favors.”

“The world is changing. Trying to use the coercive power of the state to maintain the status quo is a doomed effort. It’s like trying to carry water in your hands for an entire marathon.”

“Small, swift, new competitors are going to devour the big old dinosaurs, like a school of piranhas – and any new business that gets too big and bureaucratic, as well. The whole world is in the early stages of downsizing.”

After the Greater Depression – aka After The World Economy Resets

“The good news is that the post-industrial world will be one of true marvels. Bringing production down to the individual level, at very low cost, will create the most prosperous society the world has ever seen. The same forces are advancing medicine, and that will make our descendants the healthiest and most long-lived people the world has ever seen. And the individual nature of value creation should make it the freest culture the world has ever seen. That’s why I’m an optimist; I’m looking forward to a true renaissance, a golden age.”

‘You can’t regiment and standardize creativity. And there is no such thing as “job security,” which was always a stupid and parasitic notion. Your job is secure as long as you’re productive and creative – and your company is profitable.”

Want more? Click HERE to subscribe to Doug’s free e-newsletter. (For more information on the Greater Depression, read the best-selling book “Aftershock,” or an interview with Doug Casey from June 2010.)

Lady Gaga Truthfulness Refreshing

Aaaaaah. The refreshingly sweet sound of candor. In today’s transparent, upload-to-You-Tube-in-Minutes World, candor will be your Best PR.

Take Lady Gaga’s admission to using marijuana when she writes. She could have avoided Anderson Cooper’s question about drugs in her recent 60 Minutes interview. She could have lied. She didn’t. She admitted what she did, while at the same time acknowledging that her only other response to the question would have been to lie: something she won’t do.

Applied on a business level, whether a mission statement, press releases, problem with clients or staff state clearly what you stand for: be authentic.

Manipulation is deeply rooted in Public Relations

Many PRs from the past were masters at deception.

Edward Bernays is considered the father of modern public relations and coined the term in the United States to replace “propaganda,” as that word had gained disrepute.

Bernays’ niece Anna described his philosophy as a sort of “enlightened despotism.”

Bernays wrote of his view in his 1947 essay The Engineering of Consent which he describes the art of manipulating the American people. The central idea is that the public should not be aware of the manipulation taking place. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and operating on herd instinct.

Fast forward almost one hundred years and you have what you see today in modern public relations, advertising and marketing: an ongoing battle for your mind using spin.

Stated another way, Organic PR is: What the people you want to do business with say about you. If your organic PR turns off those whose support you, then it can be said to be “poor PR.” Conversely, if it gets them talking positively to others, you have “good PR.”

Good PR is something you can control.

When intelligent promotion is added to organically great PR, the word grows even faster. But a business with organically bad PR may get a momentary boost from some good promotion, but nothing lasting.

A triangle of organic PR elements is common to Lady Gaga, Groupon and other phenomenal succeses I’ve managed or observed. These are:

An Organic Message. Back in the mid 90s I hired a former editor in his sixties named Paul. Every good story, he explained, had to  pass the “Hey Martha” test, which was:

A man and his wife are married for forty years. Each night after work he has the same routine. He eats dinner, puts on his slippers and sits in his easy chair with the evening newspaper. His wife does the same. Once in a while he reads something that piques his interest. That is the only time he and his wife talk. The conversation starts with: “Hey Martha! Listen to this.” He then reads the story aloud.

The “Hey Martha” is your organic message. It takes observing who your market really is and what they respond to about you.

Marketing has a similar concept called the “Unique Selling Proposition” or “USP.” The organic pr message is different because it is who you are and understanding it actually helps you develop your USP. In short, developing a USP is a lot easier when you’ve isolated your Organic PR message.

Lady Gaga’s message “be yourself” sprang from her own self-image of an outcast growing up. She resonated with those who considered themselves “freaks” and other outcasts sensitive to ridicule. That message speaks to a wider segment than just those obviously out of the mainstream, so her organic message continues to spread. Meanwhile, of course her talent is exceptional.

Groupon’s organic message is that of offering local small businesses an opportunity for exposure to a massive number of qualified prospects looking for local deals that these businesses would never otherwise afford to reach.In exchange for the massive amount of exposure and new business, Groupon asks the business to offer a great deal to their subscribers.

In all of these there’s an organic message. Or, as Paul would call it: a “Hey Martha” story.

Connecting to Your Core Market with Authenticity. Don’t expect to get a big bang from generic promotion that doesn’t relate to the prospect and spouts trite messages that everyone else is saying. That’s called zero authenticity — no information go differentiates you.

What if you don’t know who your market is? What if you’re still finding out? By being authentically who you are, you’ll  attract those that are attracted to not only your service, but by who you naturally are.

Authenticity is being who you or your company actually are and not faking something you’re not because you think it’s cool.

Speaking to a core market. Organic PR is what the people you do business with say about you. That’s your core market. Build on that and don’t worry about speaking to everyone. Your sphere will widen if you keep speaking to your core.

What if you don’t know who your core market is? Starting a business often entails interacting with lots of different markets before you find the one that is a better “fit.” Keep your eyes open for it, while staying authentic and knowing your organic message. Deliver a great service, product, performance, etc all while observing who you attract.

Or, work it the other way: who do you feel most comfortable interacting with? Who do you know? What are they asking for?

“Message first — then mechanics” as I’ve said in the past. Meaning … know who you’re talking to and what to say before you invest a lot into direct mail, extensive copywriting, etc.

The Organic PR Triangle is a Journey, Not a Destination.

These elements described above work together as a triangle, with each element comprising a corner. As you better one aspect, you get more insight into the others. Pick one first and work on that and be aware of the other two aspects.

View developing the three aspects of Organic PR as a journey with no final destination. Don’t fret about getting all of these all “right” at one time. That’s a myth.

As 50 Cent so clearly demonstrates in this article, these secrets get harder to implement the more successful you are.

Whether politicians, professionals or business owners, these are the keys to achieving and maintaining success.

So, as this New Year is upon us, review these key points and see how you can use them in your own marketing and PR strategy for 2010. Thanks to www.copyblogger.com for posting the article.

Four Things 50 Cent Can Teach You About Connecting With Your Audience

By Robert Greene

I spent most of 2007 hanging out with Curtis Jackson, better known as Fifty Cent. Together we wrote a bestselling book about hustling, fearlessness, and power.

I’d like to share a couple of insights that arose from that collaboration.

After the remarkable success of his first two commercial albums, Fifty Cent stood on top of the music world. But his very success was starting to corrode his musical ability.

His sense of connection, so vital on the streets, was fading in this new environment he now inhabited.

He was surrounded by flatterers who wanted to be in his entourage, managers and industry people who saw only dollar signs in him. His main interactions were with people in the corporate world or other stars.

At the same time, he could no longer hang out on the streets or get firsthand looks at the trends that were just starting up.

All of this meant that Fifty was flying blind with his music, not really sure if it would connect anymore with his audience. Other stars didn’t seem to mind this; in fact, they enjoyed living in this kind of celebrity bubble. They were afraid of coming back down to earth. Fifty felt the opposite, but there seemed to be no way out.

Know your environment from the inside out.

Most people think first of what they want to express or make, then find the audience for their idea. You must work the opposite angle, thinking first of the public. You need to keep your focus on their changing needs, the trends that are washing through them. Beginning with their demand, you create the appropriate supply. Do not be afraid of people’s criticisms—without such feedback your work will be too personal and delusional. You must maintain as close a relationship to your environment as possible, getting an inside “feel” for what is happening around you. Never lose touch with your base.
~ The 50th Law

An experiment in reconnection.

In early 2007, Fifty decided to start up his own website. He thought of it as a way to market his music and merchandise directly to the public, without the screen of his record label, which was proving quite inept in adapting to the Internet age.

First, he decided to experiment. As he prepared to launch a G-Unit record in the summer of 2008, he leaked one of the songs on to the website on a Friday night, then the next day he refreshed the Comments page every few minutes and tracked the members’ response to it.

After several hundred comments it was clear that the verdict was negative. The song was too soft. They wanted and expected something harder from a G-Unit record.

Taking their criticisms to heart, he shelved the song and soon released another, creating the hard sound they had demanded. This time the response was overwhelmingly positive.

He put up the latest single from his arch-enemy The Game, hoping to read the negative comments of his fans. To his surprise, many of them liked the song. He engaged in an online debate with them about this and had his eyes opened about changes in people’s tastes and why they had perhaps grown distant from his music. It forced him to rethink his own direction.

Creating a radical connection

To draw more people to his site, Fifty decided to break down the distance in both directions. He posted blogs on personal subjects, and then responded to his fans’ comments. They could feel they had complete access to him.

Using the advances in technology, he took this further, having his team film him on their cell phones wherever he went; these images were then streamed live on the website. Made dramatic by Fifty’s flair for confrontation, membership grew by leaps and bounds.

As it evolved, the website came to strangely resemble the world of hustling that Fifty had created for himself on the streets of southside Queens. He could produce testers (trial songs) for his fans, who were like drug fiends, constantly hungry for new product from Fifty; and he could get instant feedback on their quality. He could develop a feel for what they were looking for and how he could manipulate their demand.

He had moved from the outside to the inside and the hustling game came alive once more, this time on a global scale.

Four keys to the fearless approach

The public is never wrong. When people don’t respond to what you do, they’re telling you something loud and clear. You’re just not listening.
~ Fifty Cent

Fifty’s approach isn’t just for pop culture icons. His insights into rebuilding connection are universal.

Most of us live in a society of apparent abundance and ease. We lack a sense of urgency to connect to other people. In such a melting pot as the modern world, with people’s tastes changing at a faster pace than ever before, our success depends on our ability to move outside of ourselves and connect to other social networks.

At all cost, you need to continually force yourself outward. You must reach a point where losing this connection to your environment makes you feel uncomfortable, even vulnerable.

The following are four strategies you can use to bring yourself closer to this ideal.

1. Crush all distance

In this day and age, to reach people you must have access to their inner lives — their frustrations, aspirations, resentments.
To do so, you must crush as much distance as possible between you and your audience.

You enter their spirit and absorb it from within. Their way of looking at things becomes yours. And when you recreate it in some form of work, it has life. What shocks and excites you will then have the same effect on them.

This requires a degree of fearlessness and open spirit. You are not afraid to have your whole personality shaped by these intense interactions. You assume a radical equality with the public, giving voice to people’s ideas and desires.

What you produce will naturally connect in a deep way.

2. Open informal channels of criticism and feedback

When Eleanor Roosevelt entered the White House as First Lady in 1933, it was with much trepidation. Denied an official position within the administration, she decided to work to create informal channels to the public, on her own.

She traveled all over the country — to inner cities and remote rural towns — listening to people’s complaints and needs. She brought many of these people back to meet the president and give him firsthand impressions of the effects of the New Deal.

She opened a column in The Woman’s Home Companion, in which she let her audience know, “I want you to write me.” She would use her column as a kind of discussion forum with the American public, encouraging people to share their criticisms.

Within six months she had received over 300,000 letters, and with her staff she worked to answer every last one of them.
She began to see a pattern from the bottom up — a growing disenchantment with the New Deal. Every day, she left a memo in her husband’s basket, reminding him of these criticisms and the need to be more responsive. And slowly, she began to have an influence on his policy, pushing him leftward. All of this took tremendous courage for she was continually ridiculed for her activist approach, long before any First Lady had ever thought of such a role.

As Eleanor understood, any kind of group tends to close itself off from the outside world. From within this bubble, people delude themselves into thinking they have insight into how their audience or public feels — they read the papers, various reports, the poll numbers, etc.

But all of this information tends to be flat and highly filtered. It is much different when you interact directly with the public, hear in the flesh their criticisms and feedback. You create a back-and-forth dynamic in which their ideas, involvement and energy can be harnessed for your purposes.

3. Reconnect with your base

We see it again and again.

A person has success when they are younger because they have deep ties with a social group. Then slowly they lose this connection.

In his own way, the famous black activist Malcolm X struggled with this problem. He had spent his youth as a savvy street hustler, ending up in prison on drug charges. Out of prison he became a highly visible spokesperson for Nation of Islam, channeling his emotions into powerful speeches that gave voice to those who lived deep in the ghettos of America.

As he became more and more famous, he made an effort to inoculate himself from the psychic distance experienced by other successful leaders in the black community.

He increased his interactions with street hustlers and agitators, the kind of people from the lower depths that most leaders would scrupulously avoid. He made himself spend more time with those who had suffered recent injustices, soaking up their experiences and sense of outrage.

I knew that the ghetto people knew that I never left the ghetto in spirit, and I never left it physically any more than I had to. I had a ghetto instinct; for instance, I could feel if tension was beyond normal in a ghetto audience. And I could speak and understand the ghetto’s language.
~ Malcolm XThe goal in connecting to the public is not to please everyone, to spread yourself out to the widest possible audience. You have a base of power — a group of people, small or large, who identify with you. Keep your associations with it alive, intense and present.
Return to your origins — the source of all inspiration and power.

4. Create the social mirror

Instead of turning inward, consider people’s coolness to your idea and their criticisms as a kind of mirror that they are holding up to you. Your ego cannot protect you — the mirror does not lie. You use it to correct your appearance and avoid ridicule.

The opinions of other people serve a similar function. You view your work inside your mind, encrusted with all kinds of desires and fears. Through their criticisms you can get closer to this objective version and gradually improve what you do.

When your work does not communicate with others, consider it your own fault. You did not make your ideas clear enough, you failed to connect with your audience emotionally. This will spare you any bitterness or anger that might come from people’s critiques. You are simply perfecting your work through the social mirror.

About the Author: Robert Greene is the bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power (two million copies sold) and The 33 Strategies of War. His collaboration with Fifty Cent, The 50th Law, spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Check out Robert’s blog at http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/

No two marketing approaches are the same.

No two shoe brands are the same.

No two individuals within the same profession will deliver the same service.

The ability to tell one from the other is the key to successful communicating.

When you’re communicating about yourself to a marketplace, your words need to resonate with your prospect. Your prospect needs to say “hey .. that’s for me!”

Whether you’re writing copy for a postcard or creating phrases for a Google Adword campaign, how do you verbalize what it is that your market is looking for that differentiates you?

A Gucci bag in the end isn’t much different in quality, design and construction than many other less expensive brands. It’s got a reputation. It’s got a “perceived value” over and above the mere materials and design.

Building your reputation is what differentiates you. It’s not an overnight process, but it doesn’t have to take long. Part of it is creating a “perceived value” over and above the actual service or product.

You want to be the Gucci or Nordstrom’s of your industry? Differentiate. It’s not complicated, nor does it require diabolical genius. It’s a process of examining what you do, analyzing what your customers have said about you, and your competition and identifying what’s different. The perceived value is often not something you might recognize yourself. Sometimes I discover it from reading testimonials or talking to my client’s customers.

When you differentiate, you lose a lot of concern over competition. Why? Because when you do it right and define how your company or product is different, and the value that’s perceived about you, you have a strength you can build on. You’re different.

Further, when you identify which market will appreciate and pay for your difference, you’re attracting the customers you want.

What makes one dentist a better service provider for a woman over fifty who needs rehabilitative work? When the dentist who has years of experience working with that exact demographic with rave results is being compared with a dentist just learning, there’s no contest. As long as she knows about the more experienced dentist, she’ll choose him, right? She’ll probably even fly across the country to get the experienced service provider.

Differentiate. Make it real. And then promote the heck out of it.

That’s personal branding.