Best practices means you are average. Better practices means that you are meaningfully different and standing out from the crowd.
The marketing manager who follows best practices is doing her brand a disservice. Best practices mean you are following the category and the leader. Better practices, say that you are creating a new path and a different approach to success.
If your competition focuses on high prices for coffee, maybe your better practice is to give away the coffee and charge for something else like spending time in your shop. See Ziferblat.
If your competition focuses on selling sparkling wine to everyone, maybe you can concentrate on a better practice to sell a blueberry-tinged sparkling wine to those getting married. See Blanc de Blue.
If your competition charges high prices for airline tickets, follow a better practice to sell a monthly pass for unlimited flights. See SurfAir.
Better practices mean you are avoiding the way the category behaves.
Ikea is a furniture store that doesn’t sell assembled furniture. It was a radical idea when the business started.
Cirque du Soleil created a circus without animals. It didn’t follow best practices for circuses but redefined what a circus could be.
When everyone focused on the best practice of the design of a shoe, Christian Louboutin focused on the soul – in their red color.
Best versus Better Practices
If there is one marketing lesson that needs to be better understood, it is that a brand has to follow a different path from their competition. When you blend in with everyone else, your brand recedes into the category.
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Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mendhak/6106754025
