Brand Bootcamp: Crossing Milestone #2 – Differentiating from Your Competition

You’ve started making waves with the direction of your brand – from your logo to your website to your social media profiles. But, how to you stand out from your competitors, especially if your space is crowded with lots of similar players?

It all boils down to customer experience and how you communicate this to your market.  Experience is comprised of major factors like how your company delivers its products and/or services, as well as subtle things like the disposition of your staff when dealing with customers...such as ensuring that employees smile.  From a marketing perspective, it is essential to identify these attributes on how your company does things uniquely, to empower and organize them (ensuring a consitent experience for customers across the board) and to communicate, communicate, communicate it.

Step 1: Identify Your Differentiators

This sounds easy, but being able to briefly and accurately describe what is different about your business versus your competitors is actually the hardest part of differentiating.  Generally, when I help clients work through this process I guide them through the following questions:

• Do you or your staff have any unique skills that are rare or uncommon in your sector?  For example, at Change3 we have B2B marketing and analytics experts on staff with decades of experience, and hundreds of market analyses and studies under their belts.  These are uncommon human skills and intellectual assets in an agency, making our firm better suited to help B2B clients speak to their customers.
• Does your company offer a unique or nicer environment than your competitors?  It may be that you have staffed your business with people that smile all the time or have southern accents or might try to hire physically attractive people.  This creates a certain kind of environment, which certain customers will value.  
• Do you have a "way" of doing things?  For example, you may differentiate by doing more training and education with your customers, as compared to your competitors.  This means you are likely to be more successful with those customers that want more help and support.

In the end, I try to help clients think about not only how they go about doing things, but also how and why their customers chose their firms over others.  This is not always about price.  It includes all the elements I mention above, and for your business it might include other things too - which you'll need to identify to help you really sharpen your brand message.  

Step 2: Target the Right Audience

Once you have identified that uniqueness of your company's way of doing things (see Milestone #1 - Showcasing Your Uniqueness for more ideas on this), you can then most effectively communicate it AND target the customers that will most appreciate that unique way of doing things.  For example, if your company likes to offer customers an informal environment, while your competitors remain quite formal, then your first step to market your business is to be able to target customers that want that informal environment.  That means, in your messaging and outreach, your unique attribute (informal environment), should be emphasized.  This does two things - makes your message or offer relevant to the segment of customers that will most value it and also communicates to all that see your message the unique attribute you want them to associate with your company's brand.

Step 3: Deliver on Your Brand Promise Consistently

The first thing is to look at your mission statement, your company’s values, and your company’s culture.  In most small businesses, business leaders don't always have time to establish hard and fast processes or procedures - which can mean that the way things are done or delivered to clients/customers may be inconsistent depending on who is doing the delivering.  As such, one of the best things you can do to stand out from the competition, is to ensure that all of your employees know what unique ways you want them to go about delighting customers, such as smiling, and that you properly train them to do that consistently.

This means part of your marketing process might actually be documenting your "uniqueness" and doing some training with your team to ensure they can deliver it consistently.  This is essential to ensuring that your business delivers on its brand promise each and every time.

Want help differentiating from your competition?  We can walk you through this process in one of our 2 hour brand bootcamps, where we'll help you identify your uniqueness and tailor your message.  Click here to learn more.