5 STEPS TO HELP YOU DIFFERENTIATE FROM THE COMPETITION

(with examples)

Is your business different than that of your competition? You know it is, your employees know it, but do your buyers understand that well enough? Today, the number of players that are competing for the same customer – and sell the same products – is multiplying at a rapid pace in every industry vertical. Trying to find the magic ingredient that will make your offering more desirable than others is increasingly challenging. And in a world that seems to have seen it all, even if you have something innovative to display, creating that wow effect will be a struggle.

The differentiation strategy involves the concept of uniqueness and it’s important to know that it’s not all about marketing your product. According to Market Research, there are six primary ways to differentiate: through the product, service, channels of distribution, customer relationships, price and reputation (your image).

We will focus on the branding aspect of this strategy and the last key point on the above list: reputation, or your company’s image. Because branding can amplify your entire differentiation strategy and create that ‘X factor’ that you need. However, to get to that point, you need to go through a very thorough process that digs deep into the core of who you are and what you do, your competitive landscape, your customer environment, and more.

Let’s get into it, step by step.

1. Tell your brand story

In today’s competitive landscape, talking only about your product features won’t cut it. To make your brand stand out more, you need to provide the ‘why’ behind your business. Because, when everyone offers the same thing, what will eventually prevail in the buying decision is an emotional element. Science has proven time and again that stories can create that emotional connection, because we are wired to soak up information through stories from an early age. Also, people are attracted to meaning and want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Your passion, a specific cause that you support, a personal experience that led you to start your business, or another element that can be turned into an interesting narrative, can define your brand story and add meaning to your business. Here’s an example of the brand story behind our customer, Leen’s, which is a restaurant chain with locations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. See how a personal experience created an emotional connection to its target audience:

“During his years in Dubai, our founder, Claudio Leenders, started to feel the pulse of this dynamic city and its inhabitants, many of whom came from different origins and backgrounds, just like himself. Like Claudio, they wanted a place that would indulge their profound taste with various international recipes collected on their travelling routes and carefully stored in their wanderlust memories. At the same time, they craved a homey atmosphere, where they – citizens of the world – could be themselves and not feel like strangers. Where they don’t have to dress up to enjoy five-star meals. Claudio decided to create such a place.”

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2. Identify your buyer personas

We love this quote because it’s especially true for branding:

“I can’t tell you how to succeed, but I can tell you how to fail: try to please everybody.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Before getting into any kind of marketing, it is critical to understand to whom your brand is talking – and be very specific about that. This starting point will define your entire marketing communication and every message, across every touchpoint, needs to be aligned with your ideal customer. Who is that? How old is that person? Where does she/he live? What does she/he do? What is motivating that person? What are his/her concerns?

That’s what you need to identify to be able to create something called the buyer persona. Hubspot defines it as “…a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers”. Usually, buyer personas include customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations and goals, and the more detailed they are, the better.

Here’s how we created buyer personas for our client Benin café.

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3. Study your competition

This is a no-brainer, and you probably already know who your closest competitors are, and how they look and sound, but it doesn’t hurt to do more research on their marketing tactics.

What’s also useful is to create something called a “competitive matrix”, which is basically a comparison of all your product features to those of your competitors. You need to identify points of parity and, more importantly, points of differentiation that are unique to your service to identify the direction you need to take in your marketing efforts.

4. Build your brand personality

Now that you know who you are talking to – and who are talking against – it’s time to define the character of your brand. Here’s why that is so important: people cannot actually relate to brands; they relate to other people. That’s why it’s best if your brand is built around a fictive character, a person that is easy to picture and connect with.

In building the personality of your brand, you cannot simply reflect the personality traits of your ideal buyer; you need to ask yourself – what is that person aspiring to? What are his/her dreams and ideals? Who does he want to become and who inspires her? Because this is another psychological element at play when people look at brands and services – they want to relate and identify with their idealized image of themselves.

Defining your brand character is a complex process in which we try to identify your buyer persona’s ideal person and avoid the brand personality that your competitors have. We help our customers get to that point through two separate workshops that are structured to simplify that process.

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5. Create your positioning statement

Finally, what will help to set your company apart is a positioning statement. Hubspot defines it as “…a brief description of a product or service and target market, and how the product or service fills a particular need of the target market. It’s meant to be used as an internal tool to align marketing efforts with the brand and value proposition.”

Before we get into that, together with our clients, we first define the needs of their ideal customers and categorise them into basic, performance and excitement. Then, based on that information, we help our customers to create a positioning statement by using this formula:

To (target audience) our product is the (product category) that provides (basic, performance, excitement attributes), because (reason to believe).

Here’s one that we created for our client, Flain, an online marketplace for activewear brands offered to customers of the Persian Gulf countries in the Middle East.

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We hope you’ll find these steps helpful in trying to define your company’s ‘X factor’. These are essential elements in our process of creating a brand strategy for our clients, which we always go through before we get into the design of the brand’s visual and verbal identity.

You can learn more about our branding strategy process here. Get in touch if you need one for your organisation. We’d love to help you create a strong branding foundation that will make your company stand out from the competition.

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