Differentiate or Die

Well jeez, this is starting off awfully morbid! But hey, now that we have your attention, let’s take a couple minutes to talk about why differentiating your business is more important than ever.

The Commodification of Everything

First, a brief tour of the problem. No matter if you sell bicycle parts, wine tours, plastic surgery, pet supplies or cruise vacations, the chances are very good that you have competitors offering much the same thing. And it’s probably hard for most people to tell you apart. Oh, but you have excellent customer service? So does everybody. Your prices are low? Really, you want to compete on that? But wait, you’ve been around for 30 years? So what?

That all might be a bit harsh but always remember that you care about your business (and see its uniqueness) much more than the average person shopping you. Having a sustainable competitive advantage is pretty critical in today’s hypercompetitive landscape.

Here’s a 3-step process for uncovering real differences and getting them in front of potential customers.

1. Brainstorming Your Difference

   You can’t well talk about what sets you apart if you don’t first know what that is. And even if you think you have an idea of how your business stacks up to the competition, it doesn’t hurt to do a bit of introspection.

   We recommend a 3-step approach (sensing a theme?):

   1. Gather your thoughts: Reflect on why you started your business, how it’s evolved, and what you see as setting you apart from the crowd today.
   2. Involve your staff: Depending on the size of your business, either gather up your entire team for a working lunch or tap key stakeholders from across your organization to share what they see as making your business stand out.
   3. Check in with customers: You might think you have a good idea of what makes your business special, and many customers are likely to reinforce what you come up with. But don’t be surprised if your customers see the key differentiators of your business in a different light.

2. Expressing Your Difference

   Now that you’ve done the heavy lifting to determine what sets you apart, you have to craft your brand message and roll it out. Wait, did we say the hard part was over?

   The first thing most people want to do is come up with a tagline. Hold your horses on that. Instead, try to condense your differences into a series of short statements starting “None of our competitors…”. Consider these your core talking points when promoting your business.

   From there, you can try to come up with creative (text, images, video, etc.) to showcase these differences, or you may be better off enlisting the help of a marketing team with branding experience.

3. Reinforcing Your Difference

   Now you have your key messages, packaged up in great soundbites, taglines, graphics and videos. Kudos. But here’s another big mistake businesses make: they roll out a new branding effort for a few months, then shelve it like a grade school trophy.

   Wrong. Your brand, like your business, is a living thing. It needs love every day to grow. Which means your staff members need to think, breathe, and speak what sets you apart to anyone who will listen, from now through forever. It means finding new ways to share your difference on social media, in advertisements, and in ongoing communications with customers. It means revisiting your differentiators periodically, and having a system in place to identify when competitors have made a change that wipes out one or more of your differences.

   Your difference is your lifeblood. And like we said at the beginning, it’s time to differentiate or die.