Finding Your Point of Difference

The success of your brand rises and falls on any number of different factors, but one of the clearest indicators of brand health is your brand differentiation.

Becoming a generic trademark is a nightmare shared by many brand managers, and there’s something even worse: if your product or service begins to feel like a commodity, you are losing the war for consumer loyalty.

That’s why brand differentiation is so important. It’s a way to ensure that your customers are confident through every step in the transaction and that they’re coming to you to fill a need they can’t fill anywhere else.

Being considered the generic and/or being classified as a commodity are the paths of decline. Brand differentiation is the path of growth.

Get your strategy in place

Marketing tactics are good, but they’re short-term. In order to differentiate, you have to think strategically before you think tactically: what’s the long-term strategy that will define your approach to the market? Who is your ideal client? You may be familiar with the 80/20 rule: most businesses get 80% of their revenue from 20% of their consumer base. Find your 20%, and be assiduous in meeting their needs.

In order to meet those needs, you need to understand the core difference in what you offer, compared to everyone else on the market. Do you…

Provide a unique product?

Offer a unique service?

Serve an under-served market niche?

Rely on special offers?

Solve a problem no one else can solve?

Provide value?

Offer guarantees?

Provide a customer-centric approach?

Have a novel way of doing business?

Outperform your competition?

Look to your current clients to find out what’s working and what’s not. This is a good time to update your SWOT analyses: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats can change as your brand evolves. Once you have your data and your ideal client in mind, rework your mission to serve that niche, and then share your story.

Three major factors contribute to brand perception. Your company should live and work by all of them:

Your core values

Your mission

Your vision

Things your customers should be able to tell you

What attracted your customers to your services? How did their confidence increase from their first awareness of you to the point of sale?

What do they get from your products or services that they can’t find elsewhere?

What don’t they get from your products or services that they need?

With this information in hand, you can create a difference summary. This defines how your company sets itself apart, how it satisfies your consumers, and how your consumers are affected by this targeted attention.

Focusing on your target market allows you to grow beyond it

You can’t satisfy everyone, and trying to make a product which addresses every need means creating a brand strategy that’s so generalized that it’s diffuse and useless. But if you focus on solving one set of needs and doing so exceptionally well, you’ll build a solid foundation and strong near-term growth.

Brand differentiation is how you provide exceptional service to the people who get – and give – the most value

It’s an ongoing process, and one that savvy companies continually revisit, recalibrate, and refine. Recalibrate Strategies can work with your company to ensure that it stays visible and distinct in a market where the reputation economy becomes more important every day.