How to Differentiate Your Brand from the Crowd
What is a brand?
At Tiny Bully, we believe that your brand is the single idea inside your consumers’ minds any time they interact with your brand. Many companies try to be everything to everyone. Why just be the best at X, when you can be the best at X, Y, and Z?
Unfortunately, this approach creates confusion in the minds of your consumers. If your target audience can’t tell immediately what you do, what you stand for, and how you are different from your competitors, your brand is destined for mediocrity.
Highly successful businesses, products or personal brands make tough choices about what they can own. What is the one thing that you do differently than your competitors to make your brand stand out?
5 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand from the Competition
1. Differentiate Your Brand by Price.
If you are going to differentiate on price you can be the low-cost value provider or the premium provider. Do you want to be Hyundai or Mercedes?
2. Differentiate Your Brand by Niche.
What is the one niche segment of the industry that you can exploit and dominate? GoPro took a traditional video camera and made a camera that could be mounted on the body, and marketed it specifically to athletes.
3. Differentiate Your Brand by Innovation.
What new features and benefits does your product or service offer? SalesForce changed the whole CRM world by offering a SaaS-based CRM with more relevant features and benefits than its competitors.
4. Differentiate Your Brand by Convenience.
How can you make life easier for your target audience? Stamps.com allows you to weigh and print postage at your house or office without ever having to go to the post office.
5. Differentiate Your Brand by Service.
People will pay a premium for customer service and a good experience. Zappos made its brand by allowing free returns and setting the standard for customer service and positive experiences.
Your point of difference must be strongly relevant to your audience. All entrepreneurs and employees are passionate about their business and product, which can make it hard to take an objective view of their value. Get an outside opinion. If you are a start-up, ask 20 random people in your target audience if they can tell the difference between your product and the competition. If you are an established brand, ask your current customers: What made you select us? Look for recurring points of difference.
A successful brand creates ONE idea inside the mind of its consumers. What is the single idea that you want to associate with your brand? Need help finding that single idea?