How to differentiate your business

13 Creative Ways to Differentiate Your Business From Competitors

It takes a few tricks up your sleeve in order to stand out from a sea of competitors.

Question: If you’re not the first in your space, how do you differentiate your company from the other businesses that do the same thing?

Offer Lower Prices

«This is our company 100 percent. We beat everyone’s price. Nobody can beat us. If you’re looking to differentiate yourself from your larger competitors, you need to cut the price or have a MUCH better service. We decided to cut the price. It’s working well so far!»

Focus on One Thing

«If you find your company is not in first place in comparison to your competitors, a method of differentiation is to focus on one aspect of your business product/featureВ and make it the best in your space. The second step is to market the focusedВ product/featureВ explaining how it is better than your competition.»

Improve Upon Customer Feedback

«Just because a company is first in your space doesn’t mean everything about them is good. Look for what the customers say and keep an eye on finding the strengths and weaknesses in the space. Once you identify the strengths and weaknesses, get creative and innovate, helping you differentiate yourself from the crowd and offer a solution consumers are seeking.»

Differentiate at the Strategy Level

«I’m a consultant, and anyone can offer the same types of services. But not everyone can provide the same level of strategic planning I do. There are lots of consultants and some are better than others. What sets the great consultants apart, regardless of their niche, is their strategy. My strength is in strategy and executing the strategy. What’s your strength? That’s your differentiating factor.»

Be Controversial

«Doing what everyone else does is comfortable and «safe,» but stir some controversy and do something drastically different! It takes courage, but focus on one thing you think others are doing incorrectly, or not doing at all, and consistently demonstrate how you’re bucking the trend. Then, shout it from the rooftops in all of your marketing and communication.»

Market Your Individuality

«Your business branding should be focused on showing potential customers how you stand out from similar companies. Emphasize these aspects of your business’s identity and your customers will take note.»

Make Your Core Values Reflect Something New

«In the business of luxury mattresses, I’m faced with several competitors who produce good, high-quality products for the same market as me. However, I am the only one who emphasizes the green technology that goes into making my products. By planting a stake in the ground in advocating for environmental protection, I make my values known to my customers and stand out from the crowd.»

Emphasize Your Unique Strengths

«For our company, we lean on four differentiators. First, we promote our unique investment thesis and our superior customer service, including response time to inquiries. We also have a unique business model that differentiates us from other companies. And finally, it’s important for us to show that we are investing and more than just a manager.»

Clearly Define Your Added Value

«Think of yourself as a potential client. What would make you choose your company over your competitors? How is your business relevant to your market, and where does it stand out compared to the current players? Do some research on your market and industry trends, and use this information to determine your added value. That will be your competitive advantage.»

Look Into Other Industry Leaders

«It can be extremely helpful to look into other industries than your own and see what their leaders are doing when trying to differentiate. Even if you are not in tech, you can still look at Apple’s business plan and marketing strategies and utilize them in your own way. Looking into other industry leaders may open your mind outside of the «box» of what your competition is already doing.»

Focus on Quality of Process

«You can really beat your competition by making it easier to do business with you than with them. Consider things like theirВ refund policy, satisfaction guarantees or any other barriers to doing business that they have in place. Check reviews to verify if those barriers are a pain point with consumers, and if they are, streamline or remove them in your own company.»

7 Ways to Differentiate Your Business from the Competition

Do you ever watch college basketball?

Notice how Clemson and Case Western Reserve never play each other?

That’s because the NCAA separates schools by their level of competition and the resources of their athletic departments. Clemsen is a D1 school and CWR is a D3, so they never go head-to-head.

That’s not how it works in eCommerce.

eComm brands and online retailers need to differentiate themselves from their competition using any means possible. Massive stacks of money could be one of those means, but it’s not a particularly practical one. Your pockets are probably far shallower than those of Amazon, Walmart, Target, and other giants in the space.

Here are 7 places to start:

1. Create Product Differences From Other Online Competitors

You know the Daft Punk song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”? It may as well be the anthem for product differentiation.

If you’re going to compete on the strength of your offerings, you’ll want to make sure customers know that they’re getting the superlative version of what they’re shopping for: a product that’s more efficient, more durable, more reliable, or better performing than any other option. Show them they’re getting the best watch or hiking boot or blender out there.

Benefits of Product Differentiation

Does let you actually compete with the major sellers, since buyers looking for the very best don’t care where it comes from

Makes for strong marketing pushes

Helps with SEO and page rank by name-dropping competitors and showing how you outperform them

Challenges of Product Differentiation

Expensive to create

Customer Success and Service Differentiation

The majority of your customers may never need customer success or service. Or at least not anything out of the ordinary. They’ll make their order, get their package, and maybe be asked to fill out a NPS survey or to leave a review. That’s it.

But what about when something goes wrong? When a customer has a question, or has run into a problem with a product, or needs to make a return, or is unhappy with their purchase?

If your company can make those experiences easy and enjoyable, you’ll stand out from the crowd.

Benefits of Success and Service Differentiation

Creates genuine brand advocates (people love sharing their opinions, and they share more positive than negative experiences )

Allows for flexibility in how you achieve it: you can be faster, more responsive to customer feedback, available on more channels, more empathetic, and more creative in solutions

Provides valuable customer feedback to product team to continue to improve what you offer

Challenges of Success and Service Differentiation

Requires staffing up a solid customer success / service team (and not outsourcing it)

Runs the risks of customers taking advantage of your commitment to delighting them

3. Provide More Distribution Channels and More Access

Some of your customers may shop on social. Others might like to make purchases from marketplaces, so they can see all their options at once. Still others could prefer to physically see items before they buy.

As an eComm retailer, can’t be everywhere, but the more places you are, the more potential customers you’ll be able to connect with. For example, if you sell headphones, you could differentiate your business by having those headphones available for sale in the most places possible: on your own website; on a major music label’s website via a partnership; on Instagram via a purchase button; on shelves at a record store; at a pop-up event in a key market, and more.

Benefits of Distribution Differentiation

Makes it extremely difficult for competitors to copy your approach

Lets you tap into markets you otherwise wouldn’t have the resources to deeply understand and market to

Challenges of Distribution Differentiation

Requires lots of coordination between internal sales and marketing teams and external partners, vendors, and other retailers to pull off

Introduces messaging risks that distributors or other retailers will misrepresent your brand

4. Build Better Relationships As Effective Differentiation

Okay, so you’ve got an interested customer, or even one who’s made a purchase from you. What happens next?

Do you get to know who that customer really is? A differentiation approach that focuses on relationship-building would be screaming for you to say YES.

A high-touch relationship management model, where you call customers to check in on their orders, invite them to exclusive in-person or virtual events, and ask the to participate in paid product focus groups, for example, allows you to showcase how thoughtful, courteous, reliable, and helpful your employees (and then, by definition, your brand) is.

Benefits of Relational Differentiation

Makes your brand values really come alive and increase your credibility

Creates long-lasting customer loyalty

Boosts employee morale by making them proud of the work they do

Challenges of Relational Differentiation

Takes a lot of time to build

Introduces key person risk, if your best sales, customer success, service, and UX people leave

5. Use Branding and Reputation To Stand Out From the Competition

A customer who is in the market for hiking gear has a staggering amount of retailers to choose from: REI. The North Face. Marmot. Columbia. Kuhl. Arch’teryx. Icebreaker. Osprey. Black Diamond. Patagonia.

But a customer who is in the market for hiking gear that is specifically made in environmentally-friendly ways by a company who shares their values really only has a few options from that initial list available. And if they want that company to actually use their platform to pressure governments to protect the environment? Well, they’ve narrowed it down to one: Patagonia.

The privately-held company famously puts its money where its values are by doing things like asking customers to buy used gear instead of new, using solar energy at its headquarters, and donating its tax cuts to climate-related efforts.

Your brand can enjoy the same kind of differentiation by defining your key values—the things you want to stand for—and making sure your branding reflects it. Customers who share your beliefs will go out of their way to shop with you instead of your competition.

Benefits of Reputation Differentiation

Creates microinfluencers who are happy to share their support of your company because it represents their values

Centers your marketing and advertising decisions around a common set of key messages

Challenges of Reputation Differentiation

Can alienate lots of would-be customers who don’t agree with your approach

Puts you at risk of distracting yourself from creating great products (or can seem that way to detractors)

6. Utilizing Your Prices As Your Differentiator

“But I can’t beat Amazon’s prices!” you say as soon as you read this heading.

Yes, that’s probably true, which is why price differentiation is number 6 on this list instead of number 1. It’s not the most realistic for many eComm vendors. But! You can compete on price without racing to the bottom. It just requires you to get creative.

Instead of offering the single-lowest price on a given product, for example, you can offer competitive pricing on a bundle that includes that good. If you sell suits, you can sell only full sets—jackets and pants together—but show that you’re slicing the per-unit cost to your customers by doing so.

You can also offer new products with speciality pricing in their first drop, then increase prices as time goes on; price products differently for different geographical locations or average incomes; or try producing specific loss-leader products that can only be bought with other products.

Benefits of Price Differentiation

Keeps your brand competitive with price-conscious shoppers

Opens your funnel of potential sales

Challenges of Price Differentiation

Can be hard to maintain over time

Risks bringing in one-time customers who don’t see value in your products in the long term

Can cheapen your brand

7. Differentiate Your Business By Learning From Different Industries

There are six great strategies on this list, but our seventh tip is to stop, think about the last eComm purchase you made, and walk yourself through what made you hit “buy.”

For me, I bought flowers from Farmgirl Flowers to celebrate a friend’s promotion. They weren’t the cheapest flowers out there, so they certainly weren’t differentiating themselves on price. What made me buy them? Well:

Their branding is creative and made me smile:

Their products are both beautiful and more eco-friendly than the competition (wrapped in reused coffee sacks instead of plastic):

And their customer service is excellent, both helping me feel educated and empowered to take care of my own flowers and giving me confidence that if anything went wrong with my friend’s, they’d be there to help:

Maybe you don’t have a flower business, but what can you learn from what Farmgirl Flowers does exceptionally well? What can you learn from the brands that you and your employees love?

Benefits of Differentiating Based on Other Industries

Offers unlimited potential for creativity and new ideas

Keeps your marketing fresh and engaging

Challenges of Differentiating Based on Other Industries

Can confuse customers

Probably won’t last long—if you introduce a cool new trick picked up from another industry, chances are your competition will follow

Differentiate With Product Protection and Warranties Using Clyde

Whether your customers care about price, product quality, or customer service, offering product protection with Clyde can help you rise above the competition.

Not only will customers know their products are covered if anything goes wrong, but they’ll spend more money with a retailer who cares about their peace of mind.

Stand Out: How to Differentiate Your Business From Competitors

In the business world, three doesn’t make a crowd. It makes a marketplace.

Few business owners get to work in an industry of one. Unless you’re bringing a completely new idea to market, you’ll always have competitors selling similar products. Fortunately, competition doesn’t kill business. It drives quality, innovation, and branding.

Differentiation in business — however narrow — is the key to building brand loyalty. Think about the last time you and your friends argued about the best pizza in town. Some people love the restaurant with the perfect cheese blend. Others obsess over the old school parlor with the house-made herb tomato sauce. Maybe for you, it’s all about finding the most crisp crust or creative toppings. The “best” is relative, and it depends on what matters to each person.

Own your business identity

Overthinking the backstory is a key reason business owners get hung up on branding. You may think you need an extraordinary origin story to make an impact. Guess what? Amazing stories get attention, but few people deeply relate to them on a personal level.

Customers relate to the blue-collar worker who will do anything for his family. They admire the entrepreneur with an inspiring rags-to-riches tale. They sympathize with the busy parent who can’t keep up with her to-do list. They respect the business owner who wants to create jobs.

Spend less time thinking of your business as mundane, and focus on the meaningful moments in ordinary lives. What purpose drives your business? Think about factors that motivated you to start a business and the solutions you want to provide. Do you care about environmental consciousness? Making a difference in your community? Creating luxury or handmade products? Offering affordability and convenience?

Sell your strengths to the right audience

Business differentiation requires taking a stance. You can’t be everything to everyone, but you can be the champion for a niche group of people. In other words, let your target market know how you go the extra mile in ways your competitors do not.

Domino’s went from being the bane of pizza lovers in the mid-2000s to the second largest pizza chain by 2016. Instead of claiming to be better than competitors, Domino’s did the opposite. The company apologized for “sucking” and positioned itself as the brand that listens and grows. While it’s a risky strategy, Domino’s saw its strength as owning up to past mistakes and following through on change.

Position your brand by pinpointing the best qualities you have to offer, no matter how simple they seem. The important thing is to make endearing promises you can keep. Consider things you’re already doing and services you could easily add at little cost. Answering these questions can help you identify crucial strengths.

Let’s say you decide to enter the pizza market. It isn’t necessary to try and beat your competitors at everything. Instead, you could be the place with the fastest delivery. Or convenient web and mobile ordering. Or the zaniest topping combos. Or the best loyalty discounts. Stress the things you do really well, and people will pay less attention to your shortcomings.

Leverage your business journey

Just like customers travel a purchase path, business owners have a journey of entrepreneurship. Use it to your advantage. No two people are alike, and all business owners have unique skill sets that influence their brand. Celebrate the challenges, missteps, and insights that led you where you are today.

You are already different from your competitors. You just have to look at yourself from an outside point of view to uncover interesting story elements.

Study competitor weaknesses

Don’t completely ignore your business weaknesses — competitors won’t. Other businesses capitalize on the cracks you overlook and draw away customers who aren’t satisfied. You should be using the same strategy to win more business and downplay shortcomings. Find out what your competitors aren’t doing well, and enhance your business in those areas. Consider these common ways to differentiate your business.

Big brands are a useful source of differentiation ideas, so look to them for inspiration. Tired of pizza comparisons yet? Well, here’s another one.

Expand your brand positioning as you grow

As you learn more about customers, you have more opportunity to differentiate your business. Consumer needs change, so it’s normal to revise your position in the market from time to time.

Not everyone will value your business, and that’s okay. Business differentiation is about tailoring your brand story to people who share your values. Some competitors have more experience, lower prices, or broader services. Yet, none of those businesses are exactly like yours.

In the long run, it’s much easier to master your strengths than overcome your weaknesses. There’s plenty of room in our economy for more business owners, so be confident in the unique value you offer.

Next step: Now that you understand what makes you different from competitors, it’s time to create a marketing plan and grow your business.

3 Ways to Differentiate Your Business

Do you know how to differentiate your business? Here are three popular ways.

There are infinite ways to differentiate your business from the competition. That’s both a blessing and a curse—a blessing because you’ll never run out of choices, and a curse because it can be so hard to decide.

What’s the best one? Whichever one works.

All kidding aside, there are three main ways to use differentiation—the process of distinguishing your business from others in the market—to help you stand out in a crowded industry.

Which one you choose depends, frankly, on which feels best to you.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and countless businesses have both succeeded and failed using each strategy.

Method #1: Focus on what’s most credible about your business

By asking yourself “What am I best at?” you’ll zero in on the aspect of your business that buyers will have the easiest time believing is true.

For example, let’s say you’re particularly good at getting hamburgers off the grill and into customers’ mouths. You could focus on, say, the number of burgers you’d created in the life of your business. McDonald’s used to do exactly this with a line on their signs that said, “Billions and billions served.”

Similarly, shipping service FedEx once emphasized their record for on-time delivery: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

Of course, with this method, you run the risk of customers simply not caring about what you’re good at. But if you know your product-market fit is right, this could be a good choice.

Method #2: Differentiate your business by focusing on what’s unique

Drawing attention to what’s different is quite literally differentiation in action. After all, if you do something uniquely, it makes sense to crow about it.

Think of HBO in the 90s and early 2000s, when the cable channel dragged itself from the swamp of network programming with some of the best shows of all time—the Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and so on.

Their slogan? “It’s not TV… It’s HBO.”

Domino’s provides another good example, with their “30 minutes or it’s free” guarantee that set them apart from everyone else in the pizza delivery game.

United Airlines took a similar approach, differentiating themselves in a crowded passenger travel market by implying they were simply nicer. Remember “Fly the Friendly Skies”?

But wait… If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice something interesting about all three of these examples.

In 2017, United ended up in “Public Relations Hell” for a PR scandal that proved they were anything BUT friendly. HBO suddenly stopped being unique when upstarts like Netflix—and even the networks—upped their television game. And Domino’s went back to being one pizza chain among many when fast delivery became an industry standard.

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with using your uniqueness to differentiate your business. Just be prepared to go back to the drawing board should that uniqueness disappear overnight.

Method #3: Find what appeals most to your customer—and differentiate based on that

Differentiating based on relevance involves finding what your customers appreciate most—and then hammering that point home.

Take Apple. Although this may come as a shock to those who’ve never had anything but an iPhone, Cupertino once made nothing but computers… Until the iPod, a portable MP3 player that revolutionized the music industry at a time when no-one even knew it was the device they’d been craving.

Fabled CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod in October 2001 as a Mac-compatible machine that “put 1,000 songs in your pocket”—and suddenly music-lovers everywhere knew they couldn’t have anything else.

This is a research-intensive approach—one for which you may simply not have the time or money. But there’s no denying the effect of a brand differentiated on relevance: customers come like moths to a flame.

Takeaway

It can be difficult to make a name for yourself in a crowded market, but it’s harder still if you’re not saying anything different from your competitors. If you’re stuck, choose one of these three methods—either the one you’re most comfortable with or the one that comes easiest—and run with it.

If your brand has taken you as far it can go, there’s only one way to take it further. It’s not with a marketing agency. Not with a business coach. Not even a graphic designer.

It makes common sense to hire a branding agency … for branding. And, you can do that in just 2-days with our Branding Intensive.

8 Ways to Differentiate Your Business

Author: Debra Murphy

Updated: August 20, 2019

Small businesses have many marketing challenges. One of these challenges is how to determine what makes their business stand out from the competition. Being able to differentiate your business and communicating your unique capabilities that your competition does not have is important to attracting your ideal client.

When someone asks you what makes you different from your competition:

When you differentiate your business, you make it memorable and credible. It helps your prospects quickly understand what you do and what sets you apart from your competitors.

The secret to creating your differentiation, or unique selling proposition (USP) is understanding what your ideal client really wants and making sure you deliver it better than anyone else. Don’t be fooled – this exercise is not easy to do. It takes a lot of thought, brainstorming and sometimes some trial and error to see what works. Sometimes we are just too close to our businesses to truly see that differentiating quality that makes us stand out.

Plus you may find what is unique for your business evolves as your business grows.

Simple exercise to help you differentiate your business

Take some time to really think about the following and come up with a list of things you do really well. Don’t underestimate anything because something that you do that is so simple may be just the key to you standing out above all others:

The challenge for service businesses is to clearly identify what you do best in a way that is visible to your target. Consultants, accountants, financial planners, coaches, designers, web developers and other service oriented businesses appear to all be the same: they offer the same services for about the same price. Stand out by really understanding what you do best and exploit it. Or come up with something unique that adds value over your competition that you can offer.

8 ways to make your business stand out

Use the following ideas to help you determine that one unique, differentiating quality that only your business has:

Narrow your target market

By specializing in a specific customer niche, you can focus on the skills or services that uniquely benefit that customer. Being the best to provide a solution to their unique situation enables you to maximize revenue and build stronger customer relationships.

Focus on superior customer service

Aim to create the best experience for your customers. From your initial proposal through final delivery of your product or service, be sure your customers are treated as if they were the only one you have.

Solve a problem

Find out what common problems your clients have and be the best at solving them. Make your solutions turnkey so you can solve their problems faster and with better results.

Be innovative

Continuously try to improve your customer facing processes to deliver better results to your target audience. Every industry evolves and so should your business. If you offer similar services as the competition, make the way you deliver them or how you work with your customers unique. Try to get to the solution faster and more accurately than the competition can deliver.

Create offers that are too hard to ignore

Be creative with your service packages and add so much value that it’s hard to say no. If you offer training, give people access to a free module or a money back guarantee. If you have a membership site, offer a free trial for a month to try it out.

Be known as the expert in your field

Build a reputation as the expert in your field through your blog posts, books, videos, training and other information products. People who truly have a problem to solve will want to work with the expert.

Make it easy to do business with you

Work on your business model to make it easy as possible to work with you. Provide access to you via text or email 24×7. Simplify your contract or instead, use an engagement letter. Do whatever it takes to make working with you easy and convenient.

Create a unique business model based on your values

Be transparent to your customers about things you do and why. A couple things I’ve done in my business is that I don’t mark up other vendors products and services and I don’t join affiliate programs for anything involved with marketing so I can remain completely objective when I recommend them to my clients.

Notice I didn’t put price in the list as a way to differentiate yourself. Although price can be used as a differentiating factor, it really isn’t ideal in a service-based business. Who really wants to be the cheapest? Cheaper can evoke perceptions of lower quality, less breadth of knowledge or a less stable business environment.

What makes your business different?

With all the tools, gadgets and platforms, the trend is to spend a lot of time on marketing execution. But one thing we must not forget is that regardless of the channel of execution, you still need the basics of your marketing strategy in place or all of your efforts will be wasted.

Take the time to determine your strengths and communicate them to your target audience in a way that gets them to notice you above all else. Once you have defined and can demonstrate your unique difference, be sure to incorporate it into your messages everywhere.

What is your unique difference that makes your customers want to work with you?

Related Posts

How well do you communicate your value to your ideal client? What is needed to create a powerful marketing message that helps your target know exactly how you can help them and why they should work with you and not your competition.

We spend a lot of time discussing how to select your target audience as part of creating an inbound marketing plan. Hopefully you know who your target audience is for your small business. But have you taken the time to further divide that target audience into smaller market segments?