Marketing is all about getting what you can offer consumers in front of the right people. If you can reach potential customers and clients who may be interested in your product or service with messaging that shows them how it could benefit them, you have a chance at converting those prospects into sales. After capturing their attention, the key is to retain it by showcasing what makes you different from your competitors.
It’s important to know what makes your company unique so that you can incorporate it into your marketing. To help you identify what is uncommon about your business that will help you stand out to prospective customers, the members of Forbes Agency Council share expert tips below on how to leverage your biggest differentiator and market it well to your target audience.
Forbes Agency Council members share tips for identifying and marketing a company’s most unique differentiator.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. See How Competitors Address Your Market’s Desires
Understand your target market’s desires, their level of awareness around those desires and how your competition is addressing those desires. After noting how your direct competitors position themselves, strategize a solution for addressing your target market’s most craved desires, but do so in a way that differs from how your competition is addressing them. – Justin Richard, Loyal Pandas
2. ‘Interrogate’ The Product Or Service
I always start by “interrogating” the product or service until it “confesses.” Ask the fundamental questions: Why does the brand exist? What is its origin story? Who is the loyal customer at heart, and what do they most uniquely value about the brand? Researching and understanding what’s truly important in the category and how you differ is truly engaging, not just table stakes. – Sue Manber, Publicis Health
3. View Subtle Differences As Tangible Benefits
Your differentiator versus the competition’s doesn’t need to be groundbreaking, it just needs to provide a tangible benefit over the others in the market. Sometimes, this isn’t a revolutionary new offering, but rather a subtle difference in approach or even tone of voice that a customer will find compelling. With a full understanding of your own brand, these differentiators can be identified and utilized. – David Harrison, EVINS
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4. Ask Your Customers What Makes You Different
Your customers know the answer. While you can and should sort through your points of difference, your customer can articulate them more quickly and better. Ask them! Review existing customer data and question current and former customers about what you “own” that no other competitor does. That becomes the centerpiece of your future efforts. – Jim Heininger, Dixon|James – Rebranding Experts
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5. Focus On Your Brand’s Purpose
Identify your ideal client persona and the addressable market. Then, listen to your customers’ needs and wants and align with them based on your brand’s purpose. Communicating your purpose in a way that expresses and addresses what your customers are looking for allows you to appeal to them in a more natural and organic way. – Fran Biderman-Gross, Advantages
6. Figure Out Your ‘Superpower’
Identify your brand’s uniqueness and think of it as a “superpower.” Wonder Woman’s superpowers, for example, are that she can deflect bullets and has super strength. Take a hard look at your product, see what its superpowers are and lean into them. Do you use all-natural ingredients when your competitors don’t? Superpower. Faster shipping? Superpower. Better check-out process? Superpower. The more powers you have, the better. – Brook Shepard, Mason Interactive
7. Market Your Brand’s Unique Story
You need to ask yourself what the real story behind the brand is. Why does your company exist? What spurred you to create your brand? Each company has a unique narrative, and with so many consumers looking for genuine, real brands on social media, marketing your unique story is a great approach. – Lisa Montenegro, Digital Marketing Experts – DMX
8. Try To Niche Down And Standardize Your Offering
If you were to present your service as a set of three different packages, what would you include in each? This simple question can take weeks to answer, but once you manage to figure it out, your business will look much more attractive to customers than many of your competitors because it will help you clearly differentiate yourself. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
9. Leverage Customer Insights From Various Sources
In addition to market analysis and competitor comparisons, companies should leverage customer insights to determine marketable differentiators. These should include customer service insights, reviews, user-generated content and social comments. These customer insights can highlight your company’s strengths, which you can market through specific content and even paid ads that are dedicated to the same topics. – Donna Robinson, Collective Measures
10. Consider The ‘Five P’s’ To Find Your Unique Selling Proposition
I really believe that every company can have a unique selling proposition (USP) that drives customers to it. In MBA classes, they refer to this as the “five P’s” of marketing: product, place, price, promotion and people. Any one of these elements can help you stand out in your industry. Once you determine what your advantage is, make sure this is the core element of your marketing. – Brian Meert, AdvertiseMint
11. Crystallize Your Unique Way Of Doing Things
Think about “how” you do things, not just “what” you do. Two companies can do the same thing, but the way they do it is usually very different—Apple being intuitive and highly designed, for example, or how Tesla is relentlessly challenging. Work on trying to crystallize your unique way of doing things and make sure it connects with your audience and isn’t true of all your competitors. – Catherine Clark, clarkmcdowall
12. Stay True To What Made You Successful In The First Place
It’s important for companies to understand what they are and what they aren’t. While aspiring to new levels and evolving is fantastic, companies need to stay true to what made them successful in the first place. They can’t lose sight of what they truly are. My company’s services have been packaged in a client-centric way around servicing their needs, and we enjoy profiling their success stories. – Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
13. Understand Your Core Values
What makes any company truly unique are its core values. A company’s products and services should be a natural extension of those values. Often, people will put this in terms of why the company exists, which is a good starting point and a natural parallel. That said, if you don’t understand your core values, you’re going to have a very difficult time finding a differentiator. – Roger Hurni, Off Madison Ave
14. Consider Your Employees’ Unique Strengths
Do your employees have a particular skill set? What are your strengths? Where do you fall short? Once you answer those questions, it’s easier to identify what makes your company unique and highlight your marketable skills. Our team is full of drug policy experts with cannabis experience, for example, so we succeed in building cannabis-centered companies and have grown operations from there. – Evan Nison, NisonCo
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
