Distinctive is the key word to understanding the real meaning of a brand. It’s not an organization or company that gets to decide whether or not its brand is distinctive. A brand is distinctive only if its customers, consumers, associates, and influencers perceive and believe that it truly is. In order for an organization to become a genuine brand, several expectations must be met.
The more that you position yourself as an authority, the easier you will find it to attract your ideal tribe, as your clients will immediately see YOU as the “go to” person when they are looking to solve a problem that they have.
WHERE ARE YOU HEADED?
Once you know yourself better you can then figure out where you want to be later on. This is both for your personal and professional life. What life aspects have been rewarding?
Do you like the job you have currently or the business you are running? You may not like jobs you had in the past. However, there may have been periods in your life in which you were most happy. Use your memory to find life aspects that have been rewarding to you. Find aspects in both your personal and professional life that have been rewarding. Don’t limit this list as you create it. List every positive thing until every life stage you have had has been assessed. Put each positive aspect into a category. Help narrow each category into a short list. You will soon see potential professions that will help your professional life become more satisfying. At this point, you will begin to see the profession type that makes you happiest.
The moment you determine where in life you want to be, compare these to your value list. You will most likely be excited about your career prospects and brand ideas at this point.
5 STEPS TO CREATE A COMPELLING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THAT WILL MAKE YOUR BRAND STAND OUT
1. Find Your Market Strategic Position
What specific segment or niche in the market should be the focus of your company? Finding this has to do with combining business skills with target prospect’s unmet needs. You then need to design a service or product that fulfills this niche.
If you remember, the strategic position of Oprah in her Oprah Winfrey Show was “Own Your Power”— this is a great example of excellent personal branding.
2. Find Your Main BRAND
For differentiating you with your competitors, this is the most compelling advantage.
Tony Robbins utilized, “Awaken the Giant Within.” This was the main advantage that addressed the needs of their market position that was newly defined—-people who were achievers with a lot of potential but needed inspiration.
3. Find Your Supporting Business Model
Specifically, how will you be delivering what your Primary BRAND and Strategic Positioning promises? Your Supporting Business Model is comprised by features in your company that are needed to guarantee that you consistently deliver.
A model was built by Apple that delivered design that was extraordinary and a testing process that was rigorous and included the involvement of Steve Jobs.
A supporting model for business was built by Domino’s to let them provide their promised advantages consistently, which was delivering your order in half an hour.
The business supporting model included locating a plain vanilla, low-cost pizzeria near schools and hiring staff for delivery, for instance.
4. Find Your Secondary BRAND
Zero-in on what you offer that no other customer offers and which will help you stand out from the rest.
For Domino’s, the benefits that are secondary could include a broader topping selection, extra-large slices or even great prices.
5. Making Your BRAND Statement
This is a simple two to three-line statement that you can do by combining steps one to four. Similar to a mission statement, this will identify what makes you different to your customers and target group.
Domino’s slogan really sums up the Compelling Competitive Advantage of Domino’s Pizza which is, “Delivered in thirty minutes or less or its FREE.”
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES - #1 SERVICE
Everyone says that their service is outstanding but most don’t really understand what makes them differentiated.
At this point I would like to focus on the 6 Value Added Service categories differentiating your business from the rest through the provision of high perceived values that will cost you next to nothing.
CONVENIENCE
In the hectic pace of life we live in, most people desire more time and not money. This is how ‘convenience stores’ have made their mark. Consumers happily pay twenty per cent more for goods that are convenient. The food stores, coffee shops and gas station convenience stores are all examples of this.
Doing everything you can to make your product more convenient is a big step to creating a competitive advantage.
There are a few things you can do to make your business more convenient to your market:
Location - The best method of increasing convenience. It is not practical to chance locations, of course. On the other hand, already having a good location is a good idea. Those found inside an industrial park location is definitely their main competitive advantages.
Mobile Services or Delivery - Bringing you service or product to consumers is the next best thing to location.
For example, there has been a proliferation of mechanics that are mobile since people don’t really want to have to take their car to the shop. Also, in Sydney and Melbourne, there is an increased popularity in mobile dry cleaning.
Easy Ordering - It should not be too hard for consumers to order your products. For example, gourmet restaurants, Chinese food and diners tend to have ordering issues and don’t even have online menus. This makes it hard to order compared to restaurants that give you easy ordering access.
Availability - Customers need to be able to do business with you even at odd hours. This is why 24-hour stores have been generating a lot of business. Of course I am not suggesting a drastic change, but rather to consider extending your operational hours to fit in with your customer’s schedule.
Terms of Payment - You can make your company different by giving more options when it comes to terms of payment, such as offering payments that your customer can do in thirty, sixty or ninety day terms. Accepting credit cards is also a good idea.
Additional Services - Find out what your market perceives as important and offer it. For instance, having a play area for children in a clothing, furniture or computer shop so that parents can shop in peace is a good idea.
SPEED
It cannot be denied that needs of the customer are rapidly changing in our society which is becoming more and more fast paced.
The emphasis on convenience and speed are increasingly becoming critical in their decisions of buying. For this reason, you need to have opportunities that are continuous for meeting these needs and for being able to develop into the dominant force in your industry.
If you are a publisher and can deliver job orders in 24 hours or less, then you are the only choice logical enough for those who would like their orders hurriedly delivered.
When supermarkets created an express line, this became a tremendous competitive advantage. Before this occurrence, just picking up eggs or one jug of milk was completely inconvenient since you had to stand in line behind someone with three full carts.
EDUCATION OR TRAINING
These categories symbolize 2 of the value added services that are most powerful, especially if you are selling a type of commodity service or product where there is a requirement for knowledge or application.
One example is Bunnings, which has hired employees and has separated themselves from the competition through hiring former tradesmen and contractors. These people give advice on projects you undertake. They also offer classes to teach a variety of DIY building skills. If you need project guidance, Bunnings would be the choice logical for you.
Keep in mind that Competitive Advantages are not just used for attracting brand new clientele but keeping the ones you already have.
CREATING A RISK-FREE PURCHASE
Generous policy returns and guarantees are great as a tool for customer satisfaction. Also, they can be your strategic position. If none of the competition offers a money back guarantee of one hundred per cent, then you have the chance to become the logical choice by doing this.
More than anything else, the one single thing that makes the shoe brand Zappos different, for example, is the generous policy of returns where they even offer to pay the cost of return shipping. Knowing this, why would customers purchase any other brand?
QUALITY
Properly defined, the nebulous term ‘quality’ can become a powerful competitive advantage. For our own purposes the definition of quality is: ‘Which of the benefits perceived does the consumer get?’
For example, a pizzeria that features gourmet choices can differentiate itself easily from competitors that are lower in cost since this one offers only the highest grade ingredients.
How can you offer more convenience? What can you give that will make you stand out from the competition?
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
How can you improve quality?
How can you reduce the risk of buyers?
How can you utilize training or education?
How can you provide service that is faster?
How can you utilize selections to make you different from the competition without altering your business?
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES - #2 PRICING
I mentioned this earlier, and let me say this again. If you are just using price as your competitive advantage, you are going to make very low profits. On the other hand, if you use price as part of your positioning that is strategic but add other competitive advantages, then pricing becomes a tool that is quite powerful.
For instance, Bunnings has a wide selection of training and education as its plusses, then sums it up by saying: “lowest prices are just the beginning.” This makes a hard-to-beat competitive advantage.
Using price as your competitive advantage falls into many classifications. These include levels of quality, service, lower prices, raising prices and price-fixing to reach various market segments.
Many times, people judge price and quality as one. For the purpose of repositioning products, businesses can actually raise their service or products to superior choices without altering anything else. High prices in themselves provide specific levels of higher perceived quality. In particular, this is true for items such as computers that most consumers don’t know very much about.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
How can you use price to make you different from your competitors?
Increase your level of service to raise prices?
Lower or raise your prices?
Give a fixed price?
For you to have a competitive advantage to become both actionable and marketable, you need to weld them into your BRAND or Competitive Advantage Statement. This is two or three descriptions of your sentence of what you do which differentiates you from the competitors.
Developing your statement includes both a primary and a secondary competitive advantage.
I would like to once again mention that you need to select competitive advantages that are easy to implement. This means that you don’t need to close your business and start a new one. Rather, just incorporate these new concepts of Competitive Advantages into your normal routine.
5 STEPS FOR A WINNING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE STATEMENT
ONE: DETERMINE THE UNFULFILLED NEEDS OF YOUR CUSTOMERS
What is your opportunity to provide additional benefits and advantages to your target audience? What needs do they have that are unfulfilled?
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
Name one or two extra needs that you can fill now which will make you different from your competition?
What are one or two needs your customer has which you can fulfill?
TWO: DETERMINE YOUR CORE COMPETENCIES
To find out whether or not your competitive advantages are right for your business, you need to find out what you are good at. What are the core competencies of your company? What do you do well at the moment which your consumers praise you for?
Many times, enterprises seek something too big for their differentiation point. Get feedback from your customers that will let you know what compels them the most.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
What are three competencies that will let your company provide the extra competitive advantage you want?
THREE: DETERMINE YOUR MAIN COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
Narrow down the lists of competitive advantages you know about your company into two main lists which you will make a focal point for the next thirty days. One is going to come from the advantages you currently have that exist and the other one is a new one. Your main competitive advantage represents these plusses that make you different from the competition at the topmost levels. For example, for Domino’s it was “Delivery in 30 minutes or less or it’s FREE.”
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
Based on the last workshop, which compelling competitive advantages do you feel would affect your profits at the highest levels while being possible to apply?
Select 1 new competitive advantage you will integrate into your company that will be new to your business.
Select 1 Competitive Advantage that you have currently but do not communicate effectively to your target customers.
Next, transform these sentences to a one—two actionable sentence statement that will embody your marketplace differentiation.
FOUR: DETERMINE YOUR STATEMENT OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
This is important since you will be able to consistently and easily differentiate you from your target audience once you crystallize this.
What would you answer if someone inquired about what your company did? Being unable to answer this concisely and clearly means you won’t be able to differentiate your business to your target audience effectively through communication.
5 ELEMENTS YOUR COMPELLING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE NEEDS TO CONTAIN
Be directed at your prospect targets.
Position you on top of the competition by listing one or two primary competitive advantages.
Describe your service or product.
List one or two secondary competitive advantages, such as your hours, that are extended.
Whenever possible, make the choice that is logical.
Using the sentence, “Do you know how…?” You want to identify the problem you need to solve. For instance:
“Do you know how hard it is to find someone to watch the kids so you can go to the gym?”
Next, follow this sentence with what your company can do and how you address the issue:
“Do you know how hard it is to find someone to watch the kids so you can go to the gym?”
“Well, I own a club for fitness that has a supervised play area for children aged two to eleven for women with small children.”
This is indeed the logical choice a woman would make for choosing a place to work out, isn’t it?
Now it’s your turn to use the outlined method above. Of course, make modifications if you are creating a promotion piece or an ad, but the core message will be identical.
Begin with “Do you know…”
Explain “How you solve this problem and what you do.”
Integrate the mentioned five elements: Be directed at your prospect targets, positioning yourself above the competition, describing your service or product, listing one or two advantages that are competitive, making a possible logical choice.
The secret is not to have more than 3 brief sentences and being concise whenever you can. It is of course all right if you are unable to crunch it down to 2-3 sentences.
FIVE: VALIDATE WHY SOMEONE WOULD VALUE YOUR PRIMARY COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Validating your competitive advantage statement is important to your targeted prospects and customers. Here are some questions you need to answer:
What is the existing p
roblem or market condition that supports your competitive advantage?
Will the benefits you state motivate them towards action?
Is it different from your competition?
Will they get what you promise?
Will your audience target perceive your advantages clearly?
YOUR BRAND LOGO
Since we are focusing on creating the advantage you have over the competition, your brand logo is important.
Your brand logo needs to address 3 points:
The strongest competitive advantage that differentiates you from the rest
Focusing on your target market
Defining your service or product
As their promotional driving force, Domino’s used the “30 minutes or It’s Free” headline. This differentiated them from the competition and made a deliverable claim by them.
Next, it also speaks to their target customers, who are people who are busy and who value convenience and speed the most.
Third, it identifies the selling product clearly.
The center for fitness is another example. Traditional centers for fitness could say: “Save twenty-five per cent this summer at XYZ Fitness Center, your complete fitness center.”
Be Your Brand Page 4