Brand Differentiation

Brand differentiation is an essential aspect of a brand marketing strategy. It enables companies to reveal their profitable qualities that help develop a unique selling proposition. This way, they understand their competitive advantage and stand out among competitors.

Why is brand differentiation important?

Customers don’t value brands that sell the same items and don’t provide them with new solutions. It makes them believe that these companies are easily interchangeable. This can cause a price war among brands because the only thing left to compete for is the price. As a result, undercutting your competitors’ prices leads to lower net profit.

Companies need their brands to stand out to avoid predatory pricing. This strategy provides them with both short-term and long-term goals. The main one is to find your competitive advantage — a unique offer that your business opponents don’t have. It will help boost your market share in the long term. As a result, you’ll increase your targeted audience, sales volume, and revenue.

In addition, a clear and valuable unique selling proposition will help you build an army of loyal clients who love your brand not only for your product but for the positive user experience and values you share. Hence, it’s crucial to thoroughly analyze your potential clients to reveal their problems, wants, and needs. This way, you’ll create a successful brand differentiation strategy.

Let’s find out how to create one for your business.

In this section, we’ll share some ideas that will help you differentiate your company from competitors.

1. Become an innovator. This method is a surefire way to stand out. You can either create a product that people have never seen before or optimize and improve an existing one. For this purpose, you need to carry out research to understand your customers’ needs, pain points, preferences, etc. Brands that bring innovations to the market are the most successful, remarkable, and trusted.
2. Choose a winning pricing strategy. You can make your brand stand out either with the lowest price for a high-quality product, which will make you a leader in the mass market, or you can become a premium brand charging more for a better experience like Starbucks does.
3. Solve clients’ unique problems. You may successfully occupy a concentrated niche offering an exceptional quality that your competitors don’t provide. Today custom T-shirt design or sewing lingerie according to personal measurements is not surprising, but someone once came up with this idea. Hence, you can also create a better product.
4. Appeal to emotions. People will definitely remember such a brand and come back for an extra dose of dopamine. These brands sell not products but experiences customers have after buying them. Coca-Cola is associated with joy, happiness, and holiday; Nike motivates people to take action with their “Just do it”; Apple makes its clients feel like they belong to something huge by selling products that have their own ecosystem.
5. Deliver unique customer support. While taking care of a prospect before the purchase is mundane, do your best to support your client after the sale. You can offer a prolonged guarantee or any special and personalized services depending on your product type. Customers appreciate brands that care about them after they’ve paid.

Congrats, now you know why brand differentiation matters, can use its benefits, and have five effective strategies at hand.

Last Updated: 21.03.2023