6 Strategies for Distinguishing Your Business Brand

All businesses have competitors. To snag customers and be successful, you must distinguish your business and its brand from others. Your brand is how you represent your company to consumers. It includes tangible elements like logos, mascots, pricing, and more abstract concepts like value, innovation, and expertise.

Good branding means differentiating your business from the competition. This is important because it helps potential customers recognize your company and products, builds trust with consumers, as well as loyalty. 

Use these strategies to set your brand apart:

Mine a Niche

One of the most effective ways to distinguish your brand is finding a niche and digging into it. If you sell apparel online, how are you different from so many other companies that do the same? Find a niche within that broad category and run with it. For instance, maybe you sell sustainable apparel or embrace size and gender inclusion.

Consider that chosen niche in all your branding and marketing efforts. Use it to guide copy on your website, content marketing, advertising, logos, and more. Consistency is essential for ensuring you get your message across.

Fair Pricing Differentiation

Pricing is a critical element of branding that too many businesses overlook. Pricing isn’t all about profit. It’s also a part of your brand and how consumers compare your company to others. Consider using the idea of fair pricing to differentiate your brand.

Offering quality products at fair prices is a huge draw for potential customers. If they come to associate your brand with reasonable pricing, you’ll build great loyalty that lasts over time.

Create a Unique Point-of-Purchase Experience

Stand out from the crowd with a different purchase experience from competitors’. The standard e-commerce experience is simply clicking on a purchase, paying, and receiving it.

Add something different to the process, and your brand stands out. Customers will remember it and be more likely to return. An incentive is a great idea for setting your point-of-purchase experience apart:

■ Loyalty points incentivize purchasing because consumers build credit toward future purchases.

■ Giveaways don’t have to cost a lot and can provide unique value that distinguishes your brand from others. Get your logo and information out there with promotional materials.

■ Offer a discount for automated, repeat orders. This not only helps customers save money but also provides convenience.  

■ Provide coupons customers can use toward their next purchase to drive additional sales.

Eliciting Customer Emotion With Highly Engaging Copy

Having an engaging copy on your website, social media, and marketing materials draws in consumers and keeps their interest. Writing excellent copy is a skill, so consider hiring a professional. They know how to harness emotion to help define your brand and direct sales.

They can turn something like cheap giveaways that cost you very little into a desirable and unique factor that customers won’t get from your competitors. A professional will take the tone and message of your brand and translate it into a copy that engages and attracts new customers.

Unique Brand Collateral

Brand collateral relates to the media employed in identifying and promoting your brand: promotional materials, business cards, media kits, social media posts, landing pages, print advertisements, and more. Collateral must be consistent to help consumers recognize your brand.

Also important in brand collateral is uniqueness. You can harness these visual materials to make your brand not just recognizable but different and distinguishable from others. This is your brand’s identity. Take time to create logos, choose colors, and select sound bites that set you apart. The best examples of this are simple: the Apple logo, the Nike swoosh, and the Target target logo.

The Use of Mascots

Not all businesses use mascots, but those that do are memorable. Consider Ronald McDonald, Tony the Tiger, the Geico gecko, and Mr. Peanut. Consumers know these characters and readily associate them with their brands.

If done well, creating a brand mascot can differentiate you from competitors. It provides a way to add humor and recognizability while promoting your products. A mascot can easily go wrong, so rely on a professional team to help you develop the right character to identify and represent your brand.

Don’t Let Your Brand Fade Into the Background

Businesses have always had to compete with each other, but in the age of the internet and social media, competition is fiercer than ever. 

Anything you can do to set your brand apart from the rest will help. Develop your brand thoughtfully and use content, pricing, niche, collateral, and more to make sure it stands out.

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