How to Stand Out From Your Competitors

Regardless of the industry you’re in, you have competitors. And the more options your customers have, the more difficult it can be to convince them your company is right for them. Unfortunately, offering a great product and providing excellent service often isn’t enough in a crowded marketplace.

Standing out requires making the differences that matter to your target audience clear. But that doesn’t mean you have to reinvent your business, develop a revolutionary new product, or spend more on marketing than everyone else. You already have qualities your target audience is looking for. The challenge is identifying which are most important and effectively using them in your marketing.

How can you make your business stand out from your competitors? Here are five ways to give potential customers the information they need to choose you.

1. Why do your customers choose your business?

When you’re thinking about how to stand out from your competitors, the natural first question is, “What makes my business unique?” This might sound like the right question but it can actually send you down the wrong path.

There aren’t many businesses that are completely unique. Most likely, your competitors offer most of the same products and services you do. They might even have similarly great sales teams, top-notch customer service, and wonderful long-term support. Prospects looking at your business from the outside may struggle to see what sets your business apart from your competitors. But those differences do exist and you do have access to the people who can help you identify them. So, rather than trying to invent a reason your business is different, go to the real source: your current customers.

The people who already work with your business are in the best position to provide insight into their choice. Send out some surveys, set up a few interviews, and add collecting feedback to your sales team’s tasks. The data you collect will help you understand:

The answers might surprise you. They could appreciate you for your responsiveness, expertise, capabilities, turnaround times, or customer service. You might learn that they value your business for something you’ve put a lot of effort into improving or something you’ve always taken for granted. 

Having these answers is the key to knowing your greatest competitive advantages and the first step in figuring out how to market your business based on them.

2. Don’t try to be everything to everyone

Around 30,000 new products are brought to market every year. Even at a time when we’re constantly bombarded by sales pitches for everything from shoes made of algae foam to ketchup slices, that seems like an almost impossible number of new products. Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s because 95% of them fail.

Your company may already be established, but a 95% failure rate is still a huge—and terrifying—number for any business owner to learn. Luckily, the reason isn’t an unfathomable mystery. One of the most common missteps behind this type of failure is not identifying what matters to your target audience and communicating why your product is the better choice for them. When competition is fierce, casting a wider net and trying to capture as many leads as possible feels like a logical next step.

But broadening your services and diluting your messaging can have the opposite effect. When you try to be everything to everyone, you’re more likely to stumble and fall into obscurity rather than stand out. Without access to specific information about your relevant capabilities, your target audience has no idea whether your business has what they need.

Focused marketing doesn’t mean you can’t expand your business or challenge yourself to work outside your speciality. It just helps your target audience understand where your experience meshes with their needs. The clearer that connection is, the easier it is for them to recognize why they should choose you.

3. Communicate your value clearly

After you’ve identified your strengths and your target audience, you have to be able to share that value with them and make the relevance easily understandable. A clear value proposition explains why someone should choose your business over a competitor. All of your marketing needs to consistently tie back to this central message.

Communicate your strengths in terms of what they mean for your customers. You can state that you have experienced engineers, rely on the latest advancements in technology, or have the fastest turnaround times in the industry. But a savvy customer will want to know what this means for them. 

Experienced engineers may be able to identify problems before production is delayed. Staying current with the latest advancements in your field could give customers a boost against their competitors. Faster turnaround times can make up for something that went wrong in the customer’s production schedule. Connecting what you do well to an outcome your customer cares about makes your value clear.

When you identify what you bring to the table that matters to your customer, don’t be afraid to highlight it. Your most important values shouldn’t be hidden on the About page or in the last paragraph of a sales one-sheet. 

4. A great customer experience can set you apart

The same goes for you. Every interaction with your business adds to customers’ perception of your competence and expertise. Prompt responses, great customer service, and consistent follow-up contribute to good experiences. And, individually, those are all important. Taken together, they become your reputation.

Unlike products, services, or marketing claims, the experience of working with your company is difficult for competitors to copy. Your workflow, team, style, and approach to customer relationships are what set you apart. When that works for the customer, it’s another reason to choose you over a competitor.

5. Consistency, consistency, consistency

It’s possible to temporarily draw attention to your business away from competitors with a big, flashy campaign. Create the right buzz and leads can spike and sales soar, but those results don’t necessarily last. Standing out over time, making a real space for yourself in the business landscape, isn’t accomplished with a single campaign or website redesign.

Understanding what makes your business special is a huge marketing advantage. Once you know where you can differentiate from your competitors, do it. Reinforce that message everywhere you have a touchpoint with a customer. That means your website, articles, videos, social media, sales presentations, and printed materials should all tell the same story.

There’s a difference between keeping your marketing fresh and constantly changing your approach to follow the latest trend. Consistency is what makes companies recognizable. Customers don’t need a lengthy list of detailed reasons to do business with you. They want one or two ideas that are relevant to them that they encounter repeatedly and come to associate with what your business does best.

Consistently marketing the same strengths helps customers associate those positive qualities with you. Being recognized for clear, consistent attributes gives you an advantage over competitors whose messaging is constantly changing.

Stand out for the reasons that matter

Standing out from your competitors isn’t about being completely unique. It starts with understanding what your customers value about working with you and using that information to make smart decisions about how you use it in your digital marketing.

Struggling to stand out from the competition? The right digital marketing strategy can help you identify and communicate what makes your business the right choice. Talk with one of our marketing experts today!