Four Key Areas To Differentiate Yourself by Rod Moore

In this world of extreme competition how you do differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd?

The marketing genius Seth Godin talks about the need to make your business stand out. He uses the analogy of when he was on family holidays in France and driving past field after field full of cows. Coming from a big city this was exciting at first but then after half a day on the road all of the cows started to look the same and blended into the background.

As there was nothing different about any of the cows none of them stood out. The thought occured to him that if just one of them was a purple cow then they would definitely stand out and get noticed.

This thought led Seth to write the book on how to turn your business into a Purple Cow. It is all about how to differentiate yourself in business.

So how can you differentiate your business?

There are essentially four key areas you could focus on to create a point of difference between you and your competitors. These are:

1/ Differentiate On Price - You could differentiate your business through price. Become the low cost supplier of your product or service and you will appeal to a large segment of your target market. The key to doing so without going broke in the process is to create highly efficient operational systems that reduces your costs to deliver the product or service.

Wal-Mart are a classic example of a retail business differentiating on price. Due to their size and operational efficiency they are able to provide their mass consumer products to the marketplace much cheaper than competitors.

Who in your industry is attempting to compete on price? Is there an opportunity for you to compete on price and become the low cost option? This could be an effective strategy to acquire customers on the front end of your marketing funnel if you have a well thought out back end.

2/ Differentiate Through Innovation - Creating an innovative product or service is another way to compete. Virgin have done this effectively. Their strategy is to look at established industrys and then apply innovation to them to make them competitive. A great example of this was when they entered the airline industry in the UK. They applied a number of innovations to their business model which enabled them to compete.

Another example of this is when we launched the Mega Networking & Referral Event. We looked at personal development seminars, and the many monthly networking events and combined the two together creating an innovative and unique event.

What innovations can you apply to your business / industry to come up with something new and unique? Look for examples of others who have also successfully applied innovation to the business you are in.

3/ Differentiate Through Narrow Niche - Another approach is to narrow your focus right down to a tight niche that is untapped or underserved at the moment. It can be difficult to compete in a broader market but a narrow tight niche could be easily dominated by you.

NetJets is a great example. They will never be a major airline nor do they want to be. Their strategy is to provide high end fractional jet aircraft ownership to high net worth customers. These customers typically do not have a need to own their own jets but happy to pay upwards of $50,000 per year for part ownership of a jet.

The good news for NetJets is that they have few competitors in this narrow niche and they own over 50% of the market.

We have followed a similar strategy here at Profit Minute. Instead of trying to be another Marketing Consultant and competing in an already over crowded market we have narrowed our focus to Attraction Marketing. This makes us stand out from the crowd, helps our prospective customers understand what differentiates us, and makes us attractive to new clients.

How can you narrow down your niche and effectively eliminate the competition? Who is a good example of someone in your industry doing this?

4/ Differentiate Through Business Model - The last area you can differentiate your business is through the business model you adapt. There are many approaches here. For example you might make the decision to provide a superior level of customer service well beyond what anyone else in your industry provides.

You might look for opportunities to gain a first mover advantage as your industry changes and develops. Or you might look to create significant barriers to entry that prevent copycat businesses emerging and leveraging of your ideas.

As mentioned there are numerous ways to differentiate your business through the business model you adapt.

So what are you going to do to differentiate your business now and into the future?